New report says the US Navy is more focused on "diversity" than warfighting...

 

The USS Bonhomme Richard. New York Post/EPA.

A new report says that the US Navy is more focused on "diversity" than warfighting. New York Post. The report was commissioned by Senator Tom Cotton along with Representatives Banks, Crenshaw and Gallagher. The investigators talked to active duty officers and enlisted and recently retired officers and they said that the Navy's focus on diversity was put ahead of things like training and challenging China. One officer said she was only seen as a black woman and not her skills. 

The report can be found here. 

My Comment:

The New York Post focused on the culture war aspects of this report but the rot goes deeper than that. The people interviewed had other complaints that were separate from the critical race theory infection. Notably, the report said that training was extremely lax and the brass was focused on just about everything else but actually fighting and winning wars. They also blasted how strict the rules were so one mistake can destroy your own career. 

Maintenance was also a major concern. Our Navy spends far too much time at sea and not enough time actually fixing their ships. This leads to burnout and could be responsible for incidents like the USS Bonhomme Richard being destroyed. 

I do think our military is a mess. We haven't had a peer war in a long time and what we have been fighting is insurgents in the desert. We don't focus on winning but we do focus on politics, both in terms of national politics and internal military politics. That is a recipe for disaster. 

It really makes me think that we won't win a hypothetical war with China or Russia. We haven't invested in new weapons and it seems pretty clear that the Chinese and Russians don't have the same problems with politics that we have. They are actually focused on warfighting so if we do win a war against them it will be because of our remaining technological advantage, not because our troops are well prepared. 

I especially think that the focus on race and other progressive hobby horses is extremely toxic to preparedness. Nobody likes to be lectured about things that are out of their control and discussions about race hurts everyone. Whites don't like being discriminated against and non-whites don't like the idea that the only reason they succeed is because they are a minority. And nobody likes to walk on eggshells around leftists that might turn them into their CO.