Top General Forcefully Defends DOD Policies Amid Accusations of ‘Critical Race Theory’ | National News

The military’s top officer on Wednesday volunteered a forceful defense to a congressional panel of the Defense Department’s attempts to better understand social injustice within its ranks and American society, moments after facing accusations from conservative members that he called “offensive.”

An unusually emotional impromptu statement from Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, followed provocative questions from Republican members during a budget hearing, including from Rep. Michael Waltz, who, like Milley, served in the Army as a Special Forces officer. Waltz and others insisted they had evidence the military and the service academies were forcing on troops and cadets studies in “white rage” and “critical race theory” – a previously obscure academic term that promotes the idea that racism is pervasive and baked into the foundation of the U.S. legal system and society as a whole. It has found popularity among Republicans looking to politicize it.

“On the issue of critical race theory, a lot of us have to get much smarter on whatever the theory is,” Milley began, when offered an opportunity to respond.

Milley stressed the importance of being open-minded and widely read – echoing comments by the Navy’s top officer in recent days in defense of issuing to sailors a reading list that includes Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to be an Antiracist.” And he stated that the service academies are universities that encourage critical thought.

“I want to understand white rage – and I’m white,” Milley said, growing more forceful in his comments as he referenced the violent mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6: “What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here. And I do want to understand that.”

“It’s important that leaders now and in the future do understand it.”

Milley, who attended Princeton University for his undergraduate degree and Columbia University graduate school, then took aim at others on the dais, including Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, also a Republican, who had moments earlier criticized Milley for pushing the teaching of supposedly Marxist theories among servicemembers and hiring advisers who espoused those theories – all broad claims for which the congressman offered no substantive evidence.

“I’ve read Mao Zedong, I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist,” Milley continued. “So what is wrong with some situational understanding of the country for which we are personally here to defend?

“And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the U.S. military, our general officers, our commissioned or non-commissioned officers of being, quote, woke or something else because we’re studying the same theories that are out there.”

He referenced a broad summary of critical race theory, which originated from analyses at Harvard Law School of the lasting, tangible effects of American history in which African Americans were defined as three-fifths of a man in the country’s founding documents, followed by the Civil War 100 years later and subsequent Emancipation Proclamation as well as the 1960s-era Civil Rights Act 100 years after that.

To Waltz, Milley stated: “Look, I do want to know. I respect your service. You and I are both Green Berets.”

“It matters to the discipline and cohesion of this military,” Milley concluded.

His terse comments followed a similarly blunt exchange between Gaetz and Austin, in which the Florida congressman insisted Austin was pushing “critical race theory” in military training and that an adviser he hired to lead a Pentagon review of potentially discriminatory practices was a “critical race theorist.”

Austin called the claim “spurious,” dismissing what he called Gaetz’ “anecdotal” evidence that troops had relayed concerns about changes in Defense Department training. When Gaetz offered that the positive support Austin had received for his reviews may have been only because his staff wanted to tell the secretary what he wanted to hear, Austin, also uncharacteristically, fired back at Gaetz over his anonymous sources.

“Maybe they’re telling you what you want to hear,” he said.