By Max Boot*

Why President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old Fox News anchor and former National Guard major general who has no experience running a massive agency like the Defense Department and who is now embroiled in scandal sexual assault? (He denies any wrongdoing in the 2017 incident and no police charges have been filed.)

At least part of the explanation for the decision can be found in Trump’s desire to clear out what he described as “a woke army that cannot fight or win, as it proved in Afghanistan.” In a book published earlier this year, Hegseth wrote: “Our generals are not ready for this moment in history. Not even. The next president of the United States must fundamentally overhaul the Pentagon’s senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. A lot of people have to be fired.”

These criticisms may resonate with at least one part of the public fed up with the “costly futility” of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – and driven by relentless right-wing criticism that the armed forces have been captured by social justice activists. Although the military remains one of the most respected institutions in US society, only 60 percent of Gallup respondents in 2023 expressed confidence in the armed forces — the lowest level in more than two decades.

However, the blame for what went wrong with the post-9/11 wars rests more with politicians than with generals. It was America’s political leaders who gave the armed forces the thankless task of transforming Afghanistan and Iraq into Western-style democracies. This was probably an “impossible mission,” especially given the limited commitment Washington was willing to make to both countries. For example, when President Barack Obama announced in 2009 that he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he also said they would begin returning home within 18 months — a timeline that encouraged the Taliban to wait for them to leave.

The US military, having completely forgotten its counterinsurgency strategy before the attacks of September 11, 2001, had its share of blunders in the early days of the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but overall, military leaders proved resilient and adaptable. . This can be seen in the US successes in countering the insurgency in Iraq in 2007-2008, which saved the country from the brink of civil war, and in the post-2014 period, when US forces supported Kurdish and Iraqi allies to defeat the Islamic State.

Some of the biggest U.S. disasters in recent history—such as the rise of the Islamic State after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 or the collapse of the Kabul government after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021—occurred when presidents ignored military advice to remain a small force in each country. It’s especially ironic that the Trump transition team is reportedly considering court-martialling officers involved in the botched exit from Afghanistan during President Joe Biden’s administration, when Trump was the one who negotiated their withdrawal in the first place — and tried withdraw US troops even earlier, before the end of his first term.

In chronicling the US wars of the past quarter century, I have met and admired many of America’s most distinguished generals and admirals. Based on personal observation, I would say that General David Petraeus, General Jim Mattis, the late General Ray Odierno, General Lloyd Austin, Admiral James Stavridis, Admiral William McRaven, General Stanley McChrystal, Lt. General McMaster and other prominent military leaders of of recent decades are on par with any group of generals and admirals in American history – including George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, two seriously flawed historical figures whom Trump seems to adore.

Many of today’s generals had considerable success fighting (as junior officers) in the 1991 Gulf War and (as senior commanders) in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and would no doubt have won more victories if they had fought in more conventional conflicts. It was their bad luck – and the nation’s – that they were assigned to carry out disorganized and unsatisfactory counter-insurgencies and exercises in nation-building.

But they certainly can’t be accused of putting “wokeness” above combat ability. Mattis, for example, is known for sayings like “Be kind, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.” Trump accuses Mattis of being “the world’s most overrated general” not because Mattis is too politically correct, but because he resigned as Trump’s defense secretary and publicly criticized his policies.

I have no doubt that some “diversity” training involves modern academic jargon that can be jarring to participants and can backfire by dividing troops along ethnic or gender lines. But some diversity training is important in a diverse force full of women and ethnic minorities. It is important to make the military a welcoming destination for recruits of all backgrounds – not just white men.

Hegseth’s criticisms of affirmative action programs and women in combat missions will likely make recruiters’ jobs more difficult. There is little evidence to suggest, as so many on the right do, that “wokeness” hurts recruiting… Internal military surveys show that young men don’t enlist mainly because they see military service as too dangerous and not a good career.

Reports of the extent to which the US military engages in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training are exaggerated.

Most of the examples of “wokeness” MAGA (Make America Great Again) activists have discovered occur in military academies, where students may receive instruction on gender and race, just as their civilian counterparts do. But the military remains a conservative institution focused on deterring and defeating the nation’s enemies—not advancing critical racial theory.

In 2023, US Army Sergeant Michael A. Greenston told the House Armed Services Committee that in basic training, 92 hours were spent on the rifle and only one hour on equal opportunity training, which includes dealing with sexual harassment and sexual assault. Air Force Lt. Col. Joan Bass testified that her service has “no pronoun training” and is focused on “combat.”

What would really degrade combat readiness is not DEI training but purging senior officers for political reasons and, as Trump has pledged to do, using the military for domestic law enforcement duties such as rounding up undocumented immigrants . Either would be a significant distraction from preparing to fight China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other potential enemies. MAGA politicization is a far greater threat to the armed forces than ‘wokeness’.

*Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller Reagan: His Life and Legend.