The mainstream media's shameless, and totally predictable, spin of the House GOP's defense bill

Congressional Democrats have a well-earned reputation for not wholeheartedly supporting the U.S. military, and certainly for not supporting it as strongly as congressional Republicans do. That’s not a good reputation for a political party to have.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that the Democrats and their media organs are portraying the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the Republican House as, in effect, anti-military. Their talking point: Republicans are using the military to fight culture wars, our national security be damned.

Here’s how the Washington Post, in its lead front-page story, advanced the talking point:

Congress’s decades-long streak of bipartisan support for its annual defense policy and spending plan collapsed Friday, after House Republicans rammed through the most conservative National Defense Authorization Act in decades — restricting military personnel’s access to reproductive care and diversity protections, and imperiling lawmakers’ mandate to set major national security priorities.

Totaling $886 billion, the bill was passed on a 219-210 vote, carried over the finish line by a razor-thin Republican majority after an acrimonious battle on Thursday that reduced the chamber of America’s democracy into a battleground in its increasingly polarized culture wars. . . .

(Emphasis added)

A companion story claims that the Pentagon is trying to “stay out of the fray as GOP breaks from bipartisan tradition” (subtitle of print version). Yet, the Post’s report belies the claim of Pentagon neutrality, making it clear that the Defense Department, which the Biden administration controls, views the efforts of House Republicans with dismay:

One defense official said some of the contents of the House bill represented “an unprecedented reach” into issues that have typically been left to the military hierarchy.

“If their goal is to depoliticize, they have fully inserted politics directly into pending public law,” the official said, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss pending legislation. . . .

“The NDAA usually moves through Congress in a bipartisan way without divisive issues, focused on the centerpiece of our national security interest and not on societal-political arguments,” a U.S. official said.

(Emphasis added)

The Pentagon is being disingenuous. The dispute here arose only because the Defense Department, under Democrat control, has taken sides in the culture wars.

It decided to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that embrace the highly controversial woke view of race relations in America. At best, these programs, which consume a large amount of resources, divert the military from its mission of defending America. At worst, by rejecting colorblindness and merit-based decisionmaking while focusing on “oppression” and “oppressors,” they create racial divisions and raise questions as to whether America is even worth defending.

No wonder a recent poll conducted by the Heritage Foundation found that 65 percent of active-duty personnel are concerned about growing politicization in the military. No wonder, the military is falling woefully short of meeting its recruiting goals, and now faces the worst recruiting crisis since the creation of the all-volunteer force nearly 50 years ago.

The Pentagon has also taken the woke side in the culture war over transgenderism. The military now provides “gender transition” treatment, including hormone therapy and surgery.

On the abortion front, it reimburses the expenses of military women who can’t get an abortion without traveling to another state. In opposing this, Republicans are upholding the principle that federal funds shouldn’t be used to finance abortions.

Whatever one believes about the merits of these policies, no bipartisan consensus exists regarding them. It’s clear that the military has taken a side.

Consequently, what the Post describes as a “normally bipartisan piece of legislation” has lost its character as such. There’s nothing normal about DEI indoctrination by the military. It’s something new, as is providing sex-change operations.

Thus, the real issue here isn’t Republican divisiveness. The real issue is congressional oversight. More specifically, the question is how much deference Congress owes the military when it changes policies on controversial social issues.

If both sides were honest, their answer would be “not much.” If the Pentagon, under a Republican administration, were to take the conservative side on important social issues, you can bet that congressional Democrats would, with fanfare in some cases, be trying to rein it in by adding riders to the spending authorization bill.

My view is that the “not much” answer is correct for two reason. First, although I don’t like legislators micromanaging the military on purely military issues, when the Pentagon strays into controversial social issues — and particularly when it embraces controversial doctrines like DEI — Congress has a right to intervene.

To paraphrase a cliché, social policy is too important to be left to the generals.

But second, is it really “the generals” who are setting the social policy of the military? I don’t think so.

The Biden administration runs the Pentagon. To the extent that generals make controversial social policy decisions, they do so at the administration’s direction or at least with its consent. And the White House, I take it, empowers its favorite generals do the deciding.

Thus, when Congress tries to override the Pentagon’s decision on controversial social issues, its denial of deference is less to generals than to politicians from the opposition party. On such issues, one political party owes very little deference to the other.

Unfortunately, Democrats control the Senate. Therefore, there’s a very good chance that much of what the House has done to curb Pentagon wokeism will not make it into the final legislation.

ONE MORE NOTE: The New York Times, every bit as much a Democrat organ as the Post, tries to take partisan advantage of the House bill through a different spin.

Like the Post, it treats Republicans as the culture war initiators. But it presents the story almost solely in terms of the abortion issue, virtually ignoring the transgender issue.

The Times is being clever. The abortion issue remains politically problematic for the GOP, so a story that portrays Republicans as doubling down on restricting access (even indirectly) — especially in the context of a defense appropriations bill — is more valuable to the Dems than another story that accuses Republicans of “divisiveness.”

And, of course, the less the public hears about transgender issues, the better it is for Democrats.