“Mr. Secretary,” said Senator Tom Cotton, “I have received, along with Congressman [Dan] Crenshaw, several hundred whistleblower complaints about Pentagon extremist and diversity training.”

Thus began the Arkansas Republican’s questioning of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday. “I just want to share a small selection of what your troops are saying,” Cotton continued. And the former Army infantry officer did just that.

Some examples:

One Marine told us that a military history training session was replaced with mandatory training on police brutality, white privilege, and systemic racism. He reported several officers are now leaving his unit, citing that training. Another service member told us that their unit was required to read White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo, which claims, and this is a quote, “People raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview.”

A midshipman at the Naval Academy said classmates were calling America a “fundamentally racist place” and this sentiment is not contested by school administrators.

An airman told us that their unit was forced into a racist exercise called a “privilege walk,” where members of the wing were ordered to separate themselves by race and gender in order to stratify people based on their perceived privilege.

One African American officer disparagingly said, and I quote, “The Navy thinks my only value is as a black woman” and not the fact that she is a highly trained military specialist.

These complaints are the fruit of a whistleblower form that Cotton and Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw, himself a former Navy SEAL, posted to Crenshaw’s congressional website recently. “Enough is enough,” Crenshaw declared. “We won’t let our military fall to woke ideology. We have just launched a whistleblower webpage where you can submit your story.”

Cotton’s back-and-forth with Austin wasn’t contentious, but the senator got his points across. “Mr. Secretary, we’re hearing reports of plummeting morale, growing mistrust between the races and sexes where none existed just six months ago, and unexpected retirements and separations based on these trainings alone,” Cotton said. “And, again, these are not my words; these are the words of your own troops.”

Cotton pressed hard and interrupted frequently to draw out yes-or-no answers to straightforward questions, and to keep the secretary from running out the clock.

“Mr. Secretary,” asked Cotton, “do you believe that our military is a fundamentally racist organization? Yes or no, please.”

Austin replied, “I won’t give you a yes or no answer on that, Senator, because it deserves more than a yes or no. The military, like any organization, will have its challenges, but I do not believe it is a fundamentally racist organization.”

We’ll put the secretary down for a “No,” then, and we’ll see if his actions live up to his professed beliefs. Because the woke supremacist bureaucrats under his command — those who now insist that our warriors read books by the likes of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo — are clearly not of the same bent.

In his closing remarks, Cotton reminded Secretary Austin and his Senate colleagues that the U.S. Armed Forces have historically led the way in matters of equal opportunity. “The military has always been one of the most diverse institutions in our society where you can get ahead irrespective of the color of your skin, or who your parents are or where you came from,” he said. “And I’m glad that we agree on that. This is not about diversity in general, though; this is about a very specific kind of anti-American indoctrination that is seeping into some parts of our military based on the whistleblower complaints we have received.”

As we noted last month, our military has been set adrift by the ardent leftists in the White House and the Pentagon, and our Armed Forces are drifting dangerously away from their core mission of deterring war and ensuring our nation’s security.

It’s long past time that we correct course.

On a far brighter note, the U.S. Army celebrates its 246th birthday today. To our nation’s soldiers past and present: A heartfelt happy birthday, and Godspeed.