Not Your Father’s Army
A Compromised Military’s Uncertain Future
Four generations of Webster men have served in the Army. Before he emigrated to the United States in 1922, my grandfather Charles was a color sergeant for a Scottish regiment in the United Kingdom from 1912 to 1918, including the last three years of World War I on the Western Front. My father, Frederick, was an enlisted radio operator on B-17s with the U.S. Army Air Corps based in the Panama Canal Zone from 1942 to 1945. My son Andrew served as an enlisted combat engineer with the U.S. Army, on active duty from 2010 to 2012, including an assignment in Germany. And I served as a U.S. Army chaplain on active duty or the reserve component from 1985 until my retirement in 2010, which included twelve one-month deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar.
None of us could have imagined, much less anticipated, the steady radical politicization and moral degeneracy that have afflicted all five original American military branches during the last three decades. Nor is the newest branch, the U.S. Space Force, immune from this trend.
Numerous Betrayals
Here is a concise list of some of those internal betrayals of the traditional American military ethos and of the warriors themselves, led or cheered on by the highest-ranking generals and admirals.
• The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy announced by President Bill Clinton’s Department of Defense in December 1993, which overturned a practice of more than two centuries, beginning with the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783), whereby colonial or U.S. military personnel who engaged in homosexual practices were summarily discharged from the armed forces. The new policy (Directive 1304.26), which was the law of the land from February 1994 until September 2011, expressly forbade discrimination against or harassment of so-called closeted homosexual or bisexual members of the U.S. armed forces. However, this measure still allowed for the dismissal of “openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service” and the rejection of such applicants for military service.
• A full embrace of the so-called LGBTQ (etc.) agenda in 2011, which not only overturned the traditional compulsory separation of known sexual deviants from the ranks of the armed forces, but also quickly led to unbridled celebration of the full “rainbow” agenda, including active recruitment and public celebration of homosexual, bisexual, and “polysexual” military personnel and flagrant, omnipresent displays of rainbow paraphernalia.
• The mandatory inclusion of women, since 2015, in the most demanding and dangerous combat military specialties, such as the infantry, armor (tanks), special operations, and Navy Seals, together with the drastic lowering of heretofore rigorous standards for physical fitness tests (that is, the “gender-neutral” Army Combat Fitness Test, introduced in 2017), maximum weights and minimum heights, and personal grooming (for example, long hair for women but not men).
• A mandatory policy of promoting the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) “reforms” in contravention of traditional standards of individual merit without attention to race, ethnicity, or sexual “preference” or “identity”; a full embrace of the entire neo-racist “woke” agenda within all components of the armed forces as necessary; and obvious sex- and/or race-based promotions and favored assignments within all ranks, including some of the most senior officers among the four-star generals and admirals.
• Beginning in 2020, an unyielding, draconian, mandatory, and punitive policy of compulsory vaccination during the Covid-19 crisis, without exceptions for religious “conscientious objection” based on the derivation of those vaccines from cells taken from aborted babies in 1973 and 1985.
• A renewed effort by the current U.S. Congress and the Biden administration, launched as recently as July 2024, to enact into law the failed “Draft Our Daughters” initiative of 2016.In a May 30, 2016 article titled “Churches Must Oppose Female Conscription,” in the traditional Roman Catholic journal Crisis Magazine, Capt. Bob Miller, U.S. Navy, Retired, a devout Evangelical Protestant, and I denounced the looming “Draft Our Daughters” legislation. We pledged to endeavor to protect our American daughters and young mothers from coercive service in the violent and deadly profession of arms by personally joining peaceful public protests. Eight years later, military watchdog Elaine Donnelly, who founded the Center for Military Readiness, observes that a revival of that political corpse would “automatically register all persons of draft age (18–26) who are subject to Selective Service law, extending government power into the lives of every young person in America while weakening military readiness . ” Donnelly notes also how such a new policy, motivated by false notions of “equality,” would be devastating for women: “Involuntary conscription of women would make combat arms units less strong, less fast, more vulnerable to debilitating injuries, less ready for deployment on short notice, and less accurate with offensive weapons during combat operations.”
An Outrageous Case
The seventh and last odious practice that I wish to explore here is the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on April 29, 2024, in the Alvarado v. Austin case, to deny a petition by 38 military chaplains to be reinstated to the service assignments they had held prior to suffering punitive action by their chains of command. The Court refused to stay or pause the policies that caused unfair retaliation by the Department of Defense (DOD) against the chaplains merely for requesting religious exemptions from the Covid-19 vaccine made mandatory in September 2021, during the Biden presidency.
Alexander F. C. Webster (Archpriest), Ph.D., is Dean & Professor of Moral Theology Emeritus at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York, and Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Share this article with non-subscribers:
https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=38-01-016-u&readcode=11195
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on America from the online archives
29.4—July/August 2016
Russell Kirk: American Conservative by Bradley J. Birzer by Hunter Baker
29.2—March/April 2016
The History of Family Strength in America May Reveal Good News by Allan C. Carlson
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
The Christian Cure for What Ails Modern Politics by David Bradshaw
more from the online archives
36.4—Jul/Aug 2023
Our Political Void & the Disintegration of Truth by Michael Hanby
27.2—March/April 2014
Higher Education Should Advance the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
