Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, thanking you for joining us, and also thanking you for making us a part of your day. Family Talk is only possible because of listeners just like you. It's because of your prayers and your faithful financial support that we remain on the air. Remember, if you like what you hear each day, please tell a friend, and also be sure to include the call letters of the station you listen to when you contact us. Your local station is incredibly important to ensuring that biblical truth is heard in the public square. And I'm excited to tell you that all this month here at Family Talk, there's a special matching grant in place. So for any amount that you donate to the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute during the month of December, it will instantly be matched dollar for dollar. That's double the impact you can give easily using the JDFI Family Talk app right on your smartphone, or visit drjamesdobson.org. That's drjamesdobson.org.
And please know how much we greatly appreciate your prayers and your ongoing financial support. Well, in just a moment, you're going to hear the rock solid powerful words taken from an important and powerful presentation given by our guest speaker here on Family Talk, retired US Army Lieutenant Jerry Boykin. After completing a successful 36 year military career, General Boykin now serves as executive vice president at the Family Research Council in Washington DC and was one of the original members of the US Army's Delta Force. General Boykin and his wife Ashley are the parents of five children and have many, many grandchildren. We're about to hear a presentation that General Boykin gave to a group assembled by Dr. Dobson on the subject of restoring our military to greatness. In this day of political correctness, general Boykin believes that the Pentagon and many of its leaders have become wokeified, and this needs to change or dire consequences will ensue.
Remember, part one of this presentation is already up at our website at drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. If you haven't listened to it yet, I encourage you to do so. And this complete two-part program is also included in our 2023 broadcast collection as well. Here now once again is Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin with part two of his powerful presentation right now on Family Talk.
Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin: Today's military diversity does not apply only to race. It also applies to sexual and gender preferences. President Biden issued an order, executive order 14004, allowing transgenders to serve in the Army. And as I said, that probably was within the 48 hours after he took over that he lifted that ban on transgenders. But you know what? In case you don't realize it, you're paying for their surgery, you're paying for their hormone therapy. Taxpayers are paying for that, but it gets worse. It's not just that we're paying for it. It is also that they get the first 18 to 24 months that they're in the military to go through the surgery and recover, do their rehab before they're even deployable. So we're bringing people in that we're going to pay for their surgery and their hormones, and then give them 24 months to go through this.
And if you want to know what it's costing over a 10 year period, $3.7 billion. And we did the math on this at Family Research Council and figured this out and passed it over to the Pentagon and said, "Do you really want to do this?" Well, it made a difference when President Trump was there. But of course, as soon as he left, nobody paid any attention to this 3.7 billion. Do you know what we could do with 3.7 billion with our troops that are under equipped now that they've had 20 years in Afghanistan? You know what we could do with 3.7 billion? It would help a lot.
We're wasting our time and our money, but more importantly, we're wasting the time of those young men and women that are going to have to fight the nation's wars with this kind of nonsense. This is what's happening in our Pentagon today. "They're teaching us not to be men" is a statement that one of the West pointers that has been through all of this. He came out with this statement. He said, "They're teaching us how not to be men." Department of Defense Education, I guess most of you realize that the Department of Defense actually has its own school system, a public school system, most of the time for K through 12th grade. They've got 160 schools serving 69,000 children and military personnel, and they've got a budget of 3.2 billion. Now, this is the children of our warriors that are putting their lives on the line, they're in these school systems in many places, particularly overseas, in Europe or Asia, any of those places overseas. They have to go to school here because they don't have other schools for.
They're now pedaling the CRT, white shaming and left wing activism to the pupils K through 12. How about recruiting and retention? Recruiting and retention, that's how we build a military. All branches are struggling to retain and recruit new personnel, all branches. In fact, the Secretary of the Army, Christine Warmouth says, "This has been the most challenging recruiting year since the creation of the volunteer force." And they can't figure out why they can't recruit. I can help them. I can be a huge help to them if they listen. You're not going to attract people into the military with nonsense like what you're doing to the ones that are already there. And by the way, you're not going to retain the ones that are there for exactly the same reason. So look at this. This year, the Army missed its recruiting goal by 15,000, and that's just the army.
All of them missed their recruiting goals, and they can't figure out why they're not recruiting. But the president's got a good answer for it. The economy is so good that it's hard to get them to come into the military now because our economy is doing so well. That is one of those... What do you say? Don't believe you're lying eyes. Just believe what I tell you. 25% shortfall in recruiting for the Army alone. And recruiting environment is so tough that the Army is offering bonuses of $50,000 for people that will come into the military, enlist the military. I don't know if it's a three or a four year commitment. $50,000, I've never heard of anything like that, but they can't figure out why they can't recruit the people that they need to maintain their force structure. You probably realize this, but 77% of all Americans between the age of 17 and 35 cannot qualify to enlist in our military. Without a waiver. You realize that? Only 23% of the population 17 to 35 can actually qualify without some kind of waiver. You realize that?
