Government Executive - Authors - Kevin Baron

CQ Brown’s Confirmation Hearing Will Get Nasty

Kevin Baron — Fri, 26 May 2023 10:45:00 -0400

If you thought the right-wingers hated Gen. Mark Milley and his support for “wokeism” policies, wait until they get a load of U.S. Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, who is now President Joe Biden’s pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Brown is a full-throated leader of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs in the military. And he’s no shrinking violet. Early in the summer of 2020, as nationwide protests and riots boiled over George Floyd’s murder, Brown posted a video message that was unusually personal for a member of the Joint Chiefs, explaining how he felt and how the military’s path to diversity has been and will continue to be a long one. After all, the general’s experience with racism and diversity is personal, and he is a rare sight: a Black military officer who made it to the very top ranks of a service branch.

“In 2020, Brown launched investigations into potential biases in the service’s promotion process and made changes to make it more equitable. The following year, he opened the Air Force’s first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office,” reports Defense One’s Audrey Decker.

Brown, like all of the service chiefs, has been asked and answered about DEI policies extensively. He supports them and denies that they are a cause of recruiting struggles or retention of current troops.

“What I will tell you is when people join our military, they want to look around and see somebody who looks like them. They want to be part of a team [and] feel like they're included,” Brown said in March, during Defense One’s State of Defense interview series with the Joint Chiefs. “They don't want to join something that they feel like you're put as an outcast.”

I’ve noted how in years past, Republicans who opposed equality and human rights-promoting policies have avoided targeting military officers. Instead, they would claim that Democratic administrations were foisting unwanted progressive policies on the military—even when those policies are supported by a majority of Americans—like allowing minorities to move from the back of the echelons to the front lines; permitting LGBTQ+ Americans to serve quietly during the Clinton-era “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and then to serve openly after its removal; opening combat jobs to women; supporting gender-affirming medical care; finding ways for troops to escape state-enacted abortion bans; and so on.

But the days when politicians honored an unwritten code and protected the military institution from politics are over. Republicans, mostly from the white Christian extremist far right, now attack the generals and admirals directly. For several years, especially since Donald Trump’s 2016 election, they have only increased their attacks. Brown’s confirmation hearings could get nasty.

Everything is politics in this town, and in politics all is fair. So expect the Republican machine to mount a stiff defense against Brown for his support of all those things.

Expect Republicans also to challenge Brown on every issue they care about: using troops for border security, his support for arming Ukraine, on Defense Department pork barrel weapons programs in their states and districts, on America’s military interventions around the world, U.S. defense spending levels, and less-than-perfect alliances.

Expect hawkish Republicans to fluff their feathers about China and look for any crack in Brown’s history that could indicate his senior military advice to the president would be anything less than arming the United States to the teeth and quickly, against Beijing, including to defend Taiwan.

If the general’s career tells us anything, it’s that he is more than ready to face lawmakers in confirmation hearings. What’s less certain is if Brown is ready for the next four years in Washington. The gap between being a little-known member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and being its chairman is larger than the Fulda. The spotlight is a million times brighter, especially these days. Milley leaves office a hated figure of the right wing. Brown will not be protected by any tradition or honor code that means to keep the military out of politics. If Brown supports anything Biden does that his opponents don’t like, the right will attack.

Then what? Not all JCS chairmen use the job in the same way, but most arrive at least somewhat unprepared for its demands. When U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey became chairman, he bristled at the idea that he would have to advocate for his policy positions publicly or work the backrooms in Washington. He recoiled at the thought of appearing on the Daily Show and giving interviews to David Letterman, as had his predecessor Adm. Mike Mullen. He pledged to be a quieter advisor to his civilian commander in chief. Four years later, he admitted to me that he was naive to believe that was possible.

Brown is an extraordinary man with an extraordinary career, and certainly not just for the color of his skin. But in these extraordinary times, American politicians who push extremist policies await him in the center of the town square. Publicly, Brown is a calm man, who listens before speaking and is careful with his words. If you didn’t know him, he can come off as disengaged or out of his depth. Woe to any senator who makes that mistake. Brown is as polished as any politician, if not more so than most. He knows what’s coming, I’m sure. And undoubtedly he will be pressured by traditionalists to “keep the military out of politics.” But I believe that’s an impractical goal based on a myth. The U.S. military is and has always been shaped by politics or even at times a driver of it. If the criticism hasn’t started already on right-wing airwaves, Brown surely will face appallingly openly racist rants and allegations. It will be direct. It will be loud. It will be personal. To succeed, the general will have to do more than give his best military advice to the president. He’ll have to defend it to the lawmakers tasked to confirm him, the troops who serve under him, and the American people watching him.

