Rep. Matt Gaetz’s battle with the Pentagon over woke policies shows no signs of easing. On Tuesday, the Fort Walton Beach Republican sent a letter to U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall criticizing the agency’s 2023 “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” strategic plan for its failure to lure a sufficient number of quality recruits.
In the letter, Gaetz noted, “Throughout Northwest Florida, my constituents have voiced concerns that the [Air Force] has placed an overemphasis on DEI initiatives through numerous policy memos that neglect to mention or prioritize the [Air Force’s] core purpose for existence: preserving national security.”
The outcome of that activity: Under former President Donald Trump’s recruiting policies, the Air Force hit its recruiting targets. Under the woke Biden administration, the Air Force, as well as the Army and the Navy, fell short of their recruiting goals.
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The service, Gaetz told Kendall, “is a key contributor to the misapplication of defense priorities, with DEI memoranda that send command signals to recruit a certain number of Americans based on superficial characteristics, like race or sex.”
Gaetz cited an Air Force memo that indicated diversity and inclusion “are an essential, part of our society and key to the success of any organization.” Accordingly, the Air Force set goals by race and sex, with targets for each demographic group. For example, one USAF goal was to have Native-American women make up 0.5% of its recruits this year.
“Unfortunately, the recruiting numbers would suggest a failure of DEI and social-experimentation programs,” Gaetz argued.
The GOP congressman cited an Air Force Times article that reported the service made its recruiting goals for the first time in five years during Trump’s last year in office.
On the other hand, under Biden, Kendall’s policies instead produced “numerous recruiting shortfalls of a historic manner,” and “some of the weakest recruiting numbers in the history” of the USAF,” Gaetz wrote.
Politicization of the USAF, Gaetz continued, resulted in “waning public sentiment and trust in the military as an institution.”
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The “overemphasis” on DEI, which added “accessibility” the acronym for DEIA, led the Air Force to maintain that “Our diversity distinguishes our force and provides us with unique advantages on today’s battlefield and the battlefield of the future.”
Gaetz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, asserted that was implausible.
“It is quite telling that throughout the 18-page DEIA policy document containing over 5500 words, ‘combat’ is only referenced once, ‘national security’ is referenced zero times, and ‘merit’ or ‘merit based’ is referenced zero times,” Gaetz noted.
“The document establishes working groups using acronyms for each subcategory of ethnicity. The working-group analytics team assesses every possible angle DEI could contemplate, except whether an emphasis on DEI could have a negative impact on military recruiting and retention. The failure to even consider this as a possible result in the ‘wokeification’ of the [Air Force] shows a clear disregard for the objective truth.”
Gaetz also predicted a dismal future on this front.
With USAF Gen. C.Q. Brown now serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gaetz wrote, “I can only imagine these misguided Air Force policies, ushered in under your tenure, will quickly find ‘adherence’ and ‘compliance’ in the other services, leading to further erosion of their standing and the entire reputation of the Department of Defense.”
“Therefore, I am formally requesting that your office eliminate the DEIA working group,” Gaetz said.
“Please do not just rely on the standard [Defense Department] echo chamber that will reaffirm the status quo. Rather, please take this moment to steer the [Air Force] back toward an America-first outlook that removes the social-experiment element from the [Air Force] and reorients the team toward addressing the threats of our near-peer adversaries.”
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