Last week, Joe Biden commemorated an important American anniversary. And then he defiled it.

“Seventy-five years ago today,” his statement began, “President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ending the unconscionable racial segregation of our Armed Forces and bringing our nation closer to our founding values. This landmark Order, issued more than a decade before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, directed the military to ensure the ‘equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.’”

All well and good. But then he stopped talking about racial equality and started talking about racial discrimination: “It is critical that the full diversity and strength of our force is reflected at every level of the Department of Defense, including at the highest levels of leadership.”

When a leftist starts talking about diversity, what he’s really talking about is quotas and race-based promotion.

To make his point, Biden trotted out one of the Left’s most infernal lies: “America’s greatest strength has always been our diversity, and there is no greater testament to this than the success of our military.”

Always? What the heck are Joe Biden and his speechwriters talking about?

How “diverse” were our fighting forces at Lexington and Concord? At Saratoga? At Yorktown? At New Orleans? At Chancellorsville? At Gettysburg? At Belleau Wood? At Midway? At Guadalcanal? At Normandy? At Bastogne? At Iwo Jima? At Okinawa?

These battles, and dozens of others equally successful though not as well known, represent our nation’s finest hours in combat. And none of these victorious units was “diverse.”

But nor were the Tuskegee Airmen diverse, and their valor and their exploits and their expertise were equally glorious. Nor was the legendary 442nd Infantry Regiment diverse, and yet this World War II unit made up almost entirely of Japanese Americans became the most decorated regiment in American military history.

To say that our military has “always” been great because of its diversity is either a purposeful lie or a lazy, ridiculous, demonstrably ignorant falsehood. Diversity doesn’t make great fighting forces. Leadership makes great fighting forces. Merit makes great fighting forces. Courage and cohesion and indomitable spirit make great fighting forces. And above all, great fighters make great fighting forces — from private to general, from seaman to admiral.

And, no, we’re not calling for a return to our long-ago racially segregated military. Far from it. What we are calling for is a return to a military that promotes its warriors based on merit rather than skin color or any other irrelevancy. Or does someone out there honestly believe Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, given his well-known weaknesses and failures, was the best man for the job?

What about Air Force General Charles Brown, Biden’s racially aggrieved nominee to succeed Mark “White Rage” Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Is Brown the right man for the job at this perilous time of international threats, low troop morale, and terrible recruitment numbers, or is there something about the color of his skin that made him stand out among a crowd of well-qualified warfighters?

For that matter, is Admiral Lisa Franchetti the best person Joe Biden could find to be the Navy’s Joint Chiefs chairperson? Or was she selected because she, like Lloyd Austin and C.Q. Brown, checked one of those irrelevant boxes? In other words, was she simply the best woman Joe Biden could find for that crucial role?

As for those irrelevancies, Biden rattled off a lengthy list of them: “Let us continue to break down barriers so that all qualified servicemembers, no matter their race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious background, are treated with dignity and respect, can reach their full potential and have their contributions valued,” he said. “That is how we will ensure the United States Armed Forces remains the greatest fighting force in the history of the world.”

Everyone got that? Biden’s statement in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the integration of our Armed Forces couldn’t be simply that. It couldn’t be simply a celebration of black Americans and white Americans fighting together, side by side. No, he had to diminish racial equality by conflating it with gender cultism.

According to the commander-in-chief, then, our only hope of remaining history’s greatest fighting force is to have military-wide stand-downs to talk about white supremacy, to actively recruit soldiers with two moms, to show our Marine Corps “Pride” with rainbow-colored rounds, to name Navy ships after gay activists, and to use taxpayer funds to pay for active-duty warriors to have sex-change operations.

All this wokeness comes at a cost. As defense analyst Frank Gaffney observes: “What especially imperils our national security now is the fact that the subversive legacy of the previous Obama-Biden terms is becoming manifest in the U.S. military, as well. It is, arguably, the last national institution to undergo the Marxist makeover Barack Obama set in motion. But, thanks to officers aggressively promoted during his 1.0 and 2.0 presidencies becoming senior commanders, it is perilously devastating morale, retention, recruitment and readiness.”

That Marxist makeover no doubt has the Russians and the Chinese laughing at us. And if we had to guess, we’d imagine some of our allies are laughing, too, albeit nervously. They’re wondering what the heck happened to the once-proud U.S. military.

Joe Biden happened. And before him, Barack Obama happened. That’s what happened to the U.S. military.

Updated with an observation on Joe Biden’s nominee to be the next Joint Chiefs chairman.