The Marines Go Woke, and President Xi and His Boys Couldn't Be Happier

Bonchie reporting for RedState

Wokeness in the military has been pervasive for years now, going back to the early years of Donald Trump’s time in office. That first seemed to manifest itself in the battle over transgender troops and using taxpayer money to pay for them to “transition.” Since then, things have broadened out to prioritizing “diversity,” including recruitment ads featuring LGBT pride parades and the inclusion of critical race theory.

But while the Army, Navy, and Air Force seemed to readily embrace such ideology, the Marine Corps had been largely resistant…until now. According to Gen. David Berger, a big overhaul is coming to focus on diversity so the corps can “reflect the society we come from.” You know, because what’s truly important when the bullets start flying is that racial and gender quotas were filled.

The Marine Corps, the smallest U.S. military force, has plans for a big overhaul designed to address its lack of diversity and problem with retaining troops.

The goal that’s driving what amounts to a cultural shift within the service, is for the Marines “to reflect America, to reflect the society we come from,” Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition.

It’s not a matter of being politically correct or “woke,” he said.

Except, that’s exactly what it’s a matter of. There is no logical reason to make diversity a priority when recruiting for the military. I’ll get into that further in a moment, but first, Berger also had this to say.

The core of America’s strength lies in its diversity, Berger said, adding that the same is true for the military.

I can only picture President Xi Jinping and his boys laughing out loud at their good fortune. Their chief geopolitical and military enemy in the United States has decided to commit ritual suicide as the predominant power in the world, and the Chinese didn’t have to lift a finger. I see no evidence over the last several years that any of this pursuit of wokeness in the military has produced a better fighting force.

I also know that like many jobs out there, certain demographics tend to prefer them. When it comes to the Marines, that typically means young, white males. Sure, that’s not absolute and lots of minorities serve honorably, but there’s no doubt the military, in general, tends to disproportionately attract white men from military families, often from more conservative areas.

To offer a point of comparison, black women are disproportionately represented in the field of social work, and Asians are overrepresented in the STEM fields. None of that is bad or racist. Different cultures tend to gravitate to different occupations, and having that choice is part of being an American.

What the Marine Corps is attempting to do here is dangerous precisely because race and gender should not play a factor in building the world’s most deadly fighting force. Rather, ability and effectiveness should. No branch of the military needs to necessarily “reflect” the country it serves. The only thing that matters is winning, something our general class has long forgotten as they’ve presided over foreign policy failure after failure.

As to this idea that “diversity” is our strength militarily, there’s no actual evidence to back that claim up. It’s simply mindless jargon from a military leadership that has taken to reading leftwing talking points verbatim. That’s not to say diversity is bad if it happens organically, but to start recruiting in a way that excludes those who actually want to serve — while trying to fill pointless race and gender quotas — is how you end up with a fighting force that isn’t as good as it could be.

Meanwhile, China just secured the world’s largest navy and is expanding its nuclear arsenal, while the US military leadership is asleep at the wheel. That’s not going to end well for anyone.