The United States Military: A Social Experiment

The military as a social experiment is not a new concept. In fact, the U.S. military has always been a social experiment in some way, shape, or form. Our military has almost always been a full volunteer service, which has been one of its most proud boasts as a war fighting unit. The American people who serve are mostly motivated by patriotism and the American spirit. However, even with the ‘citizen-soldier’ motivation, the military has always excluded citizens from serving based on many factors such as race, class, ethnicity, citizenship, religion, gender, and sexuality, with these demographics changing over the years. Serving in the military has never been a right extended to all Americans, it is a privilege extended to those who can increase effectiveness or lethality. This fact can only be described as a social experiment. While these exclusions in the past were always seemingly made in the name of readiness and effectiveness, today it seems to be less about exclusion in the name of effectiveness, and more about inclusion in the name of equality.

In 2015 the Marine Corps conducted a study on gender-integrated combat formations that concluded that those formations did not move as quickly, shoot as accurately, and suffered more combat-related injuries than non-integrated formations. This study was thrown out by then Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. That same year the military began a push towards ‘gender-neutral standards’ opening all jobs in the military to both males and females and lowering the physical fitness standards to reflect the changes to having females in combat arms. Once again, in the same year, former President Obama initiated a change to the long-standing policy on transgender individuals in the military. Luckily, for our military members (most of whom disagreed with this policy) the Trump Administration put a hold on the transgender policy until more studies could be done. Unfortunately, mere days after taking office President Biden enacted these policies. Policies that allow service members to officially change their gender to be outside of their biological gender, allow extended leave for gender reassignment surgery, and allow service members to use the restroom that coincides with the gender they ‘feel’ they are. I thought the responsibility of the military was to fight and win wars, not fight and win social justice battles for the progressive left.

These policies, like most far-left progressive policies, have harmed the fighting force today. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are being forced to sit through ridiculous indoctrination programs that include things like the proper way to use personal pronouns and even some foundations of critical race theory. I found myself sitting in one of these programs in 2016 that was about transgender policy. The most disturbing part was watching my senior leaders, those that I would have had to trust in combat, spew this bullshit and attempt to justify it, knowing that what they were doing was wrong but having no power to do anything about it. One of my fondest memories of this indoctrination was when one of my buddies whose wife was also serving in the military posed the question “So if we are on a training rotation or deployed and a man, with his penis and testicles attached, identifies as a woman, he can use the open showers with my wife?” All the First Sergeants indoctrinating us could say was “yes”. No explanation, no justification, no even saying “I know it’s fucked up but it’s just what we have to live with right now”, just “yes”. The bottom line is the progressive left will tell us that systemic racism and white privilege are the fatal flaws of America. But look at these policies and imagine being in young service members’ shoes. Does any of this promote brotherhood or cohesion? We are ripping at the fabric of what makes our military the greatest fighting force in the world, and I only hope that we can save it before it’s too late.