You know what the problem is. Number one problem, obesity, diabetes, which often goes hand in hand with obesity, poor physical fitness, felony charges, history of drug abuse, failure to graduate from high school. Those are all things that require a waiver to be able to come into the military, but the standards have been reduced in order to allow women in frontline combat units multiple failures of the physical test may not be disqualifying. You can fail the physical test and still stay in the military. Go to the COVID vaccine. Retention is suffering due to the mandated COVID-19 vaccine. You've seen a lot of this, a lot of the information about this on television. And religious exemptions are not approved. As of February 2022, 25,000 service members had requested religious accommodations. Less than 10% have been approved. And list carefully. The 10% that's been approved are people that were already processing out of the military, and they call it a religious exemption, because for one reason or another, they're already leaving. They've decided to leave the military. They're being thrown out for another reason, but they're given a religious exemption.
0% approval in the Army and the Navy. Not one religious exemption in the Army and Navy, not one. Think about that. I was talking earlier about how there's persecution against Christians. They want us to be the terrorist. They want us to be the Insurrectionist. US Coast Guard Academy just expelled seven minority seniors that actually graduated from the Coast Guard Academy and the Coast Guard Academy, threw them out a week before graduation. According to one court, the Air Force's process to protect religious rights is both illusory and insincere. In short, it's just theater. That's coming from the court. But what can you have and still be qualified to be in the military? Well, look at this. You cannot disqualify a person that is going through gender transition or HIV positive.
Now, how many of you ever been in the military? Anybody ever been in the infantry? There's this thing in the infantry that you train people... In a hot combat, you train people to take blood from one arm and put it directly into a dying man's arm. Now, we're letting people with HIV positive serve in our military. And if they have a medical exemption, they can stay in the military, but they cannot remain in the military if they have a religious objection to COVID. I'm going to go to something that I think demonstrates very well the situation and the conditions of our military. Military members are being bullied, by the way.
They're being bullied by their chain of command. And you know what that's going to do? That's going to create another generation of Americans that want nothing to do with our military. Because these people are being bullied and forced out of the military, or bullied and just leave it on their own because they can't take it anymore, they're never going to have anything good to say about our military, and they're going to help breed a generation of people that don't want to be in our military. And what are we going to do as a nation if we don't have a capable military?
Roger Marsh: Roger Marsh here jumping in once again to remind you that you are listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, and our guest on today's program is retired United States Army General Jerry Boykin. He's sharing his high standards for code, duty, discipline, and honor, and giving us some inside the Pentagon National perspective. A few life lessons in there as well. And now, let's return to General Boykins powerful presentation on this special edition of Family Talk.
Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin: How many of you remember Admiral Jeremiah Denton?
Speaker 4: Admiral Denton represents everything good about America, a heroic patriot, a devoted husband, father, and a faithful Christian. On July 18th, 1965, then Commander Denton was flying an A6 intruder on a bombing run over the Vietnamese city of Thanh Hoa. His plane was shot down and he was captured by Enemy Forces. Admiral Denton was a Vietnam POW for nearly eight years, four of which were spent in solitary confinement. In 1966, he was forced to appear in an interview before communist dignitaries with the purpose of having him admit to American atrocities. Before the interview, Denton was tortured and threatened with death. If he did not answer correctly, the questions posed. Defying his captor's, Denton replied, "Whatever the position of my government is, I believe it, I support it, and I will support it as long as I live."
During the questioning, Admiral Denton looked into the camera lens and blinked his eyes in morse code, spelling out the message torture. He provided naval intelligence with a first confirmation that American POWs in Vietnam were being tortured. On February 12th, 1973, Denton was released from prison, along with numerous other POWs. He was a spokesman for the first returning group of POWs.
Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin: Admiral Denton came back, ran for the Senate, and was a senator from Alabama. He was awarded the second highest award that the Navy gives for valor. It was a very heroic and courageous thing that he did there, but he had been well-trained in the code of conduct. The code of conduct is simply what you're allowed and not allowed to do as a prisoner of war. He had been well-schooled on this. Before the Navy put him into combat and all of his buddies, his wing mates, they had been schooled on the code of conduct, what they were allowed to do and what they were not allowed to do. 2016 January, two Navy boats, patrol boats traveling from Kuwait to Bahrain allegedly went off course and were captured by the Iranian Navy. Remember that? The commander of the two boats was a US Naval Academy graduate just like Admiral Denton. Let's take a look at what that commander did and compare it to Admiral Denton.
Speaker 5: It was a mistake that was our fault, and we apologize for our mistake. It was a misunderstanding. We did not mean to go into Iranian territorial water. The Iranian behavior was fantastic while we were here. We thank you very much for your hospitality and your assistance.
Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin: Did you get that? We want to thank them for their hospitality and their assistance. So the question then is, what's changed since the heroic actions of Admiral Jeremiah Denton? I'll tell you what the problem is. That whole crew was sent into combat unprepared because they spent their time doing this woke nonsense. They spent their time with critical race theory and all of the things that go with it. It's an injustice, and that's exactly what we do. I'm going to close this, but I'm going to tell you a story. I was a commander of the Delta Force during the events that you know as Black Hawk Down. And for those of you who have read a book, seen the movie, or heard anything about it, you know there was a Black Hawk helicopter that was shot down. And when that helicopter was shot down, I sent every person that I had to get the survivors out of that helicopter. The only thing I had left were the mechanics and the cooks and the communications people. That's all I had left.
Everybody else had gone to that first crash. But 30 minutes later, a second helicopter was shot down, a second Black Hawk. And over that Black Hawk when it went in was another Black Hawk with two Delta force snipers on there, Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon. And they called immediately and they said, "Sir, we're over the crash. They can't get out of their seats. I think their backs are broken. Put us in and we'll get them out." I said, "Look, I can't put you in there. I got no way to support you. I'm getting everybody collected up now that it can carry a rifle. And as soon as we're ready, I'll let them go." I said, "Stay up there and keep shooting. Keep the Somalis off that crash. Just keep shooting." They called back in about 10 minutes and they said, "Sir, it's really bad. There's so many Somalis coming around it. Put us in." I said, "I can't put you in. I can't put you in."
Finally, they called back and they said, "Sir, we're the only chance. Please put us in." I said a quick prayer, and I said, "Put them in." I said, "You guys understand what you're asking for?" They said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Put them in." They went in, got in low, low hover, they jumped out. They fought their way into the crash side of the other Black Hawk. And they got the crew out and got them all laid up next to the helicopter there where they had some protection, and then these two men went on the other side and just took up firing positions and they just started hammering as the Somalis would try to come up on the helicopter there. And the one guy that survived this thing was a guy named Mike Durant. He just ran for Senate down in Alabama. Didn't make it through the primary, but he was a great American. And he told us the story.
And he said, all of a sudden Gary Gordon came back and said, "Is there any more ammo? We're just about out." And he said, "Behind the pilot seat." He went in and got some out of the pilot seat, and he threw some over to Gary Shugart and they started firing again. Boom. Boom. And finally, Mike Durant told us, he said he heard Shugart yell out, "Gordy, I'm hit. I'm hit bad, Gordy." And then his gun went silent. And then Mike Duran told us that in a few minutes, he heard Gary Gordon yell out, "Mike, I'm hit," and then his gun went silent. And then the next thing that Mike Durant saw was a wave of people that swept over the site and it took him prisoner. And 11 days later, we got him back. I stood in the White House as the President of the United States gave the families of these two men the medals of honor.
And all I could think of was, what kind of men were these? What kind of men were these? But you know what it was? They were men that believed in something. They had a transcendent cause, and that transcendent cause was those guys on the ground down there, because they took an oath, they had a creed. It's called the Ranger Creed, and it says, never will I leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy. Do you think today's military is going to produce those kinds of people with the kind of stuff that I've shown you tonight? It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to see this happening to our military because we need a strong military, and we need men and women that have that transcendent cause, that are willing to say, "Put me in. I'm the only chance." God bless you all, and God bless America.
Roger Marsh: You've been listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, and you've been listening to retired United States Army General Jerry Boykin with a powerful presentation entitled "Let's Restore Our Military to Greatness." This was part two of this dynamic presentation, and both parts one and part two are now available on our website at drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. As always, thank you so much for your prayers and your faithful financial support of our ministry. We cherish the friendship we share with you, and we are able to do so much as the result of your kindness, your prayers, your notes of encouragement, even your programming suggestions. And remember, for the entire month of December, because of some very special friends of the ministry, we have a matching grant in place. This means that your financial contribution to the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute will be doubled. Imagine what we can do together with twice the impact.
You can give a gift online at drjamesdobson.org, or give us a call at 877-732-6825. Throughout this month, we are presenting to you programs that are included in our 2023 broadcast collection. So if you enjoyed today's program and you'd like to have a personal copy on CD, all you have to do is go online to drjamesdobson.org/2023, and we'll send you a copy of the 2023 broadcast collection. You can get it as a five CD set, or also as a digital download as our way of thanking you for your gift of any amount in support of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute during the month of December. So everything you need is right there on the webpage when you go to drjamesdobson.org/2023. That's drjamesdobson.org/2023. I'm Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at the JDFI, thanks so much for listening today. Have a great weekend. And be sure to join us again on Monday for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
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