Top Pentagon leaders passionately defended the military’s approach to addressing racism and extremism, pushing back against accusations by Republican lawmakers that the effort is creating division and hurting morale.
The testy exchanges showed that the political dimension of a national debate over racism and extremism weighs on the military even as it attempts to address social problems within its own ranks.
At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Rep. Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican, said the U.S. Military Academy at West Point offers instruction in critical race theory and on “understanding whiteness and white rage.” Critical race theory centers on the idea that racism is systemic in U.S. institutions and that they function to maintain white dominance in society.
Waltz called these offerings at West Point destructive, and he demanded that Pentagon leaders “get to the bottom of what is going on.”
In an extraordinary response, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took direct aim at the accusations by Waltz and similar, separate comments earlier in the hearing by Rep. Matt Gaetz, another Florida Republican. Milley said the military need not apologize for fostering open-mindedness.
“I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned and noncommissioned officers, of being, quote, ‘woke’ or something else because we’re studying some theories that are out there,” Milley said, adding that it was important for military members to be open-minded and to be exposed to unconventional ideas.
“I’ve read Mao Zedong,” he said. “I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what’s wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding, about the country for which we are here to defend?”
