McChrystal slams Pentagon focus on anti-DEI and ‘biceps’ as a distraction

Decorated warfighter Ret. Gen. Stanley McChrystal lambasted recent moves at the Pentagon, arguing on Sunday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s focus on rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion is a “distraction.” 

“I think that the DEI thing is, frankly, a distraction. It’s not helpful,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“I am completely aligned with Secretary Hegseth on the idea that we need to defend the nation, that the defense department needs to be as effective as it can be, and that a certain warrior ethos matters,” McChrystal explained. “We just define it differently.” 

The four-star retired Army general challenged the conception that “everybody’s got to look a certain way, got to have biceps of a certain size, there’s got to be a male, straight.”

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He also argued for a more inclusive military. 

“In the counter-terrorist fight, where much of my experience was, it became a meritocracy. You didn’t care what somebody looked like or how old they were, what their gender was or sexual orientation because it was too important to get the job done.

“America needs to harness talent from every corner of our society, everyone.”

McChrystal resigned as commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, only a year into the job, during the Obama administration after a Rolling Stone article attributed scathing comments about President Barack Obama to McChrystal and his aides. 

During his short tenure, McChrystal advocated for a buildup of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

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He had wanted 60,000 additional U.S. troops to reverse insurgent “momentum.” Obama offered him 33,000.

McChrystal appeared on CBS to promote his new book, “On Character: Choices That Define a Life.”

“As a nation, our character is our fate. So, what I am trying to do is convince people to start a national conversation on character, with the idea that it starts at the bottom,” said McChrystal. “Not at the top.”

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“Our national leaders are not the cause of the problem. They are the symptom of the problem. The cause is us,” he argued. 

“We’ve always had a problem with certain evil in society and corruption, but I think the fact that we see everything so much now that we normalize it,” McChrystal said. “We start to accept things in celebrities or leaders that frankly, things we wouldn’t have accepted even a generation ago. And that’s our problem.”