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Woke-ism Not to Blame for Army Shortfalls, Says Top Recruiting General

Kevin Baron and Elizabeth Howe — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 12:00:00 -0400

Though some lawmakers and other conservative politicians have pinned the blame for the Army’s recent recruiting woes on “woke-ism,” the top general in charge of recruiting for the service said he is “not seeing that at all.”

Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis, just five days into his role as commanding general of U.S. Army Recruiting Command, told Defense One that he has identified many factors keeping young Americans from joining the service, including basic knowledge about life in the military, but “woke-ism” is not among them.

The Army’s recruiting problems became a leading topic of conversation within the first hours of the first day of the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference, due in part to a recent investigation into Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe’s tweets defending female service members.

In a report released last week, the Army accused Donahoe of bringing “negative publicity” to the service after he publicly chided political talk show host Tucker Carlson for criticizing women serving in uniform,—a frequent target for far-right personalities. The Army’s decision, in turn, has sparked a fury of outrage right back at the Army for not supporting Donahoe.

The Donahoe episode is only the latest in a string of right-wing accusations against the Biden administration and military leaders for adopting anti-racism, anti-extremism, and gender equality policies. In recent weeks, as midterm elections approach, partisan conservative leaders have ramped up “woke-ism in the military” as a popular theme. It has appeared in tweets by popular far-right personalities, including Robert O’Neill, the former Navy Seal who controversially claims to have killed Osama bin Laden. And in the last two weeks, Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state and CIA director who is also a West Point graduate, linked woke-ism to the Army’s recruiting shortfalls and unleashed a political fundraising campaign targeting “gender, or woke ideology, or climate change” in the military. “We have to walk away from this radical left ideology, we cannot let it penetrate our military,” Pompeo says in a video.

The right’s politically-based accusations have put Biden administration appointees on their heels. In a press conference to open the AUSA conference on Monday, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth was asked repeatedly about the ongoing investigation into Donahoe’s actions and “woke” policies.

“I’m not sure what ‘woke’ means,” Wormuth said. “I think woke means a lot of different things to different people. But, first of all, I would say if ‘woke’ means we are not focused on warfighting, we are not focused on readiness—that doesn’t reflect what I see at installations all around the country or overseas when I go and visit.”

Pompeo quickly replied in a tweet, saying, “Madam Secretary - you know exactly what woke means: dividing by race, promoting CRT, turning Army Green into climate change green. Soldiers don’t need safe spaces, they need a relentless focus on keeping America safe.” Pompeo’s tweet was not entirely factual; Army leaders have expanded diversity and inclusion programs, but insist they do not promote critical race theory.

“The key for senior leaders in an environment that is as politicized, unfortunately, as the one that we’re all operating in is to exercise good judgment,” Wormuth said. “I do want our leaders to be able to have a social media presence and to be able to speak up for soldiers and defend soldiers…but I think in this environment, senior leaders have to choose their words very carefully.”

The inspector general investigation is just the latest in a string of conflicts that have forced the Army to assess its perception by the public—a perception that is largely flawed, according to the Army.

Bridging the knowledge gap and correcting the perception is one of the biggest challenges for the Army’s recruiting operations, leaders said.

“We really believe that exposure to the Army is really important,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said in the press conference. “What we need to do is expose those who may not have the opportunity to understand what the Army is all about.”

Davis, the recruiting general, said “a lot of our young superstars who will lead our nation just don’t know about the Army.” New recruits have all sorts of misperceptions: “They’re asking ‘Can I have a pet? Can I drive a car?’ I say, ‘Of course you can.’”

Davis said one challenge is reaching the Gen Z population through their own influencers, where misperceptions are flourishing about life inside the military, but not about “woke-ism,” he said. “From the influencers that I’ve talked to, that just doesn’t come up.”

Davis said he is unsure if the Army has data to quantify whether or not new policies on racism, extremism, and gender are affecting the Army’s recruiting or retention numbers. It would be “interesting” to see that data, if it does exist, he said. But he’s convinced those policies are not to blame. “That is not what I’m seeing.”

Going into his new job, the two-star general said he’ll be focused on the three straight-forward issues that the Army has identified that are keeping young Americans from enlisting: “information, education, and access.”

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After Roe, ‘We Do Have Options’ to Avoid Anti-Abortion States, Army Chief Says

Kevin Baron — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 10:10:00 -0400

The U.S. Army will try to accommodate soldiers and recruits who want to avoid serving in states that have banned abortion, but the service’s needs come first, its top general said.

