On Jan. 20, 2025, President-elect Donald Trump will inherit a U.S. military plagued with force readiness, recruiting, and retention issues. A conglomerate of factors played into the breakdown of each issue.
Notable contributions included the infiltration of cultural Marxism, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology into the force, as well as the tyrannical enforcement of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s now-rescinded 2021 military shot mandate.
The Gateway Pundit spoke to Matt Lohmeier, Executive Vice President of Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS), and a former Space Force commander who was relieved of his duties in 2021 for comments about diversity and wokeness in the military. The author of Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military explained, “The way in which Marxism has infiltrated the United States military has been largely subversively, just like it did originally in the university setting.”
Lohmeier said, “It then came far more directly in the form of diversity and inclusion trainings that are steeped in critical race theory, which teach our service members to view one another based on accidentals.” According to him, these accidentals include but are not limited to race, ethnic, and gender identities.
For him, “There’s no better strategy that someone might come up with to destroy a military than to divide it and then conquer it.” He warned, “Marxism never parades around as Marxism, but employs a different vocabulary to mask what’s being weaponized against the troops.”
“Genuine diversity and inclusion are not bad in and of themselves, but when divisive agendas get attached to those words then they are used to destroy unity,” he shared. “Adding insult to injury, even as the unity of our armed forces has begun to crumble, so has the military’s long history of merit-based selections, because in order to achieve the aims of the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda, a quota-based system is required.”
“While the military has been very careful to stay away from the term quotas, using other terms instead,” Lohmeier pointed out that “when terms like ‘force planning or force shaping’ are used, it means nothing less than that we have quotas.” As a result, merit-based selection has suffered greatly through the years.
Nic Gray, a former non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army and CEO of Uniformed Services Justice & Advocacy Group (USJAG), agreed. One of his primary concerns is that the military has failed to uphold its long history of merit-based selection.
He told The Gateway Pundit, “The military has unequivocally lost focus on the foundational elements of its success: unit cohesion, discipline, and readiness. Merit-based selection has been abandoned, leading to a significant erosion of true diversity.” In addition, he pointed out that recruitment standards have been “undeniably lowered,” and retention is “clearly on a negative trajectory.”
While people often focus on the recruiting issue, Gray warned, “Retention must be at the forefront of our concerns.” He noted, “Service members are resolutely choosing to terminate their careers early to escape entanglement with political or societal ideologies they view as fundamentally damaging to the military’s core values and operational effectiveness.”
Lohmeier agreed, pointing out that “all too often, some of our most talented leaders throw in the towel and retire early.”
“We still have great leaders all throughout and in every branch of the military, but many are quite discouraged,” he said, explaining “They’re discouraged by the abandonment of the meritocracy of the United States military and by overt political shifts in military culture, making many feel less valued somehow because they don’t fit a certain race or sex-based demographic.”
“When someone like that steps aside and goes quietly into the civilian world, you’d hope that the person that’s going to fill his shoes in a leadership capacity is the second best, but that’s not always the case,” Lohmeier offered. “But when this is not the case, you start to fill some of those positions with people that frankly shouldn’t be in a leadership position.”
And according to Gray, the ‘double negative’ scenario of substandard non-commissioned officers leading substandard recruits” fosters a toxic environment.” This not only undermines force readiness but also jeopardizes national security in his opinion. “Such a cycle adversely affects both recruitment and retention, leading to a generational disillusionment with the prospect of military service,” he lamented.
‘The U.S. Military is at a Dangerous Juncture’
Gray said he “clearly recognizes” the abandonment of merit-based selection and the threat it has on USJAG’s mission to advocate for injured service members who are abusively and fraudulently discharged. Emphasizing the role of commissioned officers in the discharge process, he said, “It is crucial for people to recognize that fraudulent discharges are primarily being sanctioned and executed by mid-level officers, whose primary motivation appears to be career advancement through promotion. In other words, he said, “It’s ego and profit-driven at the expense of a fellow brother or sister.”
He explained, “Promotions are partially contingent upon force readiness, assessed by deployable status, with a goal of maintaining a 95 percent benchmark.” According to him, “Mid-level officers, aware that injured service members are eating up scarce resources that could otherwise support healthy and deployable personnel, are resorting to fraudulent means to discharge these individuals.” For many, he said, it’s considered “a death sentence.”
“Laws are not being followed, [and] the rights of service members are being violated,” Gray lamented. “The new administration must address the unlawful discharges plaguing the military, because it’s been deliberate and injured service members have been the subject of total malfeasance for far too long.” Injured service members have the right to heal, return to service, or receive medical retirement.
“Fraudulent discharges not only harm the individual but also their families and communities, adversely affecting recruitment, retention, and national security,” Gray shared. “The Department of Defense must not continue to self-regulate.”
“When one gets a glimpse beneath the surface of the Department of Defense and uncovers the pervasive issue of fraudulent discharges, it becomes clear that this could be argued as the most egregious scandal in the department’s history,” Gray argued. “The Department has failed miserably to play judge, jury, and executioner.”
For Gray, the solution is clear: “Implement third-party oversight in the discharge process of injured service members to safeguard their rights and ensure compliance with Congressional mandates.”
According to Lohmeier, “The U.S. military is at a dangerous juncture at the moment, because even with a new administration and a potential Secretary of Defense who wants nothing less than to prioritize warfighting, lethality, readiness and recruiting, you can’t fix certain problems overnight, [as] it takes a long time to generate a seasoned leader.”
“For this breed of military leaders currently in place, however, it needs to be very clear to them that their chain of command won’t put up with some of that old political activism that may have gotten them so excited in the past four years,” he asserted.
For the former Space Force commander, “It’s time to abandon partisan politics and simply focus on the lethality of the force and the mission.”
