Defense secretary’s latest interposition resulted in all-male, overwhelmingly white picks for promotion to admiralty
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, stripped nine navy officers including women and Black service members from a promotion list last month, according to a person familiar with the matter, resulting in an all-male, overwhelmingly white slate of 22 advancing as nominees to become one-star admirals.
Hegseth’s unusual intervention violated promotion rules designed to be merit-based and apolitical, the New York Times said on Tuesday, and extended the Trump administration’s push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the military.
The original promotion list included three women and two Black officers in addition to the two who remained, the newspaper said.
It’s more about the nature of a purge. If you were trying to put the best people for the roles in those roles prior to a purge, then a purge is going to leave you with worse people for the jobs, or at the very least, less experienced people doing those jobs.
It might have been sexism behind the reason women dominated those roles before the purge, but it’s normal for quality to drop after a political purge.
Same thing happened with the Nazis after Hitler did some rounds of purges in the Wermacht upper echelon after that assassination attempt with the bomb that injured him and discovering the plot for a military coup in its background. The purges really didn’t help their war efforts when they were already struggling.
Yes, I don’t disagree with this assessment. My problem is with talking about the decreasing quality of logistics by relating hot meals to the presence of women.