In other words, you cannot enlist and refuse to serve in Oklahoma. But you can ask.

Facing a shortfall of more than 15,000 recruits in fiscal year 2022, which ends this month, Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said in an interview with Defense One that the Army is trying to overcome a long list of societal challenges to retaining and finding new soldiers, including plummeting aptitude test scores, poor physical fitness, and, most recently, some states’ new bans and limits on abortions. McConville and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a July memo that the service expects to have 466,000 soldiers at the end of fiscal 2022, and to shrink as low as 445,000 one year from now. Their goal is to retain a force of 460,000 soldiers.

After 20 years in which the ground wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan flooded the American consciousness through front-page news, movies, and video games, Army leaders are rethinking how to sell a new generation of youth on military life.

Want to be a doctor? You can be that in the Army, McConville said. Want to be a cyber expert? You can be that too. “You can be all you can be,” he said, invoking the classic U.S. Army recruiting motto.

But you can’t join the Army and refuse to serve in a state that bans abortion.

The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has led 10 states to criminalize abortion immediately and freed others to enact additional restrictions. Senior Biden administration and military officials have since said the Defense Department will continue to provide some abortions in these states. But longstanding federal law forbids the military to perform abortions or to reimbursement troops for abortions performed in private facilities except in the case of rape or incest or when the life of the pregnant person is at more risk than usual. Some women’s groups—–including some veterans—–are now counseling American women to avoid enlisting in the military, which can require them to serve and live in states where abortion is now illegal.

McConville spoke cautiously about the politically-sensitive topic.

“We’re always looking at how we can take care of our soldiers, and any impact that policy may have. We stay out of the policy mode, as you know, and the laws, and what we’re going to do is—we’re committed to taking care of our soldiers and families,” McConville said during Defense One’s State of Defense virtual event series, in an interview recorded two weeks ago and posted on Wednesday.

McConville said the Army will consider, but only consider, requests to avoid abortion-banning states as soldiers put in for their next duty and job assignments.

“We do have options where a soldier can say, ‘Hey, I want to serve in Alaska,’ and if we can meet those preferences, we will actually do that. But as far as, ‘I’m only going to serve in these states’ or ‘I’m going to do that,’” he said, trailing off skeptically. “It’s a contract…and if we can make it work, we’ll try to make it work for them.”

When asked directly whether soldiers and recruits can request a duty station purely for social-political preferences, McConville said, “We try to make sure that we’re taking care of soldiers, and at the same time if we can meet their preferences while taking care of them, of where they might want to serve, and we have a job that meets their skill set, then that’s certainly a consideration.”

McConville indicated he was aware of the warnings to women against enlisting.

“I hope that they consider joining the military. I have two sons and a daughter that serve, and I think it’s a great opportunity for everyone’s sons and daughters to have an opportunity to get world-class training, to work with world-class people, and—it’s the world’s greatest health club.”

Despite the political firestorm over abortion rights, the general said lawmakers are not leaning on the Army. In July, House Republicans skipped a hearing with military doctors to discuss the issue.

“No, I haven’t had any pressure” from Congress, he said. “All I can say, as chief of staff of the Army, is we’re just trying to take care of our soldiers and families.”

The new limits on abortion are only one factor complicating Army recruiting. American teens and young adults are flunking out of the military’s entrance test and failing physical fitness requirements at higher rates.

“Only 23% of Americans are qualified” to serve currently, McConville said. “We’re not going to lower standards. To me, quality is more important than quantity.”

Historically, two-thirds of recruits have passed the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, or ASVAB, but lately the rate has fallen to just one-third, he said.

“I don’t have data to prove this, but some would say the last two years with COVID and virtual learning—a lot of things going on have been problematic. On the physical side, less young men and women are playing sports, so there have been some physical challenges,” he said.

Right-leaning politicians and pundits have charged, with little supporting evidence, that conservative would-be recruits are turned off by what they call Democrats’ imposition of anti-extremism, anti-racism, and pro-LGBTQ policies on the military. It’s a frequent partisan trope rolled out historically in moments of social progress, including opening military jobs and combat to women and minorities, permitting openly LGBTQ Americans to serve, and weeding out right-wing racists and extremists.

But is the Army’s current shortfall due to wokeism? Does the Army have any data on it? McConville said he is not even wading into that debate to try and find out.

“For me, I’m staying out of the politics and that whole thought process,” he said.

Instead, Army leaders will try harder to to sell the old-fashioned “call to service” to attract the next generation of soldiers. “We're going to spend more time making sure that the American people and American youth know about their military, and I think that’s something we’re just going to have to invest in. We’re going to put [Army] people outside their gated communities and make sure [Americans] know their Army, they know their soldiers, get with academic leaders and tell them what the opportunities are in the military.”

