Pentagon Diversity Degrades Meritocracy
By Forrest Marion
April 11, 2023
Recently, “Real Time” host Bill Maher came out in favor of meritocracy. Maher identified professional sports as the “last refuge of meritocracy in America.” He continued, “Sports is the last place where it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, just what you do.” Until the last few years, one might have expected the U.S. Department of Defense to have held stubbornly to Maher’s newsworthy “just what you do” matters observation.
Since 2021 the Pentagon’s unmistakable abandonment of meritocracy in lieu of “diversity” has contributed to an overall decline in combat readiness – one documented by the Heritage Foundation, among others. This dangerous trend is despite an end to U.S. contingency operations in Afghanistan and reduced operations in Southwest Asia, which under normal circumstances ought to have facilitated a degree of reconstitution of forces and resulting increased readiness.
In May 2021, the firing of Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier served as an early indicator of the Biden Pentagon’s commitment to radical, ideologically based priorities at odds with traditional merit-based readiness. Lohmeier, a U.S. Space Force squadron commander, had just published a book that addressed his views on quasi-Marxist influences within the U.S. military. During a podcast promoting his book, Lohmeier stated that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was promoting “diversity, inclusion, and equity [DIE or DEI],” which are “rooted in critical race theory [CRT], which is rooted in Marxism.” Lohmeier was immediately relieved of command on the grounds of participating in “prohibited partisan political activity.” Following Lohmeier’s firing, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) wrote a letter to Secretary Austin to express his concerns, beginning with the fact that Lohmeier had been relieved prior to any investigation. Wicker declared,
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/04/11/pentagon_diversity_degrades_meritocracy_892979.html
