This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The outcome of November's presidential election will affect the U.S. military in the profoundest ways possible. The beliefs, values, practices and potential deployments of America's armed forces under the leadership of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance versus Kamala Harris and Tim Walz could not be more different.
As Army Lt. Col. (Ret.) Darin Gaub, who for a decade commanded thousands of soldiers, told WorldNetDaily: "Throughout the Biden presidency, I began hearing for the first time in my life that people are telling their children to do something else rather than join the military – and I can't blame them."
Gaub, a former UH-60 Blackhawk pilot and co-founder of the nonprofit Restore Liberty, explained simply: "Many of today's military leaders are inadequate, and in the military, everything ultimately comes down to leadership."
As far as November's presidential election, Gaub started with the obvious: Harris' and Walz's uninterrupted embrace of the Biden-Harris administration's profoundly leftist ideology "would continue to significantly affect the morale of those who serve the country."
"For example," he told WND, service members "would be forced to endure at least another four years of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion deciding who gets promoted based on everything but merit." And that, in turn, would result in families across the nation continuing to dissuade their children from joining the military in the first place, he said.
Gaub warns that "only those who comply with an agenda that has nothing to do with our military war-fighting capacity will be promoted."
He fully expects the poor decisions of the Biden administration to continue into a Harris presidency. "Over the last three-plus years of the Biden administration, we've witnessed the evacuation of the strategic air base of Bagram in Afghanistan, which was soon followed by the tragedy of our surrender in Afghanistan," Gaub said, affirming that "a message of weakness was seen and heard around the world for the years to follow."
"It all boils down to inadequate leadership," he stressed. "Under the Biden administration, it was easy to predict that Kabul would fall into the hands of terrorists, Russia would invade Ukraine, the militarization of China would continue and the Middle East would flare up to threaten a global war."
Gaub offered a much more positive outlook for the Trump-Vance ticket at the helm. "Americans will have patience and allow them to do the things that need to be done to right this sinking ship," he said. They would also have to factor in what happens in the Senate and the House, he noted, which would have a major impact regardless of who occupies the White House.
"But from a military perspective, with Trump as commander-in-chief," Gaub expects that "we'll see some very aggressive moves" in reforming America's armed forces. This would include a return to merit-based promotions only, he said. "With good leadership in place and an industrial base that's capable of producing the arms and ammunition the military needs, we'll also see military readiness transform in a fashion that projects strength to the rest of the world."
As a result, he concluded, threats from Russia, China, North Korea and other countries would subside.
"The American people just have to remember that it takes time to build and rebuild, as it's far easier to destroy a country," Gaub admitted, which is what the Biden-Harris administration has been doing via its "woke" assault on the U.S. military.
