While America Slept: The Story of a Distracted Military and a Rising China Rep. Mark Green M.D.(R-Tennessee -7)
Rep. Mark Green is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He served on the mission to capture Saddam Hussein, and he interviewed Saddam Hussein for six hours on the night of his capture. He serves on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.
President Biden has diverted our military away from its mission. Instead of prioritizing military readiness, our new Commander in Chief is redirecting the military’s focus from fighting and winning wars, to using the military as a vehicle to advance the radical left’s agenda.
Redirecting precious time and resources to appease the woke mob is dangerous to our national security, and it’s putting America at risk.
It began in January when the Biden Administration announced that climate change is now a national security priority. Instead of focusing on growing threats to our country from foreign adversaries such as China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia, President Biden will now direct our military’s resources to combat climate change, including replacing 173,000 gas-powered military vehicles with ones powered by electricity. While electric Humvees sound tempting, after three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I know how dangerous active duty can be. The last thing I ever want to hear is that a unit got stranded in the middle of the desert because their vehicle ran out of electricity—all to appease the left’s woke agenda.
Then, the Biden Administration reinstated controversial Critical Race Theory seminars, forcing servicemembers to participate in hours of training, teaching them that they are either victims or oppressors. President Trump rightly disbanded these seminars throughout the Federal government because they promote division over unity. He understood that when soldiers put their uniform on, the only color they should see are the colors of our flag. Yet the Biden Administration has brought them back in full force—promoting a leftist ideology that poisons our combat effectiveness and unit morale.
The Biden Administration’s radical woke agenda for the military didn’t stop there. Under President Biden, the military will also divert precious resources from mission-critical goals, like a new cyber security infrastructure and modernizing an aging nuclear arsenal, to something as controversial as using taxpayer dollars for expensive gender reassignment surgery.
Our military budget is already stretched thin. Our Navy is short 100 battle force ships, and many of the Army’s main battle tanks are over 40 years old. Every dollar spent on this ideologically-driven agenda is a dollar taken away from mission-critical training and resources. The Biden Administration’s woke focus is a distraction from the military’s true purpose—our national defense.
Today’s distractions echo those that Winston Churchill witnessed when Great Britain’s military largely disarmed after World War I. Churchill’s book, While England Slept, chronicles his pleas for Great Britain to wake up to the threat of the German military’s rearmament. No one bothered to listen until it was too late.
Our leadership is distracted right now. While the Biden Administration diverts critical resources to advance domestic Democrat priorities, China is rapidly building its military, and foreign adversaries are becoming more aggressive.
According to a 2020 Department of Defense report, China has spent the last twenty years modernizing and strengthening its military. They have been so successful that in some cases, they have already surpassed the United States. As of last year, the People’s Republic of China has the largest navy in the world, with 350 ships and submarines. While radical Democrats are pushing to cut our military’s funding by 10%, China recently announced they will expand its defense budget in 2022 to $208.6 billion, an increase of 6.8 percent.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral Philip Davidson, testified to me and other Members of the House Armed Services Committee last month that the U.S. is losing its military edge against China. Even more concerning are China’s plans to double the size of its nuclear arsenal in the next ten years, surpassing the U.S. stockpile by 2030.
The Biden Administration should be giving our service members the resources they need to meet this threat. Instead, officials in the highest echelons of power can’t even stand up for our great country. This travesty was on full display at the Biden Administration’s meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials in Anchorage. CCP officials openly mocked the U.S., and claimed we have no right to criticize their treatment of Uighur Muslims because of American racism. Where did the CCP get this narrative? From the radical left’s endorsement of the idea that the U.S. is systemically racist. America still has work to do to become a more perfect union, but preaching that America is irredeemably racist will hurt our efforts to eradicate racism and combat human rights abuses around the world.
The left today may be woke, but they sure aren’t awake. Right now, too many in the Biden Administration are asleep to the real threat that China poses to our national security. The military’s mission creep into radical leftist policies will only politicize the Armed Forces and keep the United States from being able to defend itself from growing national security threats.
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