Jonah Bennett on January 3, 2017

Retired Marine Colonel and professor Gary Anderson argued Monday that the next secretary of the Navy should dismantle all the progressive social engineering policies implemented by the service’s current head Ray Mabus.

In an op-ed for Small Wars Journal, Anderson slammed Mabus for using his office to shift the Navy’s focus on combating global warming and political incorrectness, as opposed to refining the force into a more lethal war-fighting machine.

“The Mabus priorities have been making the naval services more caring, inclusive, and environmentally protective. Discipline, combat effectiveness, and readiness have been secondary goals at best,” Anderson wrote.

In other words, warriors should receive training for war, rather than being treated as “lab rats in bizarre social experiments.”

For Anderson, the next secretary of the Navy should return the service to its core mission of deterring or defeating hostile navies by making it loud and clear that the Navy and Marine Corps will focus on combat readiness and discipline — not inclusivity. As such, celebration days for LGBT troops should be abandoned with haste, as according to Anderson, any special recognition based solely on identity detracts from good order.

With that in mind, leaders in the service should be empowered to hand down discipline without being afraid of malcontents ginning up bogus claims of racism or sexism.

As just one example of the consequences of misplaced priorities like being caring and inclusive, Anderson pointed to the utter incompetence that resulted in Iran’s capture of Navy sailors in January 2016 and the subsequent “disgraceful conduct” of these sailors, which included crying and apologizing, while lauding the Iranians for their hospitality. The reason the Marine Corps hasn’t suffered the same fate, said Anderson, is because leadership has vocally opposed Mabus’ attempts at social engineering and successfully resisted a push to integrate male and female boot camps.

Mabus, the longest serving secretary of the Navy since World War I, has made it an absolute priority of his to transform the Navy and Marine Corps in progressive-friendly ways, earning him a lot of flack in the process.

From the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2011 to the opening of all combat roles to women without exception, Mabus has always pushed the military in a leftward social direction.

His most recent effort to abandon the Navy’s traditional job title system in order to make roles gender neutral earned such universal and widespread reproach that the service actually backed down.

So obsessive is Mabus’ penchant for social reform, Anderson suggested he should be investigated for potentially turfing national security in favor of a political agenda.

“Mabus and his ilk should be investigated for their performance in office; their ‘accomplishments’ go beyond incompetent,” Anderson argued. “If their actions are found to be of such a nature that they have eroded national security to further their political agendas, they should be prohibited from doing business with the government in the future.”

The prospect that a Trump administration could roll back progressive reforms in the military has sparked fear among LGBT troops and direct comments from Mabus himself in a recent interview with The Washington Post. In that interview, Mabus said that while an incoming administration could repeal changes, the move would result in a manifestly weaker force, as diversity provides strength.

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