Opinion: Confidence in the military erodes as culture wars rage
Opinion by Carl Forsling • Yesterday 12:35 PM
Confidence in the military has eroded after taking hits from both the political left and right for being too politicized.
Perhaps no one is more symbolic of this than Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. He was appointed by President Trump in 2019 and came under fire from liberals soon after. Most famously, in 2020, he was criticized for accompanying Trump through a Lafayette Square recently cleared of Black Lives Matter protestors for a photo at nearby St. John’s Church. But it only took a few months after that for Milley to make himself a scapegoat of the right ever since he took a firm stand against coups and detailed his personal reading list to senators.
Milley is a 64-year-old man who has served in the military for 42 years. It’s safe to say his political views never changed much in the course of his chairmanship, yet both the left and right have come after him. The military as a whole finds itself in the same dilemma.
The Ronald Reagan Institute recently published a study about the attitudes of American people toward the US military, which has long been one of the most highly regarded institutions in the US. This study shows a calamitous decline in confidence. Less than half, 48% of recipients, have “a great deal of confidence” in the military. That’s down from 70% five years ago. Lest one blame that on the current administration, confidence in the military is actually up a tick from 2021. Before that, it was in free fall.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinion-confidence-in-the-military-erodes-as-culture-wars-rage/ar-AA15TGVD?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1b0f883b8d6346a09f3f7d1fa4209f3f
