well it turns out when you suggest the
pentagon may be lowering the standards
for
troops and thus affecting our ability to
successfully win
wars for political reasons they don't
like it
but that doesn't change the fact that
that's exactly what they're doing in
december the defense department signed
off on 15
recommendations from a so-called
inclusion board those recommendations
are slated to be completed by the end of
this month march
according to the pentagon quote acting
defense secretary chris miller signed a
memo
entitled actions to improve racial and
ethnic diversity
and inclusion in the us military and
that examined the culture of the
military following the murder of george
floyd in minneapolis
end quote one of those recommendations
was to quote remove
aptitude test barriers that adversely
impact
diversity separately the pentagon is now
reportedly considering lowering
fitness standards for female recruits
the military had adopted a
gender-neutral test that scored men and
women on the same basis
the idea being they would have to fight
the same wars turns out though that far
more than half of the women who took the
test
failed it so they apparently are
ditching that
the question is whether or not this
helps diversity
will it help us win wars and defend
the country douglas mcgregor is in a
good position to answer that question
he's a retired army colonel we're happy
to have him on tonight
doug mcgregor thanks so much for coming
on so
the military is doing these things and
has been doing them for a long time in
order to achieve
political goals most of us don't see the
military as a political organization
but as our last line of defense against
hostile foreign powers
do these changes make it more or less
likely the pentagon will be able to
defend the country
well tucker i think the last 20 years
have had a profoundly negative impact on
the american military particularly on
the combat forces
that have had to go through these long
occupations
long deployments without clear missions
and attainable objectives
and as a result of this we've also
fought a very weak enemy an enemy
without air forces without air defenses
without
armies and people reach erroneous
conclusions about the nature of combat
under those circumstances and i think to
some extent that's what's happened now
so that there's a readiness to
accommodate
pc demands from policymakers who frankly
have a cocktail level of familiarity
with real war
when otherwise senior officers would put
up much more serious resistance
so the answer to your question is i
think these policies
are detrimental in most cases and and
probably divisive
so the rest of the world is of course
paying close attention to this we have
been
the world supreme military power for a
long time
what is the view of our adversaries and
potential adversaries of these
of these political changes that we've
made to our military
well none of our potential opponents
whether they
are in the middle east northeast asia
eastern europe doesn't make any
difference
none of them would even think of
adopting any of these positions and
policies under any circumstances
they are training for the super bowl and
i think that's important for us to
understand
we have been fighting or essentially
playing against pickup teams
we are not training organizing
fighting power to deal with the super
bowl
they are so i think we're in for a real
surprise under the circumstances
many of the assumptions that we're
making about what will or won't work
they will be destroyed i i have to ask
you we're going to be doing
i think a lot on this on the show but
china is projecting power
all over this hemisphere all throughout
the caribbean
and latin america even very close to our
shores in for example the bahamas
um is is the military away is the
pentagon aware of that
it doesn't i you you almost never hear
anything from the pentagon
about what looks like obviously a
potential threat
do you think they're paying attention or
the attention that they should be paying
to this
oh actually i think they're doing more
than paying attention they talk about it
all the time because they link
their budgets and their force structures
to this enormous chinese threat
that they hype quite frankly i think
it's overdone
and i think that it would make much more
sense for us to talk to the chinese
since we are the ones that sail carrier
battle groups up and down the straits of
taiwan we are the ones that are
challenging
the chinese in the south china sea about
their islets
on ostensibly freedom of navigation
missions
i think we might find that the chinese
are willing to talk to us and we can
avoid collisions that way
interesting i i wonder
after you know all of these
political very sort of obvious political
expressions
from the military um if
rank and file the people who actually
fight the wars are confident in their
leadership is it possible to know that
it's difficult to ascertain it depends
on whom you talk to and under what
circumstances
all i can tell you is that until you
fight
a really capable enemy you can make many
assumptions about the force that are
erroneous
and i think that's where we are we
assume that certain things will work
because they worked in iraq
or they worked in afghanistan they had
no chance of working at all
against the chinese the russians the
turks any number of people
and we need to come to terms with that
and and back away from some of the
policies
that i don't think have been carefully
considered in that context
colonel douglas mcgregor never had a
conversation with you right or i didn't
learn something and i didn't know i
appreciate your coming on tonight thank
you
thank you