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Is America Losing Its Merit? Pete Hegseth Says …
Movieguide® Contributor
Pete Hegseth, Fox & Friends host, combat veteran and author of “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free” is sharing how America is losing its merit system and why we need it.
“If there’s one institution that we as citizens ought [to]… be completely based on merit, it’s the United States military,” Hegseth told Mike Rowe on his podcast Dec. 13, “and for our sons and daughters joining, we ought to have full confidence that the institution they’re joining, which could send them to war and ask them to die, is doing so in a manner that fully protects that life and gives them every advantage to win no matter what, and that was the ethos for the most part of the military that I joined.”
“I also joined a lot of mixed multiethnic units because… I was in the New Jersey Guard and different units, and racial animus was not an issue,” the Defense Secretary nominee recalled. “This was a team devoted to a mission that loved the country and wanted to serve, and our best performers were elevated into leadership positions and our poorer performers were relegated or pushed out altogether, and that’s what it’s supposed to look like in a fighting force, and just over time you started to see political prerogatives being pushed from the top that weren’t focused on standards or accountability or meritocracy or lethality but on sort of social, just politically correct priorities that wanted to make the military look a lot more like civilian society.”
That’s what “The War on Warriors” is all about. In the book, Hegseth also points out that the military was one of the first institutions to incorporate black men as equals.
“It did it better than anybody else, earlier than anybody else, and once black men were serving alongside white men, those white men realized there was no basis for their racism because they were equals with the black men they were serving with across the board and so it served that healthy function, but really in this story it started with women in combat,” he expressed. “I mean, it started before that, but more or less it was this idea that politicians and political ideologues at the end of the Obama Administration wanted to solidify women in all Comm roles.”
“And that’s when, with very little fight in the Army and the Air Force, with some fight in the Marine Corps… there was pushback to say, well, let’s test this and see if women joining combat units make them more effective,” he continued. “And of course, the study showed I mean you know, low bone density and lung capacity, and muscle difference. It’s all that the all-male units performed much better.”
The study was mandated, “extensive,” and “incontrovertible,” but it didn’t help much in the fight to prove that men’s capabilities for combat are much higher than women’s because it was ignored.
“The evidence was overwhelming,” Hegseth said. “The amount of injuries that females had, and this was a unit of 400 men doing extensive field exercises versus a unit of 300 men and 100 women integrated in those field exercises, and women were injured at much higher rates. Their, you know ability to maneuver on the battlefield was much lower than men.”
“That unit was much less ready and capable, and yet even when those results were presented to the Marine Corps, the secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, and others did everything they could to contort the language to make it sound like there really wasn’t that much of a difference. They went so far as saying maybe these 100 Marines aren’t representative of all women. So this sort of dismissing the whole idea that you could have a sample size you know or a control group.”
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Hegseth says the Obama administration wanted to say that they have women in all units, so the research didn’t matter for appearance’s sake.
“What hasn’t happened is men and women haven’t changed, right?” Hegseth told Rowe. “So we’re the same, but what has happened is instead of keeping standards high and allowing women to compete for them, standards have been forced down formally or informally by commanders and admirals and others who are under political pressure to say, well why don’t you have 15% of women in this military MOS or this military job?”
“That question is not a question. It’s a suggestion, which leads to they don’t say the standards are changing; they say the standards are evolving, which of course means they’re just lowering [them].”
Rowe said, “Wait, wait, wait. When your commanding officer asks a question or makes a suggestion that’s just fancy talk for an order, correct?”
“Correct,” Hegseth replied.
Hegseth spent months talking to “dozens and dozens” of vets and active servicemen to record their experiences in his book.
“They all sang the same tune. They said commanders are walking on eggshells because standards are lowering,” the Fox host explained. “There are new classes of who’s in and who’s out, who’s up and who’s down, what the Army wants, what the Army doesn’t want.”
“It all sort of mushes together to create an unhealthy environment which is distracted from its core purpose, which used to be: we find the best dudes, put them together, go kill bad guys. And now, it’s all these other boxes we need to check which creates animosity or skepticism or reticence or hey, was that person promoted for the right reasons or not the right reasons, which means that person is imped either way and it’s maybe fair to them or unfair to them. All things you can tolerate in a Harvard faculty lounge. Not things you can tolerate in the 101st Airborne when their job is to get dropped behind enemy lines,” Hegseth concluded.
Hegseth also wrote “Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes,” “Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation,” “American Crusade,” and “In the Arena.”
Hegseth’s senate confirmation hearing for his potential position as the new Secretary of Defense is scheduled for Jan. 14.
Hegseth shared on Instagram last week, “Thank you President @realdonaldtrump for this opportunity. Thank you GOP Senators (+ @johnfetterman) for over 50 thoughtful meetings. Thank you to all the military, veterans & their families for always having our back. And all glory to God. See you January 14.”
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Publish date : 2024-12-26 02:00:00
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