cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/54211228
A senior official exclusively told MS NOW how decorated military officers with decades of experience were withheld from promotion after Pentagon staff printed out internet searches showing they had attended official events like promoting Covid-19 vaccinations or marking International Women’s Day.
…
The senior official described to MS NOW how Hegseth’s executive office led a planned and deliberate process that involved creating paper-only files filled with printouts from internet searches that were inaccessible to the officers under consideration. Hegseth’s office gave instructions about the new criteria over the phone instead of in writing.
That meant brushing aside highly decorated officers with decades of experience leading carrier strike groups, thousands of flight hours on dozens of different aircraft, multiple joint assignments inside the Pentagon and shore and sea duty locations around the world. Some had multiple advanced degrees from schools like MIT and Johns Hopkins, and others had deployed in support of several conflicts like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and Operation Inherent Resolve against ISIS.
But those same officers had findings from the internet searches that disqualified them based on Hegseth’s criteria. The senior official described to MS NOW what was in the paper files for more than a dozen of the senior officers whose promotions were withheld. Some of the findings put into the paper-only files included officers who allowed a celebration that included rainbow flags, a Pride Month event and stood up a diversity committee and task force on the USS Kearsarge to combat discrimination.
Other examples among the officers included: served as a diversity liaison officer early in their career, disciplined an officer in their command who refused to take the Covid vaccine, spoke at a National Hispanic American Heritage Month celebration aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, participated in a Minority Aviation Panel at the Naval Academy, spoke about the importance of taking Covid vaccines, participated in AFRICOM’s International Women’s Day panel, made a statement about being a “champion for inclusion,” participated in a discussion with the African American Employee Resource Group, took a photo with the command triad after their second Covid vaccination on the USS Carl Vinson, made statements encouraging sailors to get Covid vaccines, wrote an article about diversity in a publication and was quoted in an article talking about the importance of diversity.
The way that Hegseth’s office intervened may have also broken the law, said the three senior officials. Cody Harnish, military defense attorney and former Army judge advocate general, said the way that officers were pulled from the promotion list after being selected “is illegal.”
Promoting and removing top officers based on political ideology rather than merit would be terrible for combat readiness and strategic decision making
Luckily that’s only a huge issue if we’re at war… unfortunately, we are at war
I wonder how much Hegseth’s DEI program contributed to our disastrous war on Iran
I don’t think it would have helped the US get any farther. But it might have prevented the 260 something Iranian schoolgirls who were killed, or the dozens of US soldiers who died needlessly in unprotected structures.
What a clown.
What an absolute piece of shit Hegseth is.
It’s almost like Trump picked a weekend Fox News anchor to run the entire military. Oh, wait…
Hegseth was a “Major” in the Army before becoming secretary of defense, that’s rank O-4. He replaced someone who was a 4 star general O-10.
They ran on “hiring by merit” and put someone 6 ranks lower in as secretary of defense.
There shouldn’t have been a single veteran or member of the military who didn’t look at that and say… wtf?
Tbh there is something to be said about political control of the only organization that can take control by force. How you don’t give that control to someone who until recently an integrated part of it.
But that person then needs the same decades of experience in the various political roles controlling it. Oversight, budget, and so on. Perhaps some involvement at lower level like company commander.
But I totally agree on the basic principle of your argument. Hegseth is utterly incompetent and has no merit. His hireing policy is also designed to ruin the US armed forced that its almost like he is a plant from a hostile nation.
The ideal would be someone who was say a Major, or a relatively high rank, then left the military and had a successful career as an executive in the private sector, or one who reached a very high non-appointed post in the government via promotion. Someone who is familiar with the culture of the military and understands how things work, but doesn’t know the high ranking military members, and has no friendships with them, no obligations to them and won’t show any favouritism. OTOH, someone who has the personnel-management skills and small “p” political skills that you need in that kind of job.
This is stupid and disgusting.
Hey, you just described conservatives.
and par for the course
Just keep making the American military weaker, dipshit.
No really, keep it up the world is tired of you.
If this were happening in some other country instead of here, the media would be plainly stating what this is: a fascist purge.
This is not stupidity or incompetence. This is what preparing to subjugate the American public by force looks like.
Well don’t worry. The likely Democratic speakers for both the house and senate have come out to say that ending the ‘war’ in Iran and returning healthcare subsidies to 2024 levels is their top priority and that they’re looking forward to working together with Republicans so this fascist takeover plot should fall apart any day now.
Senate has a Majority Leader, it’s a pretty different job then Speaker of the House. In fact, the Speaker does not even need to be an elected representative!
The senior official also described how Hegseth intentionally scuttled the promotions of senior officers who were perceived to support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; played a role in implementing the Pentagon’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate; were involved in the evacuation from Afghanistan; or had a connection to former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as President Donald Trump’s senior military officer but after retirement publicly criticized Trump’s leadership.
The depths of Republican incompetence is frankly difficult to believe or even grasp. These people couldn’t run a banana stand, and almost every republican leader and voter went along with them for 12 years. Republicans should never be in charge of anything ever again. This needs to collapse the Republican Party forever, or they will literally finish destroying America, just like the tankies and the Russians want.
Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking.
This needs to collapse the Republican Party forever
“Ooh, best I can do it put Schumer and Jeffries in power so we can go back to the status quo” -Democratic elite, probably
After 12 years of Trump, please give me that sweet, sweet moderate-conservatism-masquerading-as-progressivism that is the Democratic Party. “They can speak in complete sentences about reality” is the level of requirement for public office that we’re at here — Trump is unironically bragging about passing dementia exams and it satisfies the Republican leadership and base.
If it’s a choice between the neoconservative insanity of vaccine-skeptic and roadkill-enthusiast RFK Jr. versus the neoliberal corporate appeasement and rhetorical AIPAC fellatio of Schumer/Jefferies, I’d choose the latter every time. They’ll still get us out of Iran, support Ukraine’s stalwart defense, and at least pretend to support the basic constitutional rights of citizens.
Or, we could collapse the Blue wave with Democratic infighting and stalemate every measure to undo the damage inflicted by the Republican Party over the last decade — an attractive strategy for America’s enemies now that the propaganda battle is finally yielding diminishing returns. Either way, I’m mostly excited to be able to stop paying attention to politics for the next four years.
Well, 2024 voters seemed to think leaving it to hopes and dreams would work better than stopping trump from taking office, so here we are. What a great strategy that one turned out to be.
You know what’d be cool? If anyone in the chain of command - and yes, I would say that explicitly includes the president, as well as the SecDef, regardless of whether either are actually serving members of the military - does a thing in violation of the UCMJ, the military justice system can take a shot at them, too.
I wish anybody would take another shot at him.
“meritocracy” huh?
Fuck this guy fuck. What a fucking disgrace.