The chief said the Army does have data on what Americans know about the military, and it shows that Americans are still surprised when they learn about the career and life opportunities it offers.

As for politics, McConville’s reaction to the summer’s heated debate over the PACT Act—which makes it easier for some veterans to get health care—was to say simply that it shows “Americans love their veterans, they love their military and they want to take care of them.”

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What’s Taking So Long? Rename Those Confederate Bases

Kevin Baron — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 11:00:00 -0500

For this second Black History Month of Joe Biden’s presidency, the commander in chief should do something he promised his voters long ago: right a wrong by renaming U.S. military bases named for Confederate soldiers.

What’s the holdup? It’s been one year since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin named his panelists to the Congressionally-mandated commission on base renaming. It’s been nearly six months since the commission asked the public for new base name ideas. After receiving thousands of base name suggestions last fall, a source close to the decision tells me this week that the commission is likely still months from making its recommendations.

Meanwhile, the moment is passing the Pentagon by. Across the country, statues built to honor white men who enslaved their fellow humans for profit have come down by force or decree, their names removed from buildings, streets, and schools built in a time when white Americans tried hard to create a fake history to serve their own purposes.

Angry Americans who want to show their children the famed statue of Robert E. Lee that guarded the heart of Richmond, Virginia, for decades will still be able to do so–in the city’s Black History Museum. They can then visit the horrible statue in Tennessee of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader, Confederate general, and Ku Klux Klan leader, now removed from the state’s capitol and sent to its museum.

What’s taking the Pentagon so long?

One reason is the ridiculously convoluted righteousness-by-committee process set up by the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats. The 2021 defense authorization bill gave Biden three years to make up his mind. But one hopes that Biden’s team is not foot-dragging or holding because of the blatantly partisan and racist political hype-machine about the fake controversy of “critical race theory,” or the right-wing’s complaints about teaching racism in the ranks.

This week, Senate Armed Service Committee’s top Republican, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, complained about all the hours being spent “promoting its leftist social agenda in the military.” Inhofe’s office blasted out a release saying that the Pentagon under Biden had spent 5,889,082 man-hours, or 672 years, on “woke training” in total, about things like extremism and climate change. That’s a nice job of spin—because in fact, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley’s office had replied in its letter to Inhofe that the 5,359,311 hours spent only on extremism “averages to just over 2 hours per Service member in a total force of 2.46 million members and is comparable to other Joint Force periodic training requirements.”

The Republican’s open attacks on the military for teaching about racism and extremism have been jarring, but they’ve proven toothless. Red-in-the-face Fox hosts and far-right tweeters have pulled out an old playbook in trying to blame leftists for forcing the military to evolve. But the fact is there is no real controversy over Confederate base names anymore. It’s just a matter of time.

The latest renaming request is a pretty straightforward example. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., has proposed to change the name of Fort Benning, in Georgia, to honor Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe. Biden posthumously awarded Cashe the Medal of Honor in December. Benning was a Confederate brigadier general who fought to kill U.S. soldiers in hopes of preserving slavery in the South. Cashe saved his teammates from a burning Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Iraq, his own uniform aflame, suffering burns that killed him three weeks later.

Murphy sent her appeal to the official commission on renaming, empaneled after Biden came to office. Former President Donald Trump was opposed to base renaming, of course. It was a sensitive issue that surged to the fore during the year of Black Lives Matter protests, and so Democrats waited and under Biden formed a commission, stacking the panel with like-minded scholars, including respected conservative policy names. It was a move akin to how the Obama administration first commissioned a Pentagon study revealing that hardly anybody in the military feared repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against gay U.S. troops. That study, and the time it took, helped cool heads, build a consensus, and create a fait accompli.

On Confederate base names, the fait is already accompli’ed.

At this point, the administration is unnecessarily partaking in the performance art of political theater. If this commission was just a rubber stamp designed to create sheens of bipartisanship and scholarship, just get on with it. If it’s a serious panel, as we believe it is, then great, but get on with it. The country has had to live with these monuments and memorials to long-dead racists and traitors long enough.

One more consideration: defense secretaries eventually leave office, and this may be Lloyd Austin’s last year in the post. He likely won’t be the last Black American to hold that position, but he may be the last one for a long time. And on the Joint Chiefs side, there are few high-ranking Black officers in the pipeline available for the chairmanship.

The military’s independent newspaper Stars and Stripes reported this month what’s to be done. “The Army installations in question, all in former Confederate states, were named in the 1910s and 1940s during the South’s Jim Crow era. They are Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Fort Hood in Texas.”

