Hon. Lloyd Austin Secretary of Defense The Pentagon Washington, D.C. 20301

Dear Mr. Secretary:

During your time in uniform and now as the senior official in the Department of Defense, you have repeatedly sworn an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” We call on you to honor the oath by bringing to an immediate end to activities currently underway in your Department that are incompatible with that solemn commitment.

As you well know, our military is one big team, ranging from the top level of Joint and Combined operations down to two soldiers in a foxhole. Teamwork depends on mutual trust and confidence in each other so that each servicemember believes he or she can rely on the other for their lives in combat. That is the basis of unit cohesion. And unit cohesion is essential for the readiness of the force. Anything that destroys teamwork and unit cohesion also destroys readiness and, as our adversaries know, that destroys our ability to fight and win our Nation’s wars. No doubt such adversaries are pleased to see our military being fractured along racial lines.

Specifically, the armed services are being fractured by the Countering Extremism Working Group program run by your Senior Advisor for Diversity and Inclusion, Bishop Garrison. It is imposing on them so-called “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) training and related programs, like Project 1619. Such programs falsely teach that our country is inherently racist, with whites as the oppressors and blacks the oppressed. That is a Marxist tactic used to pit one group against the other. It is designed to do exactly the opposite of building cohesive military teams that have the essential trust and confidence in each other needed to fight in war. In short, CRT and other such programs are degrading our readiness, which will seriously damage our ability to deter wars and if necessary, to fight and win them.

Mr. Garrison’s initiatives vilify our Constitution and are an affront to patriotic Americans. Worse yet, this program is clearly aimed a purging the military of those who are seen as “extremist” simply because they adhere to traditional American values embodied in our Constitution and take seriously their obligation to support and defend that document.

It is your sworn duty to do the same. To that end, we respectfully insist that you: shut down the Countering Extremism Working Group; fire its Director, Bishop Garrison; prohibit further CRT and similar training of armed forces personnel; reinstate a brilliant officer, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier – who has warned against actual extremism within the Defense Department – as the Commander of the 11th Space Warning Group; and restore to Service other personnel who have been wrongly accused of “extremism,” but who are, like LTC Lohmeier, simply opponents of anti-constitutional ideologies like Marxism.

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