Adedokun Waliyu 
This week, president-elect Donald Trump’s nominees began their Senate confirmation hearings. After four years of the administrative malaise of the Biden administration, the nominees proved to be a breath of fresh air. They completely reject the failed philosophies of the Biden years — and the contrast is stunning.
Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth explained that it was time to “bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense.” His laser focus would be on “warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards and readiness.” To do that, Hegseth pledged to eviscerate so-called diversity, equity and inclusion standards, explaining, “The strength of our military is our unity — our shared purpose — not our differences.”
For that anodyne perspective, Democrats raked Hegseth over the coals. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., angrily intoned, “Our military is more diverse than it has ever been, but more importantly, it is more lethal than it has ever been. This is not a coincidence.”
Of course, diversity has nothing to do with lethality; the notion that an army formed from members of different ethnicities but without a common purpose would somehow overcome an army with a unified purpose but without racial diversity is asinine. But such nostrums have governed our military policy for decades. That’s how we end up with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley disclaiming the evils of “white rage.”
