Coast Guard Senate Bipartisan Bill Mandates Diversity Training
Coast Guard Senate Bipartisan Bill Mandates Diversity Training
Republicans join with Democrats to push wokeness and undermine the Coast Guard.
By Daniel Greenfield
The woke war on the military has been overseen by the Biden administration and by disloyal military brass who have sought to advance their careers at the expense of national security.
But the latest attack is coming in the form of a bipartisan Senate bill for the NDAA.
The National Defense Authorization Act is a massive annual omnibus defense spending bill that currently hovers around $850 billion. It’s been the subject of detailed negotiations and the only real win that Republicans have come away with is dumping Biden’s military vaccine mandate, but without actually assuring a return for those service members forced to leave over it.
That one important victory covers any number of NDAA defeats that will undermine our military.
One of these is the military branch that people tend to pay the least attention to. And that may be why the damaging language in the ‘Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2022’ within the NDAA has flown under the radar. Much like the woke attacks on the military in the 2011 NDAA, Republicans will usher in, approve and vote for a defense bill that undermines national security.
And most Americans will never even be aware of it. That’s why we’re directing attention to the betrayal of the Coast Guard’s mission and the undermining of the military meritocracy.
As America’s drug crisis worsens, the Coast Guard’s role in intercepting smugglers is more important than ever. The service captures tons of drugs every year. It intercepts everything from drug smuggling submarines to fishing boats dispatched by enemy cartels to kill Americans.
The Coast Guard’s ability to protect America has been under attack by the Left from different vectors. Leftist lawfare has taken aim at the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act which authorizes Coast Guard vessels to stop and intercept smugglers in international waters.
That campaign to enable foreign drug smugglers free access is being waged by the Federal Public Defender’s Office of Puerto Rico which is unfortunately funded by taxpayers.
But the Coast Guard is also under attack from the more familiar woke infrastructure of diversity, equity and inclusion which seeks to impose racial and gender quotas, and puts identity politics ahead of readiness and national security. Much as China cheers wokeness in the Air Force and Navy, the cartels are thrilled to see the Coast Guard being taken apart in the name of equity.
The woke war on the Coast Guard went hot with the 2021 NDAA that mandated “The Commandant of the Coast Guard shall appoint a Senior Advisor for Diversity and Inclusion for the Coast Guard”. These political commissars have become ubiquitous within the military and their closeness to command means that military leaders are always being monitored.
There is no room for political commissars in the military or for the continued politicization in the name of diversity that the ‘Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2022’ embodies. The Act is packed with multiple diversity sections focusing on “improving representation of women, and racial and ethnic minorities” that are wholly unnecessary and alien to the Coast Guard’s core mission.
Pushing diversity metrics inevitably leads to quotas and the elevation of people who are not the best candidates for the job. And in the military that means virtue signaling gets people killed.
The Commandant of the Coast Guard is Linda Fagan: whom the media takes pains to remind us is the first woman to lead a branch of the armed services. At the change of command ceremony, Biden left little doubt about why she was chosen. “It’s about time,” he rambled. “The Secretary of Defense, when he sent me name, I said, ‘What in the hell took you so long?’”
Is the Coast Guard any better at performing its mission when its commandant is a woman? Are its personnel more confident of the leadership of someone chosen for her DNA?
Even though the Coast Guard Academy is already 40% female, the Senate bill orders the Commandant to work on improving the representation of women using the RAND representation report which pushes political agendas under the guise of fighting discrimination.
The RAND report demanded that the Coast Guard address “concerns” about “racism in local communities” and monitor racism in “problematic locations for assignments”. This moves the Coast Guard into policing the views of local Americans instead of rescuing them at sea.
The report quotes an anonymous minority man complaining that, “I have a friend going to Oregon right now. He’s the only person of color there. There are certain things you can’t say or do.” The state has a lesbian governor, but there aren’t enough black people in the state so now the eight coast guard stations in Oregon are to be treated like they’re in KKK territory.
Other Coast Guard locations denounced as racist in the RAND report are the state of North Carolina and Portsmouth, New Hampshire: which declared itself a “racial justice municipality” during the BLM race riots. Apparently that’s still too racist for the woke activists of RAND.
Beyond just imposing quotas, the RAND report demands political tests through “cultural change” in the familiar metrics of critical race theory. Diversity training is to be mandated for all leadership. And diversity training has long since become a political vessel for delivering racist ideas about America, the legitimacy of the Constitution and fundamental national values.
Diversity is just a false flag for the cultural transformation of the military and its mission from defending this country to promoting the treasonous and disloyal agendas of its leftist enemies.
The RAND report has a quote bemoaning the racist concept of “white privilege” while attacking the Coast Guard’s white officers for not understanding how racist America is. It pushes for diversity as the core metric while insisting that the Coast Guard “must foster a climate in which diversity is recognized as enhancing the collective operational performance.”
Except it doesn’t. And no amount of lies will change the fact that it undermines performance.
The Authorization Act mandates a “10-year strategy to enhance Coast Guard diversity” and seeks to build recruitment around diversity. This perpetuates the myth that the Coast Guard is somehow racist or restricts minorities from joining or serving. Captain Michael A. Healy actually became the first black captain in the United States under the United States Revenue Cutter Service which preceded the Coast Guard. It’s since boasted of black female helicopter pilots and assorted ‘historic firsts’ to disprove the accusations of racism that keep coming its way.
The Coast Guard isn’t racist, but, like the other branches of the military, it attracts recruits who are drawn to its particular ethos.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
The obsessive idea that the Coast Guard and the rest of the military “need to look like America” is not only deeply distorted, but undermines their primary missions. The Coast Guard isn’t here to fill diversity quotas or to “look like America”, but to defend America.
The ‘Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2022’ is a mistake. And any future patriotic administration or congress need to dismantle the quotas, jettison the diversity, equity and inclusion plans, and eliminate advisers and personnel dedicated to implementing them at every level.
Defeating the woke enemy within is becoming our leading national security crisis.
The woke assault on the military has touched off civil wars within each branch of the military between those patriots trying to serve their country and those trying to serve themselves.
As Captain Healy’s role shows, the military is there to overcome identity politics by bringing its people together to serve a common mission. When identity politics becomes the mission, morale, readiness and performance fall apart. And our national security is the first casualty.