Imagine a gender studies program at an elite liberal arts college recruiting applicants by using images of masculine, gun-wielding warriors heroically storming the enemy with their brothers.
That would be close to the absurdity of the U.S. military’s recruitment strategy under former President Joe Biden, which often featured messaging better suited to woke academia.
Consider the 2021 Army recruitment ad “The Calling.” Set to melancholic indie music, it traces the story of Emma, the daughter of California lesbian mothers, who began “defending freedom” from an early age by attending Pride marches. Emma went on to attend the University of California, Davis, where she joined a sorority of “other strong women.” Upon graduation, she decided to join the Army to atone for her privilege and shatter stereotypes.
Of course, someone with Emma’s background should not be prevented from serving her country should she qualify to do so. However, the idea that the military should spend its valuable resources targeting a population unlikely to yield many recruits was always imprudent. The strategy was so manifestly backward that it couldn’t have been motivated by the desire to enhance recruitment numbers but only to propagate an ideology.
So, it was no surprise that the U.S. Army announced last week that recruitment had reached its highest levels in 15 years during January. This showing built on a strong December, which saw its highest numbers in 12 years. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took to X to deliver the news.
“BOTTOM LINE: America’s youth want to serve under the bold & strong ‘America First’ leadership of @realDonaldTrump,” Hegseth posted.
His insistence that President Donald Trump is behind the surge is with merit. Trump campaigned on scrubbing woke ideology out of the military, and his nomination of Hegseth to lead the Defense Department signaled the seriousness of his commitment.
The turnaround comes at a crucial time for the military, which has suffered extreme recruitment shortfalls in recent years. In 2023, the Army, Navy, and Air Force missed their recruitment goals by a combined total of about 26,000, leading many to conclude that military recruitment had reached its worst crisis since the inception of an all-volunteer military in 1973.
Diminished recruitment mirrored the growing crisis of public confidence in the military during Biden’s term. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 fueled the perception of a military in disarray. Biden’s attempts to cancel all student loan debt also undermined one of the key incentives for joining: the promise of having your education paid for by the government.
But perhaps nothing dissuaded possible recruits from volunteering to serve other than the military’s sudden public commitment to woke ideology at the highest levels.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
This was, above all, an affront to common sense. Would-be soldiers are motivated primarily by patriotism and the desire to serve something greater than themselves, not by a dogma that demonizes America and fixates on group identity.
Trump and Hegseth should enjoy the credit for the sudden uptick in recruitment. The act they followed makes it easy for them to look good in comparison. All it took was a little common sense.
