Along with Victor Davis Hanson, Newt Gingrich is the best political analyst in the nation. Here he brings his talents to the matter of critical race theory our armed forces.

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Gingrich: Critical race theory has now taken hold in the U.S. military. And I have to say, I find it perplexing.

My father served for three decades in the U.S. Army. I grew up understanding that the military is about forming a bond, a unit, a team working toward the same goals and protecting each other while achieving them.

So, you can imagine my shock when I started to learn how seriously the leaders at the Pentagon were starting to integrate critical race theory (CRT) in their curriculua. In fact, a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lynne Chandler Garcia, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “I teach critical race theories to our nation’s future military leaders because it is vital that cadets understand the history of racism that has shaped both foreign and domestic policy.”

As Mark Davis opined in Newsweek, “Finding such warped content in today’s liberal college classrooms is not surprising. But finding it at the U.S. Air Force Academy is unacceptable.” I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, it’s not just the Air Force Academy. West Point offers a seminar class on “White rage.”The chief of Naval Operations recommends “How to Be an Antiracist” as a “foundational” text for sailors. The Navy’s reading list for sailors also includes “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” and “Sexual Minorities and Politics.” In short, the military has gone woke.

Indeed, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recently defended the study and teaching of critical race theory within the armed forces. “It’s important actually for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read,” he told the House Armed Services Committee. “I want to understand White rage.””I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read [Vladimir] Lenin,” Milley continued. “That doesn’t make me a communist.” Other top Pentagon officials have made this same point.

But they’re missing a key point: Studying political ideologies of adversaries so we can better combat them is completely different than studying CRT, which divides our own people. Cohesion and camaraderie, especially within small units, is absolutely crucial to military success. It’s been said that soldiers don’t fight for some general theory; they fight for the person next to them. CRT, which causes us to see each other through the lens of race and the oppressor versus the oppressed, is the antithesis of this cohesion.

Simply put, critical race theory undermines our military’s effectiveness, destroying trust and taking focus away from the mission. Soldiers shouldn’t be concerned about whether the person next to them is Black or White, Asian or Hispanic. All that should matter is that they’re both Americans serving their country and they have a mission to do. No other country is putting its military through this nonsense. They’re focusing on warfighting, which should be the top priority – preparing for and deterring war, hoping it never comes but always being ready to fight.