Have you seen the video of the Russian fighter intentionally colliding with our drone over the Black Sea? It’s outrageous – not because it was a hostile act over international waters. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs “Mark the Mediocre” Milley says, “Incidents happen.”
No, the really egregious aspect of the drone takedown is that the Russian pilot didn’t take the time to learn the drone’s preferred pronouns. For all he knew, the drone operator could have been a gender-fluid person of color. The attack may not have been an act of war, but it definitely was a hate crime.
Thankfully, the U.S. Air Force is determined to be better than that. That’s why the service is investing in mission-critical human assets. The Daily Mail reports that the USAF is “hiring a team of diversity, equity and inclusion managers on salaries of up to $180,000 per year.”
Take that, Ivan!
The Mail says the Air Force has advertised “for at least four senior diversity, equity and inclusion positions this month,” and the ads feature “a word soup of management speak and woke terminology”:
A “Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator” position at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska pays $93,367 to $121,378 per year. The candidate will “[perform] a range of functions to facilitate and support the achievement of the Installation/Wing Diversity and Inclusion mission.”
Another vacancy for a “diversity and inclusion coordinator” at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama offers between $82,830 and $107,680 per year. Responsibilities include implementing “Diversity and Inclusion educational and training courses and workshops to affect a culture of Diversity and Inclusion.”
That compensation is peanuts for a job every bit as demanding as flying multimillion-dollar jets at hundreds of miles an hour to put lethal payloads on the breakfast table of sworn enemies of your country. Have you ever tried to rank privilege quotients and balance victimization points between employees of various marginalized groups? It takes nerves of steel dogfighting pilots can only imagine.
Presumably, those highly trained warriors will report to whoever fills the
… senior role at the Pentagon, advertised earlier this month, [which] pays up to $183,500 per year. The “supervisory diversity equity inclusion and accessibility officer' will be responsible for making top-level decisions about the Air Force's diversity policies.”
All of them will be part of a crack team of DEI commandos (I suggest “Directorate of Victim Elevation” – “DOVE Squadron” sounds snappy, doesn't it? ) commanded by USAF Director of Diversity and Inclusion Marianne P. Malizia, the legendary commander of the First LGBTQ Employee Resource Group during the Battle of Booz Allen.
The usual reactionary suspects might fail to see how adding a or increasing a layer of fashion-following, pseudoscience-subscribing bureaucracy will aid the Air Force in its primary mission of killing bad guys and blowing up their stuff.
Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker (R), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee said:
It is mystifying, even disturbing, to see President Biden's top political defense officials promote toxic social policies of equal outcome versus equal opportunity … Their agenda has harmed military readiness and alienated a large portion of potential military recruits.
Well, Senator, maybe the service is better off without bigots, homophobes, transphobes, white supremacists, ableists and fat-shamers.
And when the media finds out that the wreckage of a bomber includes diverse identities – gender-queer pilot, BIPOC navigator, DREAMER weapons officer – all sharing the ultimate equity of death, you’ll realize there are more important things than “military readiness.”