For Black History Month 2022, Biden should honor America’s actual history by erasing the revisionist, racist one put in place long ago. Change the names on U.S. military bases to honor men and women who represent what the military stands for: We the People.

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Biden Orders New Review of Sexual Assault Policies in Military

Kevin Baron — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 11:04:56 -0500

On President Joe Biden’s orders, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on his first full day in office directed the Pentagon to send him their best plans and practices to address one of the most pervasive and lingering problems for U.S. troops: sexual assault and harassment within the armed forces. But whether the Biden administration will remove sexual-assault trials from defendants’ chains of command, as many advocates want, remains unclear.

In a memo released on Saturday, Austin declared that service members cannot defend the United States “if we also have to battle enemies within the ranks.” Although Biden had asked for the report within 90 days, his new defense secretary said, “I do not want to wait 90 days to take action.”

On Monday morning, Austin told a meeting of senior leaders, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that this was a priority, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. “This is a scourge in the military that we have not been able to get our hands around,” Kirby told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell after Austin’s lunch meeting with Biden at the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

Responding to rising public and congressional pressure about sexual assault and harassment, Pentagon leaders have spent millions on education and awareness campaigns, yet struggled to make much headway. Several Senate leaders have criticized the Pentagon for putting culture above justice by refusing to removing sexual assault investigations and trials from the traditional military justice system that can require victims’ complaints to be handled within their own chains of command.

In his memo, Austin wrote, “I know this has been a focus for you and the department’s leadership. I know you have worked this problem for many years. I tried to tackle it myself when I, too, commanded. We simply must admit the hard truth: we must do more. All of us.”

The memo was addressed to the military’s 11 combatant commanders, who sit one notch below him on the chain of command, plus the Defense Department’s civilian agency and field office directors. The secretary ordered them to send to his office within two weeks their sexual assault and harassment plans and accountability measures from the past year that appear to be working.

“Include in your report the consideration of any novel approaches to any of these areas you believe might prove fruitful,” he wrote.

From 2012 to mid-2019, according to the DOD’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, defense secretaries launched more than 50 initiatives against sexual assault. Congress has inserted more than 150 related provisions into DOD-related legislation. Changes have been made to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and thousands of service members and DOD employees have been trained as sexual assault response coordinators and investigators.

The issue is so pervasive that Austin mentioned in his opening statement of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We also owe our people a working environment free of discrimination, hate and harassment. If confirmed, I will fight hard to stamp out sexual assault, to rid our ranks of racists and extremists, and to create a climate where everyone fit and willing has the opportunity to serve this country with dignity,” he said at the Jan. 19 hearing.

Several committee members pressed Austin on the issue.

“Every secretary of defense from the last 25 years has said there is zero tolerance for sexual assault in the military, but every time they say there is zero we don’t seem to improve at all. In fact, last year the Defense Department announced a record number of assaults recorded by or against service members and the lowest conviction rate for their assailants on record,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a leader on the issue. Sixty-four percent of those in the military who reported crimes, she said, received blowback for it often within their own chain of command, a percentage that had gone unchanged since 2016. She called it a “total lack of progress or accountability within the military justice system.”

Austin said he took the issue “seriously and personally…We have to go after the culture, we have to go after the climate. This is a leadership issue. This is a readiness issue.” But he did not commit to change the UCMJ, calling only for better investigations and prosecutions. “You can count on me to get after this on day one.”

Gillibrand noted that in April 2020, Biden pledged to do “much more than a commission” when during a campaign fundraiser he told the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders that he agreed with the idea of moving serious felonies out of the chain of command for prosecution. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, Gillibrand told Austin.

Replied Austin: “I would like to work with the chain of command and very rapidly assess what things that there are that need to be fixed and addressed.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, also said it was time to stop prosecuting sexual crimes within defendants’ chains of command. “It is very clear that the reforms that the Department of Defense has instituted are not nearly good enough and much more action is needed,” she said.

Austin’s latest effort is being coordinated through the Pentagon’s office of the undersecretary of personnel and readiness.

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Purity Tested, Senators Confirm General Austin for Secretary of Defense

Kevin Baron — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 09:31:51 -0500

It wasn’t much of a fight. With no floor debate and an overwhelming vote of 93-2, senators confirmed retired Gen. Lloyd Austin on Friday to become President Joe Biden’s first defense secretary — and the country’s first Black defense secretary. The vote cast aside opposition from liberal members who for the past month had expressed dismay or vowed to block the president from appointing a recently retired general with defense industry ties.

Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the body’s most vocal opponents of the defense revolving door, voted yes.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to serve as our country’s 28th Secretary of Defense, and I’m especially proud to be the first African American to hold the position. Let’s get to work,” Austin said, in a tweet.

Few members of Congress took public issue with Austin’s leadership abilities, policy positions, or basic qualifications for the job. Austin, the final commanding general of the Iraq War, retired five years ago as the 4-star commander of U.S. Central Command, overseeing the wars in Afghanistan and Syria. The main concern was his relatively recent status as a uniformed officer. By law, nominees for defense secretary must be out of uniform for at least seven years. Senators who granted an exception for Donald Trump’s first SecDef bristled at being asked to pass similar legislation again.

At Austin’s confirmation hearing last week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee asked about his commitment to civilian rule of the military. Warren received Austin’s assurances that he would recuse himself from decisions regarding Raytheon, where he was a board member. But other members were not convinced. On Thursday, 27 senators cast their votes against the waiver for Austin. They did so knowing they would lose, and 25 of these dissenters voted for his confirmation on Friday.

“I believe that Mr. Austin is highly qualified for this role. However, the importance of civilian leadership at the Department of Defense is greater than any individual nominee,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who voted against the waiver but for Austin’s confirmation, along with notables like Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

No floor time was given for other senators to debate the nomination before Friday’s vote. Some released written statements explaining to constituents why they supported the waiver and the man.

“After a careful evaluation of his military service, experience and commitment to bolstering civilian roles at the Department of Defense, I believe Lloyd Austin is the best person to lead the Pentagon and voted in support of his nomination,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“My conversations with Mr. Austin and his testimony before the Armed Services Committee have reassured me that he understands the value of a civilian-led DOD, and will surround himself with strong civilian leaders,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine.

“Lloyd Austin is committed to civilian control of the military and is well-equipped to lead the Department of Defense as it protects us from enemies foreign and domestic, including the troubling growth of white supremacist and other extremist mindsets within our own Armed Forces,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Biden’s selection of Austin — and not Michèle Flournoy, the former defense undersecretary for policy under President Barack Obama widely believed to be lying in wait for the post ever since Hillary Clinton announced her 2016 candidacy — took some in Washington by surprise. Many liberal supporters groaned. They had granted a special exception just four years earlier for Jim Mattis, Trump’s first defense secretary, largely on the desire to surround the volatile rookie politician with stable, experienced leaders. “Mad Dog” Mattis, as he was known — his actual call sign is “Chaos” — was a beloved military leader with an encyclopedic knowledge of history and an affectionate and almost cult-like following. His arrival was seen to calm the nerves of Republicans and Democrats anxious that Trump would too quickly make drastic moves with U.S. troops abroad or threaten adversaries with attacks, threaten allies with financial blackmail, and threaten to use nuclear weapons — all of which he eventually did. Mattis, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, had to work hard to shield the military from the hotbed partisan politics of Trump’s White House. They drastically reduced public media engagements and on-camera briefings while maintaining close ties with the press behind the scenes. History has yet to fully judge the success of their efforts, but the experiment was reason enough for some members of Congress to rise in opposition to Austin.

House members approved the waiver language on Thursday after meeting privately with Austin, but not unanimously. Many cited his experience and race as reasons for their assent.

“This is not an easy question,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., on the floor Thursday. Smith said he believed Austin was qualified, committed to the principle of civilian control of the military, and worthy of a waiver to install the first Black American as defense secretary, “which is enormously important in and of itself. The military has a problem with diversity. They have an insufficient number of people of color who have been advanced to high positions, to general and general flag officers. It is enormously important that they address that….Having a highly qualified African American be secretary of defense

will be an enormous step toward addressing that problem.”

Others also cited Austin’s race. “His confirmation is more than a symbolic milestone towards genuine integration of the Department of Defense; it is a substantive answer to many of the challenges that the military faces,” said Rep. Anthony Brown, D-Md. “What are those challenges, Mr. Speaker? White supremacy and extremism. There is a dramatic rise in White supremacists and racist hate groups within our military. They actively recruit from our uniformed ranks.”

Republican Mike Rogers, of Alabama, the new minority ranking member of the committee, expressed anger that Austin did not sit for a public committee hearing. “I voted for the waiver for General Mattis, and I will vote for the waiver for General Austin,” Rogers said. “For me, it is just fair: a waiver for a Republican President and a waiver for a Democrat President. But I stand here frustrated by this dysfunctional process.” He said presidents either should honor the law as written or change it in the next National Defense Authorization Act.

