An Ominous Precedent for the Left’s Politicization of the Military | This isn’t the first time in history a left-wing elite has tried to drive conservatives out of the armed forces. France saw something similar — with dire consequences.
... Under the Third Republic, France was extremely polarized between republican Left and monarchist Right. ... To “republicanize” the military, the French government recruited a network of Masons to secretly develop a card system on military officers, in what historians call “the Affair of the Cards.” While officers with republican tendencies were promoted, officers deemed politically unreliable were held back.
... For example, the American military has also traditionally drawn from a more conservative base than the country overall. ... President Biden’s Day One Executive Order 13985 mandated diversity and inclusion training for all federal employees, including the military. Vaccine mandates led to the discharge of more than 8,000 active-duty service members. These actions had an effect that was soon hard to ignore.
The recruiting and retention crisis, which the article describes, is well-known.
... Is it fair to characterize this as an analogue to the “Affair of the Cards?” Certainly. ... In some senses, the comparison is imperfect because the current effort looks worse. The Affair of the Cards was secret until its discovery. But today’s effort at rooting out political wrong-think in the military has been overt.
... But there is no legitimate basis for allegations of systemic white supremacy in the U.S. military. ... Further proof of this came when defense secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to launch a military-wide “stand down” to combat extremism was contradicted by a DOD-commissioned study that found no evidence of disproportionate military extremism.
When you appoint people to high positions for their political views and not for their technical competence, you get---a lack of technical competence. Duh.
Politicization is bad in itself. Its national-security implications are also troubling. By definition, when one prioritizes anything other than quality, an inferior product results. France learned this in 1914, when generals promoted by the Affair of the Cards were disproportionately represented among those fired for incompetence in the opening months of World War I. Americans should hope that we don’t have to face a similar reckoning. We can avoid, or at least mitigate, such a fate only if the left-wing politicization of the military ends now.