It has become obvious from the multiple failings of the Biden administration military we may well see soon the world domination of China in concert with Russia, Iran and North Korea not to mention the resurgence of ISIS and/or al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic organizations. These potential multiple failures and defeats for the USA may well be by design of the liberals. Whether intentional, the result of abject ignorance or self-serving political expedience, the lack of war-fighting focus is very real as evidenced by my recent personal experiences at an Army unit.
Last Sunday I had the enlightening experience of attending and providing an ancillary service briefing to a major Army Reserve unit headquarters unit assembly to inform the soldiers of their pending annual required weapons qualifications exercise. The briefing was well organized and presented in a comprehensible sequence that generally followed the standard Army Five Paragraph Operations Order. The information presented was clear and logical until the highly emphasized and grossly unfocused safety briefing.
The officer presenting the brief gave careful information on vehicular movement safety, necessary safety equipment required, personal involvement by all soldiers with being alert and observant for dangers, and a long dissertation on the requirements and protections in place and to be observed by the soldiers with regard to COVID-19. Vaccination mandates and critical dates were presented, COVID testing, if necessary, specified, and working and billeting (sleeping) arrangements and protections were specified.
Incidentally, reflecting the now ingrained exaggerated unwarranted paranoia of much of the ill-informed American public, the soldiers had a surprising number of questions about COVID protections, inoculations, the “imminent” threat of the dreaded Omicron variant, sleeping arrangements with masks, but NO questions about weapons safety.
As an Infantry soldier of more than 40 years of service and four combat tours, who conducted weapons training and weapons qualifications more times than I can count for units from squad to brigade size (3,000 troops), weapons safety is paramount. I was gobsmacked to not hear weapons safety included in the operations briefing. It must be realized is an astonishingly infrequent experience of soldiers (usually one time per year) when they can actually fire their weapons with live ammunition for qualification or any other training reason.
Weapons safety is briefed prior to the operation, prior to any issue of live ammunition, and any execution of training with weapons in the field. What this dramatically demonstrates is the astonishing lack of warfighting and soldier task focus by this unit as evidence of a much the more pervasive lack of mission-focus current in our current military.
The lack of basic warfighting task training for this unit and all our military as well as leadership failures from the pentagon to squad level has resulted in the gross debacle and world humiliation of the astonishingly badly planned and executed defeat, needless American deaths, and abandonment of those Afghans who actively supported our mission as we ignominiously exited Afghanistan with our tail between our legs.
All this we saw as the DoD leadership to include Secretary of Defense Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Command Commanding General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr. all made embarrassing, unintelligible excuses for their failures. For these senior leaders, there was and is no accountability at all.
Austin did not impress me as Multi-National Force-Iraq Corps Commander (3-star) when I met and served with him in Iraq during one of our concurrent tours. As SecDef, he immediately mandated a totally unnecessary 60-day “stand down” of all our military forces to train the forces to investigate and expunge virtually non-existent “radical” elements in our forces. It should be understood that such a “stand down” prohibits any other form of action or training until the period of the stand-down is over. As a combat leader, I was repeatedly required to conduct such “politically correct” training diversions, severely inhibiting our primary mission of planning and preparing to fight and defeat our enemies. All this in our military, the most pervasively diverse and racially integrated (since 1948) large organization in the USA.
The U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael M. Gilday, is another fine example of a totally disconnected senior military leader who is more interested in imposing on his sailors a required woke reading list and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Training. Gilday has ignominiously led the way in wasting curriculum time and effort at Annapolis and other military academies for this political ghost hunt.
All this distraction from warfighting has led to Navy vessels colliding with other vessels and an attack submarine, the USS Connecticut colliding with an undersea mount last fall. Sure the commanders of those ships were dismissed and their careers ended unlike our senior military and Secretary of Defense. However, the very nature of such incidents is inexcusable. The U.S. Navy has the most up-to-date radar and sonar in the world. What those incidents tell an old soldier in clear detail, those ships sailors were not properly trained or supervised in their essential wartime skills.
The USMC recently lost an amphibious vehicle off the coast of California with all on board perishing. The facts were found that the crew was not properly trained or supervised to check the vehicle prior to the exercise or follow well-established Standard Operating Procedures. Eight marines died unnecessarily.
There are numerous other such leadership and training failures caused by a lack of focus on warfighting and mission while genuflecting at the altar of Wokeness.
General Mark Milley, during the last months of the recent Presidential election, called the Chinese to tell them if former President Trump initiated hostile action against the PRC, Milley would inform them of the action. This is obvious and absolute sedition and near treason (treason must be against a declared enemy by the Constitution). Milley was not held accountable as he should still be, properly tired by a military tribunal and sentenced, minimally, to a long term in Leavenworth Prison.
The sad fact is, as I experienced last week, from the very top of DoD down to and including mid-grade officers and senior non-commissioned officers the military has bought into political wokeness and the propaganda of the left at the expense of training to, “… to close with the enemy by means of fire and maneuver to defeat or capture him .” We may well pay the price very soon for that failure to plan and train for war by having our collective butts handed to us by the Chinese over Taiwan, and by the Russians invading and conquering Crimea on the way to further Black Sea area dominance.
Bill Wenger is a retired commercial real estate executive, college professor, and U.S. Army Infantry Airborne Ranger Colonel. He voluntarily served four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan after initial military retirement. He served 42 years commissioned service. He earned five Master’s Degrees and has taught National Strategic Planning, the Operational Level of Warfare, business and U.S. History. His latest book is on Amazon: The Key to American Independence: Quantifying Foreign Assistance to the American Revolution.