Some Republicans who voted for Mattis’ waiver objected to Austin’s. “I want to make clear that I have enormous respect for General Austin’s service,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher, of Wisconsin. “I don’t think anyone can look at his record and not come away very impressed. But I also strongly oppose this bill. There is no waiver; we are actually changing the underlying law.”

Gallagher also argued that Austin, whose later career was focused on the Middle East and Afghanistan, was unqualified to take on China or the politics of Washington. Mattis, he said, had proven that kind of background a clear deficiency.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., voted against Mattis’s waiver, in part because Trump and Mattis did not previously know each other. “That relationship did not go well, unfortunately,” Hoyer said, whereas Biden and Austin have a long history.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said, “I don’t think the American people are concerned about process arguments, about whether someone wore a uniform or didn’t wear a uniform.” Instead, he argued, they want to know if the defense secretary is going to start new wars or circumvent civilian control and the president of the United States. “General Austin deferred to President Obama, and [as defense secretary] he will absolutely defer to President Biden.”

Gallagher’s warning that Austin lacks political experience in Washington may prove prescient, given the hyper-partisan state of politics on the Hill and within Republican ranks. The two senators voting against Austin’s nomination were Mike Lee, R-Utah, and the extreme right’s latest poster boy, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who days earlier blocked Senate action on the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas to lead the Department of Homeland Security, in protest over Biden’s pledge to defund the Mexico border wall.

Shortly after noon on Friday, Austin arrived at the Pentagon’s River Entrance, greeted by elbow-bumps from a masked-up Joint Chief Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

“Good to see you guys,” Austin said to the waiting press, “look forward to working with you. See ya around campus.”

After being sworn in by Tom Muir, acting director of Washington Headquarters Services, Austin was scheduled to meet with Milley, host a COVID team briefing, call NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and hear briefings on China and the Middle East.

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Viewpoint: Pentagon Won’t Throw Traditional Farewell Ceremony for Trump

Kevin Baron — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:38:01 -0500

The Pentagon, in a break with recent tradition, will not host an Armed Forces Farewell tribute to President Donald Trump.

It’s a shame, but not a surprise. Trump will leave office in disgrace, one week after the House voted a second time for his impeachment, two weeks after his supporters staged a deadly siege in the Capitol Building, six months after he dragged his Joint Chiefs chairman into a political firestorm, and after four years of nonstop assaults on truth. One of those disgraces is how he is ghosting the U.S. troops that he commanded.

On Wednesday, the White House announced that this weekend Vice President Mike Pence “will deliver remarks to sailors on the Trump Administration’s historic foreign policy achievements at Naval Air Station Lemoore,” and then to the 10th Mountain Division, in Fort Drum, New York. Two senior defense officials confirmed to Defense One on Thursday that no military farewell is being planned for the commander in chief.

Perhaps it’s for the best. Trump has used the military as a political prop since his first days in office, from signing MAGA hats for troops to giving partisan-fueled speeches in the heart of the Pentagon. American’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have been made to stand at attention for Trump’s rants long enough. Besides, presidential visits are an honor and a headache for any military base that hosts them. The last time Trump appeared before troops was the Dec. 12 Army-Navy game at West Point. Before that, there was a brief Oct. 29 private visit with Army special operators at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as he passed through on the presidential campaign trail.

But I’ve seen the fawning exuberance in the eyes of young service members thrilled to see real live presidents of the United States who visit them. There are ways Trump could have shown his respect to the millions of service members who put their lives on the line for their country. If only he could allow any moment to not be about himself.

How have previous presidents used their final appearances as commander in chief? The first Armed Forces Farewell hosted by the Joint Chiefs chairman and defense secretary occured in 1989. Ronald Reagan turned the ceremony at Camp Springs, Maryland, into a celebration of the younger men and women in uniform he faced — while also touting his administration’s successes. Basking in the post-Cold War peace, Reagan noted that America had at last shed its post-Vietnam feelings about the military. “The luster has been restored to the reputation of our fighting forces after a time during which it was shamefully fashionable to deride or even condemn service such as yours. Those days will never come again.”

Four years later, Reagan’s successor received his Armed Forces Farewell at Fort Myer, Virginia, overlooking the Arlington cemetery. With Gulf War leaders Gen. Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush urged the incoming kid from Arkansas not to cut defense spending.

Bill Clinton used his 2001 farewell to thank the troops for the ways “we are closer than ever before to building a Europe that is peaceful, undivided, and democratic after the 1990s.” Flanked by Defense Secretary Bill Cohen, a Republican; and Gen. Henry Shelton, Clinton said, “Thanks to you, arm-in-arm with our NATO allies, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia was ended, refugees have returned to their homes, and freedom has a chance to flower.”

