Culture war on the military
by Mackubin Owens
| June 03, 2021 11:00 PM
A recent U.S. Army recruiting ad that portrays a college graduate explaining how, after being raised by “two moms” and marching for gay and transgender rights, she decided to join the Army has elicited two reactions. Many liberals praised it as a welcome example of the Army’s attempt to reach out to more “diverse” groups. A fair number of conservatives mocked it as just the latest example of how the military has become another American institution signaling its “wokeness.”
Sen. Ted Cruz took the opportunity to compare the Army’s recruiting campaign to that of the Russians, arguing that the latter seemed to understand the purpose of a military better. In response, Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, tweeted that “politicians like Senator Cruz are disgracefully trying to draw the military into culture wars that are terrible for cohesion in our military. Cohesion and commitment are what wins wars, and these attacks damage it.”
Ms. Schake is right about cohesion, although I believe she misconstrues its meaning, but her concern for keeping the military out of the culture wars comes several decades too late. To paraphrase Trotsky, “The military may not be interested in the culture wars, but the culture wars are interested in the military.” In fact, the U.S. military has always been battling to maintain its ethos against civilianizing forces.
That battle has sharpened lately.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/culture-war-on-the-military
