Conservative American pundits and politicians have found a surprising new punching bag: the “woke” U.S. military. “Anti-American indoctrination [is] seeping into parts of our military,” Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, railed in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in June. “Holy crap,” Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, tweeted in May in response to a recruitment ad showcasing the U.S. Army’s diversity. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea.”
In the ongoing controversy over “critical race theory” (CRT)—a framework for analyzing racism that was once confined to the ivory tower—the U.S. armed forces have emerged as a surprising defender of the importance of teaching about systemic racism in the United States. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, angered many Republicans in July 2020 when he apologized for his misguided walk with President Donald Trump across Washington’s Lafayette Square in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests. “I should not have been there,” he said. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
