The Supreme Court’s much-anticipated affirmative action decision Thursday does not explicitly overrule the Court’s previous decisions permitting race-conscious university admissions, but it will almost certainly have the same effect as a total ban.

And that will “impair the military’s ability to maintain diverse leadership, and thereby seriously undermine its institutional legitimacy and operational effectiveness.”

Those are not my words. That’s the view that a long list of former generals, admirals, and other senior national security officials laid out in a brief they filed when the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, was being considered. That brief urged the justices not to end affirmative action in university admissions. And they are hardly the only ones to offer such a warning.