[July 10, 2024] Historian Victor Davis Hanson gives us his thoughts on the American military in full panic because they cannot reach their recruiting goals. People, mostly men, make up the bulk of the Army, and when you don’t have the bodies, your ability to fulfill your mission is weakened. I will make a better point, and that is our military is not ready to fight a war against any large adversary like China, Russia, North Korea, or anyone with a nuclear capability or large standing and military force. Period.
It appears that someone in the Pentagon got the message. According to Dr. Hanson, we see a change in recruiting commercials.
“Gone are the commercials of pregnant women in flight suits. For recruitment, and suddenly it’s a bunch of guys who look like they’re World War II vets, jumping out of helicopters and storming the beaches, and then the commercial says, Be All You Can Be, Defend Your Country. And this is a direct appeal to that lost constituency that they alienated.”
Some comments on X (formally Twitter) get quickly to what most of us are thinking:
“To quote Doughnut Operator, you know it’s getting bad because there’s white men in army commercials again” @Nukin_Paladin.
“I know families with multiple generations of military service who are telling the newest generation to take another path. The faith in the military institutions is gone.” @OutintheWild00.
“Now, who’d have thought that alienating your key recruiting demographic would result in poor recruitment outcomes? The same has happened in Australia and the U.K. The clowns are in charge.” @superdavies5548.
Dr. Davis recognizes the failure of those at the Pentagon and how maybe, just maybe, they are beginning to wake up after a visit to Capitol Hill to speak with Republican Congressmen who spent time dismantling the “woke” Secretary of the Army, Hon. Christine Wormuth (who is also not a Veteran).
“We’re short 45,000 Soldiers. It’s never happened before. If you look at the demographics of the enlistment, the shortfalls are almost entirely in the very demographic that died at twice the numbers in the general population in Iraq and Afghanistan, where 75% roughly of all the deaths were lower class, middle class, white males. Inordinately from Red States, and they only represent white males in general, about 33% of the population, yet that’s the very demographic that the Army went after. And now all of a sudden, with the Afghanistan Humiliation, and Gaza, Ukraine, the Chinese Balloon, the military is in full panic.”
I don’t believe that the Army is tracking this at all. They seem to believe that the main demographic they should play to is the lesbian, black/Latino female with life traumas or some other mental health problem they want to welcome into the ranks, precisely what the military should avoid at all costs.
Those of us who witnessed firsthand what happens when the nation insists on using the U.S. military as a social experiment are appalled at what the SecArmy has done and will be happy the day she is removed from her job. We will start to see improvements immediately.
What I dislike the most is that senior Army General Officers are not giving her good advice. If they are and she is ignoring their advice, they are obligated to resign from their positions, and none have done so to date.
The Army is in trouble because it has weak, woke, wacky leadership, and not because it is institutionally insufficient.
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NOTE: Please read “Would I Recommend Joining the U.S. Army?” https://www.theleadermaker.com/would-i-recommend-joining-the-u-s-army/
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Gen. Satterfield, well said and thanks for highlighting Historian Dr. Hanson, a great man who helps us “see” what we might normally overlook.
Another excellent article, Gen. Satterfield on Dr. Hanson, my favorite historian.
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Anything that Victor Davis Hanson has to say, I’m going to read and think about. I do believe that he might be overexaggerating here calling for the military to be in “full panic” but I do understand where he is coming from . Our military is being run by those who do NOT understand it, and from that comes poor decisions based upon a terrible ideology that we refer generally to as WOKE but is actually a combination of progressive thinking, bureaucratic inertia, weak leadership at the most senior levels and immature staffers who have little experience in the field and are allowed to influence policy. The Army’s recruiting effort is a classic failure of these WOKE policies and our leaders might just be figuring that out.
Good point Willie, but it is WORSE in CANADA where this “wokeness” has fully taken over our military and we could not fight a war if our nation’s existence depended upon it.
Ron, yeah, I’d heard that. Once Trump is elected this year, he will help Canada come out of their shell and have a better military thru cooperation with us.
“The Army is in trouble because it has weak, woke, wacky leadership, and not because it is institutionally insufficient.” – Gen. Doug Satterfield
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OUCH
VDH is a true historian and one not influenced by this progressive crap that we find that has filtered down into the leadership universities of America and the West. We are now governed by the weak. Just look at president Biden who cannot even put together a coherent sentence. Wow.
With Joe Biden in charge, America is in trouble.
mainer, I love that guy. Every time I find an article by Dr. Hanson, I read it. I know that I’m reading the real deal and not some suck-up garbage put out by a weak, effete sissy ‘man’ from a university. This is also the reason that I read this blog by Gen. Doug Satterfield and also forward the articles to my friends. And this particular article will be sent to those I know in the military. They deserve to hear a different perspective than the wokeiness of the Biden train wreck.
Excellent comment, Jerome. 👍
Ha Ha Ha … Victor Davis Hanson. My man, you know the deal. You are da man!
Exactly the kind of response I would expect from those in the know on military affairs and understand the culture unlike the SecArmy does not know and will never know because she is 1) a woman who lives in a bubble of wokeness and 2) she was NEVER a part of the military and thus does not understand it – at all despite the woke generals who give her ‘advice.’ Kick her butt out and put in a real man. That will turn this around in 24 hours. I know Gen. Satterfield could do it.
Great points, Army Vet. But I do think it is less that she is a woman (does she know what a woman is?) than she is a bureaucrat who was never ‘in the trenches’ to get an understanding of the military. She only sees the top and not the bottom of the rank structure that she has the most influence over.
Gen. Satterfield, excellent point and woman like her are far less likely to get that experience because they avoid being ‘in the trenches’ in the early part of her career because it is HARD. And most women avoid anything that is physically hard or requires getting your hands dirty. She was always a paper pusher, as we say in the army, and because she was always behind a desk, she doesn’t understand – deep down in her soul – what it takes to run a military.
Well said, sir. Thanks. 👀👀👀👀👀
Powerful comment, Army Vet and thank you!