Diversity Thursday

the IC is not a serious community

If you think the DEI problem has gone out of control in our educational system and certain parts of the civilian sector, well … you haven’t been visiting us every Thursday and you must not have to deal with our government much.

If you think DEI are just the people in HR or the N/J1/00 shop that people try to avoid eye contact with and dread listening to during another session of annual training they have to endure, you could not be more wrong.

Especially in the Department of Defense - from the service academies to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and our Intelligence Community - the DEI Commissariat has bullied their way into being the tail that wags the dog. They see themselves not as a supporting part of a staff, but as the supported.

Words mean things - that is most assuredly true. In the profession of arms and its sister in the intelligence community, while to the outside ear we are allowed to be vague and misleading - internally we need to be direct, clear, and as precise as possible to each other. If we are not, our people get killed and our missions fail.

We noted hints of that yesterday in INDOPACOM’s Posture Statement, and via Spencer Lindquist at the Daily Wire, we have some red-in-tooth-and-claw examples of the same;

An internal newsletter sent by diversity, equity, and inclusion officials in the Biden administration’s top intelligence agency warns personnel not to use “problematic phrases” when discussing Islamic terrorism and foreign adversaries such as China, an internal document obtained by The Daily Wire reveals.

The unclassified newsletter from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, called “The Dive” … argues in its cover story that the intelligence community needs to focus on “changing terminology related to counterterrorism,” because “words matter.”

“This article is about one of our goals: disentangling Islam from words and phrases used to discuss terrorism and extremist violence,”

…

“Some of the problematic phrases include, but are not limited to: ‘Salafi-Jihadist,’ ‘Jihadist,’ ‘Islamic-Extremist,’ ‘Sunni/Shia-Extremism,’ and ‘Radical Islamists.’”

Over the last quarter century, thousands of Americans on US soil and overseas were killed in cold blood or while fighting, “ ‘Salafi-Jihadist,’ ‘Jihadist,’ ‘Islamic-Extremist,’ ‘Sunni/Shia-Extremism,’ and ‘Radical Islamists.’ ” Tens of thousands were maimed. Trillions of dollars were spent to fight them.

They are still attacking us. They defeated us fair and square in Afghanistan and still remain undefeated in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia.

Yet, we can’t name them for what they are.

The inmates are not running the asylum, they are running the government.