The leadership of the US military continues to recreate the modern forces in the image of the 1800s so beloved by the president. Women, people of color, trans people, and non-Christians have all been removed from the public histories, ejected from positions of trust and responsibility, and even told they aren’t wanted.
In addition to all of the removals of history reported by us on March 14th, we have had reports that civil rights activist Medgar Evers was hidden from the website of Arlington Cemetery, that Native American Code Talkers had been wiped from military history pages, and that soldiers depicted in the movie Glory were erased from the Pentagon’s website. At the same time, the Naval Academy which is supposed to train the next generation of leaders for the Navy and Marines, pulled more than 400 books from their library that were seen to promote diversity and “mistakenly” removed a display honoring Jewish women who had graduated from the school.
On top of the efforts to remove transgender military participants and prevent future enlistments by members of that community, rules for Air Force pilots and aircrews were rewritten to forbid females from flying if they were in the first trimester of pregnancy and not at any time in the pregnancy are they allowed to fly any plane that has ejector seats. The next day, 3 reports starting going around that the commander of the National Security Agency and his deputy had been removed because a failed candidate for Congress who is known for conspiracy theories said that they weren’t loyal to the President. Loyalty to the nation, to the Constitution, to their oaths wasn’t sufficient. They weren’t seen as loyal to the individual in the office and so couldn’t be trusted. No doubt their replacements will pass that loyalty test, even if they don’t know how to do the actual job.
In March it was reported that Pete Hegseth’s removal of the ill-suited top lawyers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force was just the beginning of efforts to remove protections against violations of law. JAG lawyers are going to be retrained so they will “take a more lenient approach in charging soldiers with battlefield crimes” and to allow commanders to be able to use “more aggressive” tactics. The Army has also made sweeping changes to the training that soldiers are required to receive. Among the courses that are now deemed not critical to warfighting are programs on the laws of war and codes of conduct. In addition, courses that help military participants develop coping skills to handle stress and trauma have been deemed unneeded for readiness. Finally, there are reports of plans to reduce the size of the active duty Army by as many as 90,000 people.
All of these actions to change the face of the military raise the question of who will stay and who will be let go. Will those who remain be only those who have the desired look of white, male, and Christian? Will they be led by officers who are loyal to the man and not the nation? Will Pete Hegseth make yet another step towards his American Crusade to get “we Christians … to pick up the sword of unapologetic Americanism and defend ourselves?”