Making a SEAL team used to mean cutting the mustard. It meant being one of the minority who are even accepted for training to make it through training.
It will soon mean being a minority. A face. A color. A pair - or not. And what you do with what you've got in your shorts.
Not whether you can run 1.5 miles in less than 10 minutes and 30 seconds. Or swim 500 yards in less than 12 minutes and 30 seconds. Do at least 50 pushups and ten pull-ups.
That’s to get into the SEAL training program.
Once accepted - to make it through the program - you must be able to do at least 70 push-ups and swim 1,000 yards in 20 minutes or less. Not many people can do that, regardless of the color of their skin and irrespective of their equipment.
A SEAL candidate must successfully endure Hell Week - during which the candidate must be able to remain awake and alert for 20 hours at a time, getting only four hours of sleep over the course of five-and-half days; to stand in frigid surf to the point of hypothermia. To work as a team with a group of other candidates without being a liability to the group.
To understand and follow orders no matter how you feel about them.
The training is so winnowing that fewer than 30 percent of those who qualify to be trained ever make it through training and qualify to be SEALs.
Their color, genitalia - and what they do with their genitalia - have never been considerations for admission to the program. Only their toughness - and their demonstrated abilities.
Very much the same as making it to the NFL or the NBA is about what you can do rather than who you are.
That’s not Woke enough for the Harris-Biden administration, which has appointed an Inclusion Czar to make sure that Wokeness counts at least as much as push-ups. It is likely that this “czar” - Richard Torres-Estrada - cannot do 50 or even 25 push-ups, not being a special operator himself or - apparently - even a veteran.
Except of government Woke-work.
Torres-Estrada’s “service record” includes a “tour” as the equal opportunity officer for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority. In which capacity, his efforts probably didn’t cost lives - even if they did cost some otherwise-qualified people their jobs, because they weren’t the right color, sex or sexual orientation.
But when it comes to elite troops, the Harris-Biden administration's new "czar" could cost a great deal more than jobs. When the lives of others - the people on your team - depend on your being able to swim 1,000 yards without sinking - no matter what color your skin is or what's in your shorts.
Or go 20 hours without sleep - without losing focus.
Torres-Estrada has a very different focus. Stars and Stripes reports that he is facing scrutiny over posts comparing former President Trump with Hitler and characterizing the children's story about Goldilocks as an example of racial oppression and white supremacy - among other indications of the "diversity" he favors.
America’s enemies are no doubt very glad to hear that America’s special ops and elite troops - Torres-Estrada will also oversee “inclusion and diversity” for the Delta Force and Green Berets - are to be Woke rather than ready.
U.S. Special Operations Command Tweeted (something that sounds like a thing done by 12-year-old girls, not hardened warriors) that it “welcomes” Torres-Estrada and “look(s) forward to his contribution in enhancing the capabilities and effectiveness of (special forces) through diversity of talent,” helping us recruit the best of the best.”
Problem is, the special forces were already doing just that - recruiting the “best of the best.” And rejecting those who weren't - regardless of their skin color or equipment.
Unless, of course, Torres-Estrada believes - as is implied - that current SEALs, Green Berets and Army Rangers are somehow less than “the best.”
And how does “diversity” enhance talent, exactly?
Is a soldier more - or less - capable on account of skin color, sex or sexual orientation? Doesn’t the winnowing of training, the measuring up - or not - to standards that apply toeveryone accomplish that purpose?
Or is the actual purpose a political purpose - i.e., to Wokishly bean-count the special forces as corporate America Wokishly bean-counts its hires and refuses to fire, if the “bean” at issue is Woke?
Just what America needs when the need arises for people who can cut the mustard.
It conjures up the dramatic courtroom scene in the 1992 epic Jack Nicholson/Tom Cruise film, A Few Good Men - in which the hardened Marine colonel played by Jack Nicholson famously told Tom Cruise’s lawyer character that he couldn’t handle the truth.
That truth was a different truth than the one that’s at issue today - which is whether America’s most elite forces are to become America’s most Woke forces, no matter the consequences for America.
