Loving the Military Because It’s More Diverse

Women and war: the Roman goddess of war, Bellona

W.J. Astore

At the Guardian today, I saw the following headline: US Navy: for first time in history four women of color command war ships; Kimberly Jones, LaDonna Simpson, Kristel O’Cañas and Kathryn Wijnaldum break new ground in white and male-dominated field.

Are we supposed to love the military because more women of color are reaching positions of command?

Don’t get me wrong: this is a good thing. My boss at my last job in the Air Force was a Black female colonel. Serving in the U.S. military, I saw and befriended plenty of “diverse” people during my career. (In today’s military-media context, I guess “diverse” means anything but your standard white male.) Few people seemed to care about gender, race, sex, color, ethnicity, and so on as long as the person was competent. Good bosses come in all shapes, shades, and sizes — and so do bad ones.

So, I don’t want to join Tucker Carlson in a misinformed and ridiculous rant against an alleged feminization of the U.S. military. For a military and a country that is supposedly too feminine or too soft or whatever, we still spend more on war than the next ten countries combined (and most of those countries are America’s allies); we continue to have a global network of 800 or so military bases; we still dominate the world’s trade in deadly weaponry; we still throw our weight around like bullies and fancy ourselves the world’s lone superpower. Are any of these facts changed or softened because more women or more people of color are reaching high rank within that military?

That the Secretary of Defense is a Black male doesn’t seem to have affected policy decisions in any meaningful way. Why should it, when he spent his life in the U.S. military and then joined Raytheon and profited greatly after retiring?

Again, it’s a good thing that people of color aren’t as hamstrung as they used to be in reaching positions of command in the U.S. military. But does it change anything if the Hellfire missiles that kill civilians in Afghanistan are launched from a Reaper drone by a Black female pilot rather than a white guy?

I remember during this year’s Super Bowl festivities that the lead B-2 bomber pilot was a woman. Good for her! But if she pilots a B-2 into a nuclear war, will anyone be pleased that a city gets nuked by a woman rather than a man?

The only “diversity” the Pentagon seemingly rejects is anyone who wants to pursue a new, more peaceful, course, in which the military is not the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy. How about some “diverse” people who will put an end to the war in Afghanistan? Who will argue for less spending on wars and weapons?

Women can be warriors too. We get it. The Greeks had Athena. The Romans had Bellona. This is not new. As others have said, it’s not enough to put Black faces in high places. Or for women to shatter glass ceilings. Not if the policies and power arrangements stay the same.