Steven Beynon
@StevenBeynon
A few things about Hegseth, Trump's pick for SECDEF
First, he's way against women serving in combat arms - Saying in a recent podcast, "I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles."
Rolling back women's roles in service is a top concern among most Army officials I've talked to recently. A proxy for this attack in recent years has been the service's fitness test and the fight over having a gendered standard.
Hegseth, a Guardsman, says he was removed from the 2021 inauguration mission after Jan 6 because he has a Deus vult cross tattoo - an image that has been appropriate with the far-right.
"Deus vult" was a battle cry in 1st Crusade in battles against Muslims & Jews. It's a common neo Nazi imagery, including Mauricio Martinez Garcia a mass shooter in 2023, killed 8 people in Dallas. You also see it at most farright protests, including Charlottesville
He's a big culture warrior, writing in his book, "Do we want woke 'diverse' recruits that the Biden administration is curating to be the ones with the guns and guidons?"
Meanwhile, the Army has had to lean on minorities to fill in the ranks. Black recruits, for example, make up about 24% of recent new recruits -- compared to making up 14% of the general population. Hispanics make up 24% of recruits.
Army Sees Sharp Decline in White Recruits
The shift in demographics for incoming recruits would be irrelevant to war planners, except it coincides with an overall shortfall of about 10,000 recruits for the Army in 2023.
www.military.com
Women's recruitment has been steady for a decade. You may have heard of the "recruiting crisis," but that's entirely attributed to men -- specifically white men. And it's a decade trend that has more to do with male identity than literal politics. .
The Army's Recruiting Problem Is Male
A decade of declining recruitment numbers for the Army is almost entirely attributable to a significant drop in male recruiting as female enlistments have remained relatively flat, internal service da ...
www.military.com
It's totally anecdotal - but I've talked to three mid to senior-level officials who all say a notable chunk of their teams are LGBT. In short, the math doesn't math if you want a giant Army and you're only interested in recruiting straight, white male troops.
Finally, for recruitment, the Army has had to rely on the Future Soldier Prep Course, which takes applicants who are short on body fat or academic standards and gets them up to snuff.
A lot of these soldiers speak English as a second language and are minorities, many from failing school districts.
'Last Stop USA': How the Army Is Trying to Fill in for a Broken Education System
Test scores, which were already falling before the pandemic, took a nosedive, and recent years have seen a blitz in teacher strikes over poor working conditions and being paid wages not far above the ...
www.military.com
