As a former artillery officer who served in Vietnam, I consider Secretary of War Peter Hegseth the breath of fresh air that was needed at the Pentagon.

Seen by some as just a television host, Hegseth was a graduate of the ROTC program at Princeton who commanded a platoon guarding detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Following a short return to civilian life he volunteered for the Iraq War as an infantry officer and was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division. While there he also served as a civil affairs officer.

In 2011 he was promoted to captain in the Minnesota Army National Guard. In 2013 he volunteered to teach at the Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. After completing his tour, he was promoted to Major and enlisted in the Individual Ready Reserve. I believe that Hegseth provides the necessary focus on our war fighters that have been missing.

During the Biden administration, whoever was actually directing policy issued directives that were designed to infect our military with the same Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion instruction found in our universities, elementary, and high schools. Such training is based on critical race theory, a Marxist ideology that views the world through an “oppressor vs. oppressed” lens. In teaching DEI, the military had been teaching an ideology that seeks the destruction of Western society, the same Western society that our soldiers are pledged to protect.

Rather than uniting service members behind a love of country, this training fostered divisions based on characteristics such as race and even implied that patriotism was a manifestation of white supremacy. In reality it fostered an anti-American ideology.

Our military has one job and that is to protect the United States from foreign enemies by focusing on combat readiness. This is accomplished by providing the men and women of our armed forces with the best weapons and the appropriate training to accomplish that mission. The purpose of the military is not to remake American society or even to exactly reflect society. Under the Biden administration, however, military spending was increasingly focused on diversity, equity and inclusion training that had nothing to do with mission readiness and over time would have posed a threat to our national security.

Until recently the military implemented DEI training in all its branches and academies. DEI material was even a recommended part of the leadership curricula in the ROTC where it was considered a “core competency.”

Under the President Donald Trump administration, military leadership and the Department of War implemented policies to dismantle DEI programs at service academies and throughout the military. Trump signed an executive order, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” that required the Department of War to eliminate all DEI offices and initiatives. The order directed that all hiring, promotion, and selection for assignments be based solely on merit, without considering sex, race, or ethnicity.

The new directive specifically directed the end of all instruction of Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or DEI as part of military curricula. Instead, service academies were instructed to teach that “America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.”

After a lawsuit brought by the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions, the U.S. Military Academy and U.S. Air Force Academy voluntarily ended the consideration of race in their admissions processes as of April. In addition, West Point shut down several cadet organizations for women and students of color in early 2025 to comply with the new directives regarding DEI.

Following the executive order, the military removed diversity-related content from its official websites.During the house cleaning several web pages devoted to underrepresented groups were inadvertently removed with the Pentagon later restoring some webpages that had been removed, including those about Jackie Robinson who served as an officer in the Army during World War II and the Navajo Code Talkers who befuddled Japanese listeners and saved many lives in the War with Japan.

This is the core of what Secretary of War Hegseth is reinstituting at the Pentagon and throughout the armed forces and why he called senior Commissioned and noncommissioned leaders to Quantico recently. At that rare gathering of military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Sept. 30, Hegseth announced directives to eliminate “woke” policies and reinforce a “warrior ethos”. 

Hegseth stated, “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now.”  He criticized the physical condition of the armed forces and mandated that all service members meet height and weight requirements twice a year. He also announced new “gender-neutral” or “male-level” physical fitness standards for combat positions.

Finally, In a direct challenge to the assembled officers he stated that if his new standards make their “hearts sink,” they should resign, stating that it was nearly impossible to change the culture with the same people who benefited from it.

If anyone should question the acceptance of these changes they have only to look at the numbers of new recruits. Whereas during the Biden administration, recruitment sank to historic lows now under the changes instituted by Trump and Hegseth recruitment is meeting and exceeding goals. Only last year polls showed that parents who had served themselves were telling their sons and daughters to not sign up. What a difference a year and a new administration makes.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com