The Pentagon is about to get its first aid to advise the Secretary of Defense directly on issues of diversity in the military – including the plague of white supremacy from the ranks.
According to two sources familiar with the appointment, Bishop Garrison will begin next week as the senior adviser to Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense for Human Capital, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Both sources said Garrison would only report to the Pentagon chief.
The appointment has yet to be announced and the scope of the post has not yet been fully defined as it is a new post. But Garrison, a West Point graduate who has hosted two tours in Iraq and advised Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on foreign policy, will likely advise Austin on improving diversity in the Pentagon, combating sexual assault and white supremacists. and confront domestic extremists in uniform.
The Department of Defense already has an office for diversity, equity and inclusion. But having a top official with direct access to Austin who deals with the same issues increases their prestige in the Pentagon. Austin surrounds itself with senior advisers for many of its top priorities, including one for China’s policy.
The appointment of Garrison, a black man, underscores the Biden administration’s emphasis on diversity throughout government.
In January, for example, President Joe Biden signed an executive order reversing former President Donald Trump’s ban on trans members of the military. This is the kind of move that Biden, Austin and others are promising.
During his confirmation as Secretary of Defense, Austin – now the first head of the Black Pentagon – told lawmakers when he was confirmed: ‘I will fight hard to eliminate sexual assault, free our ranks of racists and extremists and to create a climate where everyone fits in and willingly has the opportunity to serve this country with dignity. ”
And during a visit to the Pentagon this week, Biden honors Black Americans who have served in the military for decades. There is a long history of black Americans fighting for this country, ‘Biden said,’ even if their contributions are not always recognized or properly honored. ‘
Garrison did not respond to a request for comment. A Pentagon spokesman did not deny the pending appointment of Garrison, but said: “Bishop Garrison is not currently a DoD employee, so we will not comment on that.” The spokesman then said: “We plan to update the list of officials sworn in at the beginning of each week.”
The Pentagon has a lot of work to do on diversity
Following the nationwide protests caused by George Floyd’s assassination last summer, the Pentagon – like other government institutions – paid more attention to issues of diversity.
In July 2020, the then Minister of Defense, Mark Esper, said what he had known for a long time: “We in the military are not immune from discrimination, prejudice and prejudice” and announced some steps to solve these problems. They included, among other things, that the Confederate flag be effectively banned from military facilities. Esper, however, continued to elevate mostly white men to the highest positions of power, even after the uprisings over racial injustice.
It seems like Austin’s Pentagon is taking diversity issues more seriously, but it has a lot more work to do.
As the New York Times noted, about 43 percent of service members are minorities, but only two of the 41 most senior military posts are held by black people. In fact, 36 of the 41 leadership positions are occupied by white men.
In addition, the Capitol uprising on January 6 included an extraordinary number of veterans in the attacking mob. Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon-believing riot who was fatally shot to break into speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, served in the Air Force.
Pentagon officials are aware that white supremacists and extremists are currently serving in uniform, although they note that the majority of troops do not attribute it to hate ideologies. Nevertheless, Austin announced a 60-day stand-down on February 3 so that military leaders could discuss these issues with troops.
Analysts and experts say this is a start, but for many it is not enough.
” A stand-down is not a solution. It’s a placeholder that gives defense officials time to come up with real solutions, ‘wrote Jeff Schogol of the military-focused news website Task & Purpose. “It will be nearly impossible for senior leaders to get the poor of the extremists into the military, as long as the Department of Defense has so little information on how many service members have ties to domestic terrorist groups.”
And the Pentagon is also struggling to track the number of sexual assaults filed by civilians, according to the Government Accountability Office this week. During the 2015 and 2019 financial years, only 3 percent of the estimated 12,500 cases were recorded, the report said. Regarding sexual assault within the military, 7 825 reported cases were found in the latest official report of the 2019 financial year – an increase of 3 percent over the previous period.
The hope is that Garrison Austin can help improve these and other issues, as the Pentagon needs to lift qualified minorities into more positions of power and keep extremists out of uniform. If he can not, the US military will continue to struggle with problems he has not solved in a long time.