The Pentagon’s Fight With Tucker Carlson Proves It Doesn’t Even Exist To Win Wars Anymore

Tucker Carlson may have never served in the armed forces, but he’s still decisively winning a PR war against the U.S. military. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, of course. The U.S. military loses most of the wars it fights these days.

During America’s long golden age as a country, the military typically abstained from politics and won wars. But in the decaying Globalist American Empire, the military plays a very different role. Protecting America and winning conflicts isn’t the military’s goal at all. Instead, the armed forces have become a skinsuit. This once-great institution has been repurposed into a vehicle for globalist and left-wing domestic political goals.

The clash between Carlson and the DoD began on Monday. In remarks delivered for the Communist holiday of International Women’s Day, Biden boasted of how he and President Obama had worked to make the military a fully gender-neutral body:

I’m incredibly proud that in 2015, under the Obama-Biden administration, we took the final steps to open up all positions in the military to anyone qualified to serve in them. The women who join today’s military aren’t told “no” when they apply to fly fighter jets or attack helicopters just because of their gender. They aren’t told “no” when they want to apply to Ranger School or infantry officer basic training. [White House]

Biden bragged that it is easier than ever for pregnant women, and women who care about their appearance, to serve in the armed forces.

We’re making good progress designing body armor that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating — updating requirements for their hairstyles.

And Biden said, overtly, that his administration would be fighting to change the military to make it more feminine, a place where a woman trying to become a general is as easy to understand as a woman becoming a teacher or a nurse.

And some of it is going to take — and — you know, an intensity of purpose and mission to really change the culture and habits that cause women to leave the military: That women are — making sure more diverse candidates are considering — being considered for career-advancing opportunities at every single level. That women aren’t penalized in their careers for having children. That women aren’t just token members, but integral parts throughout all branches and all divisions.

Nothing Carlson said is insane, or even particularly notable. What’s notable is the shrill, borderline ridiculous response from the once-apolitical Defense establishment.

That’s not a screencap from DNC, or Slate, or the Center for American Progress. That’s a screencap from Defense.gov, an official website of the American military. It should be disturbing to anybody who cares about the military’s overall efficacy. How can anyone feel confidence in a military that writes headlines about it “smiting” TV talking heads who “dissed” it?

The body text is no less appalling:

The United States military is the greatest the world has ever seen because of its diversity, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a news briefing this morning. Kirby addressed this because a Fox cable show host used his show to denigrate the contributions of women in the military and to say the Chinese military is catching up to the U.S. military because it does not allow women to serve in the percentage the United States does. [Department of Defense]

The Department of Defense used Twitter to issue another passive-aggressive attack on Carlson, but in fitting fashion, this attack hurt the one making it more than the target:

“Women were limited to supporting roles in the military early on.” Any historically observant person might realize that “early on” the U.S. military actually won the wars it fought in.

Does anybody who isn’t a full-time Twitter addict find this appealing or impressive?

Despite all the embarrassing attacks levied on him, Carlson has actually been generous in his response. On Thursday night, even as he doubled down on his criticism of maternity madness, Carlson described the military as “the last functional institution of any size in this country.”

Tucker is being far too charitable. The military has become just as dysfunctional as every other institution in America. Soon, it could get even worse.

True, President Trump had some limited victories, such as a temporary return to the ban on service by transgender individuals. But the Trump military was entirely invested in making it as easy as possible for the military to keep pregnant women in active service. This press release, for instance, was issued under Trump, not Biden:

The Fit and Wear tests are part of an effort to roll out a flight uniform designed specifically for pregnant aviators.

“This effort is important,” said 1st Lt Avery Thomson, lead program manager for Maternity Development efforts in the AFUO. “Current aircrew members are modifying their flight duty uniforms, at a significant personal financial cost, or they are borrowing bigger uniforms from their husbands, which creates a safety of flight issue. The Maternity Flight Duty Uniform will help remove a barrier for approximately 400 pregnant Airmen each year.” [Air Force]

But even before George Floyd’s death, the military was touting diversity as its greatest strength. In a 2019 tweet, the DoD bragged about how military service prepared one woman for a career as a “beauty influencer & diversity activist.”

All these tweets, initiatives, and obnoxious cable TV clapbacks are more than a distraction. They reveal the fundamental nature of the modern military. Whatever the U.S. military cares about, it’s certainly not winning wars. In fact, in many ways, the U.S. armed forces are barely a “military” at all now. Instead, it is an enormously expensive vehicle for pushing progressive politics and enriching defense contractors and war profiteers.

A military that wants to win wars would focus ruthlessly on preparing to do that. It wouldn’t pick fights with cable news hosts as an excuse to talk about how “badass” and “lethal” women in combat are:

A military that cares about winning would maintain rigorous physical standards for soldiers, instead of weakening them to help women pass. It would promote entirely based on rigorous measures of merit, instead of throwing those standards out and explicitly warning officers that their promotions are contingent on hitting diversity targets. It wouldn’t worry at all about the “fairness” of making sure pregnant women can return to service without enduring a career setback. It would have exactly zero jobs for “gender adviser”:

The military’s domestic political purpose also shows in how it is used. America keeps 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, which are useless for controlling the country or defeating the Taliban. Their only purpose is domestic, to allow Washington politicians to posture as tough on terrorism, supportive of women’s rights, or just vaguely “pro-military.” Twice as many troops are deployed in America’s own Capitol, ostensibly to “protect” it from a “right-wing insurgency.”

But as Revolver explained this week, the real purpose of the occupation is to send the message that conservatives are dangerous (why would we need troops in the Capitol if they weren’t, after all?) and stricter laws are needed to curb their freedoms.

No troops at all, meanwhile, are deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border, even though hundreds of thousands cross the border illegally every year, and even though protecting the frontier has been the traditional obligation of standing armies for all of human history. Why are they gone? Because only militaries concentrated on foreign threats protect their country’s border. America’s military is focused inwardly.

Militaries are meant to win wars and defeat foreign adversaries. But the four branches of the American armed forces serve a very different purpose. They do not win our current wars, and they do not effectively prepare to win future ones. 

America doesn’t spend $700 billion per year to deter Chinese aggression or defeat the Taliban. America spends $700 billion per year to tell women that they are just as good at being soldiers and sailors as men are. It spends $700 billion per year to affirm, against all external evidence, that “diversity is our strength.” It spends $700 billion a year to prop up the balance sheets of defense contractors and provide de facto welfare to the lower middle class. It spends $700 billion a year in order to give transgender soldiers free sex changes. Slashing the DOD budget in half might be the most appropriate approach to “welfare reform.”

After all, the American armed forces are now just a woke welfare department with drones.