To the editor:

In President Joe Biden’s remarks on the Afghanistan fiasco, he refers to “the bravest, most capable, most selfless military on the face of the earth…. the backbone of America, the spine of America… the best the country has to offer.”

Most Americans would agree. In fact, one of the few people who often has seemed not to agree has been Biden himself.

Biden as Commander in Chief does not trust the “highly capable” men and women who comprise “the spine of America”… to make good decisions regarding what foreign substances they put into their own bodies.

Biden does not trust members of the “most selfless military on the face of the earth” to judge one another by their character alone. He so little trusts them to do that, that he subjects them to a degrading form of so-called “anti-racist training” which insults their intelligence and their humanity.

Biden so little trusts the men and women who make up “the backbone of America,” that he encourages them to be on perpetual Alert for evidence of “extremism” in their buddies, and to eagerly report any such “evidence.” In other words, to be snitches.

Biden is so obsessed with the political purity of “the best the country has to offer” that he sends minions to comb through their social-media output for examples of impurity — so that if an infraction is found, the “guilty” party can be purged forthwith. Is “the best the country has to offer” so rife with beyond-the-pale misjudgment that draconian surveillance is justified?

Biden’s words say one thing: They speak of trust, respect, admiration. But his policies say something else: They bespeak distrust, disrespect, contempt.

I believe that actions speak louder than words, and I believe that the actions dictated by Biden’s policies…. are unworthy of our men and women in uniform.

It would be nice to have a president who genuinely appreciated one of our healthiest national institutions… instead of bringing it down to the dysfunctional level at which many other institutions already languish.

The military does not need to be built back better; it just needs to keep right on enabling excellence. It does not need to be a sandbox for infantile re-imaginers to play in. Nor a tool for tyrants to weaponize against legitimate political diversity.

Let the military be the military.