The Patriot Post® · Biden's SOCOM Diversity Dupe Dumped

This week, we noted the Biden/Harris regime’s appointment of a new “Chief of Diversity and Inclusion” for the U.S. Special Operations Command. This absurdity is part of Biden’s plan to ensure our military forces are woke and full of social justice warriors.

According to SOCOM, Mr. Richard Torres-Estrada will be implementing the “USSOCOM Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, which will guide the enterprise-wide effort to institutionalize and sustain Diversity and Inclusion.”

At least that was the plan before it was discovered that Torres-Estrada’s social media pages are littered with partisan political propaganda, including a comparison of Donald Trump with Adolph Hitler. For that reason, he (if I can use that pronoun) has been “reassigned,” (a.k.a. “dumped on some other federal agency”).

You would think, given the defense secretary’s recent “stand-down order” for a “top to bottom” review of military personnel in order to purge “political extremists” (a.k.a. “Trump supporters”), that somebody would have noticed Torres-Estrada’s left-wing social media posts before his appointment to oversee “Diversity and Inclusion” in the ranks of our nation’s most highly trained operators carrying out highly classified operations.

For the record, a quick check of Torres-Estrada’s work history indicates that he has the same military service record as the commander-in-chief who appointed him — none. But he does have a long bureaucratic history as a diversity officer. Given the fact Joe Biden spent more than 45 years in the swamp doing nothing, I assume that Torres-Estrada looked “highly qualified.”

His reassignment not withstanding, Biden will announce some other woke Chief of Diversity and Inclusion to “institutionalize and sustain D&I” at SOCOM. Thus, I am including this note from my friend, Robert Schmidt, offering some timely perspective from a professional warfighter on the Demos’ “woke” military agenda:

My last assignment in the military, I was the Chief of Current Intelligence (the highest ranking naval officer in the Intelligence Directorate) of Special Operations Command South, the multi-service organization that oversaw the activities of all special operations forces in Central and South America, plus the Caribbean. By “special operations forces,” I am referring to naval special warfare operators (SEALs), Army Special Forces warriors (“green berets”), and other national assets. Though I am now retired from the Navy — which is why I am free to express my views publicly — I doubt that our special operators view the concept of “diversity and inclusion” and the Left’s “identity politics” differently now.

I have never been in any working environment that supported the concept of true “diversity and inclusion” more than the special operations world. The special operators I encountered were from many different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, and they all worked together as one cohesive team, ignoring any identity factors that did not somehow affect the mission. For example, native Spanish speakers with dark complexions and hair blended in better in some Latin American operational environments than pale, red-haired, non-Spanish speakers. When I refer to “diversity and inclusion” in the spec ops world, I’m not referring to it as defined by the political Left. I’m referring to literal “diversity and inclusion,” not the “woke” nonsense.

To the Left, “diversity and inclusion” is based on the premise: “We believe minority groups cannot compete equally in this white-biased world, because it was intentionally built to be inherently unfair to minorities, so we’re changing the rules to give minority people advantages to help them succeed, even if they are not the most qualified from the standpoint of skills, education, or abilities.” In the spec ops world, the concept of “diversity and inclusion” is both more straightforward and more complex, because it’s not about “who wins,” it’s about “who qualifies.” Thus, in the universe of special operations, “diversity and inclusion” have nothing whatsoever to do with “minority status,” based on skin color, race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion.

For special operators, it’s all about the good of the team, and any person of any background, who has the operational skills and courage, the loyalty to the team’s code of conduct, and the physical ability required to carry out the mission, is respected for their abilities and achievements, and is welcome to be on the team. All others are not welcome, because they would adversely impact the team’s ability to successfully execute the mission.

So, what matters most is a person’s abilities and their courage to complete the mission, not their “diversity.” Special operators celebrate and admire achievement and success, not “identity.”

Taking all of the foregoing into consideration, the next “Chief of Diversity and Inclusion” at SOCOM will not improve the morale or the operational effectiveness of special ops teams. That Biden appointee is going to be a nuisance that command will demand be tolerated. The last thing SOCOM needs is to have its modus operandus undermined by a career bureaucrat — especially one who has never served our nation in uniform. Special operations is a very dangerous occupation, but “woke” politicians and their “social justice warriors” don’t care about military mission. All those leftist cadres care about is the warm, fuzzy feeling of smug self-satisfaction they get from virtue signaling — forcing their “morally superior” policies on the rest of us. They do so at great peril to our nation.

Finally, Biden and Harris probably missed this Harvard Business Review study, “Why Diversity Programs Fail.” The authors note: “In analyzing three decades’ worth of data from more than 800 U.S. firms, and interviewing hundreds of line managers and executives at length, we’ve seen that companies get better results when they ease up on the control tactics. … Companies do a better job of increasing diversity when they forgo the control tactics and frame their efforts more positively.”

I’m sure the same holds true in government bureaucracies, but “diversity and inclusion” are not the leftists’ underlying motives. They want to keep all their constituents divided up by innate attributes — and to do so they have to make those attributes more visible, not less.