And in 2009, President George W. Bush celebrated his intensely controversial Afghanistan and Iraq wars. “Because of your actions,” Bush told the assembled troops, “more than 50 million Afghans and Iraqis have seen the chains of despotism broken and are living in the liberty that the Creator intended. The new wave of freedom in the Middle East has made America more secure at home, because it is undermining the culture of tyranny that fosters radicalism.” He added, “You'll be able to tell them the story of the first decade in the 21st century, their early days of a generational struggle against terror and extremism.”

In January 2017, Obama was feted in a somewhat awkward-feeling event. It was fitting; the 44th president had an awkward relationship with the U.S. military. He presided over an administration that attempted to tone down the hyper-militarized Bush years, but still commanded wars from Afghanistan to Libya, closing up one in Iraq and restarting it in Syria. He bristled at Bush’s oorah-gushing, shoulder-hugging manner with the troops. Privately, Obama had his own intimate relationships with some leaders and the ranks, particularly young minorities. And First Lady Michelle Obama used her office to direct media spotlights onto programs for military families and wounded warriors, a cause which her successor, Melania Trump, has given minimal time and attention.

One month earlier, Obama had staged his own thank-you moment to the war-fighting troops at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base, the headquarters of U.S. Central Command and warrooms for U.S. Special Operations Command. Troops cheered as they always do for a president, but some derided Obama’s policy-heavy speech as a crass attempt to burnish his legacy by staging a photo op with those who had done the real hard work fighting ISIS.

It’s unclear whether Trump has any relationship with the troops. His love for them could be as sincere as any president, given the gravity of the office and the daily experiences with those offering him and his family personal protection. By now, any attempt to stage his own rally with U.S. troops surely would meet a mixed reaction. Some would cheer; others would question its motives or sincerity. But in these fractured days, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff felt compelled to remind the men and women under arms in American service of their responsibility not to a man but to the Constitution, an Armed Forces Farewell for Trump would have meant subtly more than any that had come before. A Pentagon event thrown by the military’s leaders for their civilian president, from any political party, would showcase to the world their support for American democracy and a peaceful transfer of power.

Being commander in chief, Reagan said in 1989, is “the most sacred, most important task of the presidency.” And so he used his final moment in front of a military audience to close with simple words that Donald Trump, by his own hand, will not be given the opportunity to say: “On behalf of all America, I thank you.”

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Viewpoint: This is Not a Coup

Kevin Baron — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 10:14:29 -0500

It’s not a coup. It’s awful. It sucks. It’s appalling. It’s illegal. It’s ugly. It’s not a coup.

Stop.

Coups don’t ask permission from courts and parliaments. Coups don’t come without any military, police, secret police, or armed forces of any kind on their side. Coups don’t let free press be the free press. Coups don’t beg for it over Twitter. Coups don’t rely on nearly-spontaneous, short-lived, mostly unarmed mobs to break into one building.

There’s a lot of debate over this word on social media today. How much opposition to an existing government is enough to qualify as a coup?

Britannica says: “Coup d’état, also called coup, the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements.”

Merriam-Webster says a coup is much less: “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics — especially: the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.”

But the fact that we are debating whether what is happening in the United States today is a coup should be clue enough that it’s not. Congress was already back in session debating in the hall where today’s alleged “coup” occurred, less than six hours after it began.

But let’s consider it.

Has Donald Trump or anyone around him commandeered battalions, brigades, squads of any military unit to help him keep power? No.

Are fighter jets scrambling above, dropping bombs on government positions, intimidating national military forces? No.

Are tanks rolling in the streets? No.

Are Democratic leaders like Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer under arrest by Trump-loyalist forces? No.

Are Trump supporters throwing up every legal roadblock to Joe Biden’s peaceful transition that they can? Yes. Are factions of the government defying laws and authorities to maintain the president’s power? No.

Did Trump encourage today’s brand of violent rejection of government for four years and right on through the riot on Capitol Hill? Yes. Did he order today’s actions, order the Capitol Police to let it all happen, and is he or his team leading other orchestrated unlawful avenues to hold power? No, not that we know of.

Do you think Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were orchestrating a coup? Give me a break. On Wednesday, they were orchestrating a political headache by lining up members to make speeches on cable TV and lining up supporting senators in the legislature.

In Turkey in 2016, coup plotters blew a hole the size of a car through the wall of the legislature that killed 12 people. I saw the hole. On a trip with Defense Secretary Ash Carter through Ankara, our press motorcade waited outside the building where the American military leader was shown exactly what Turkey’s government withstood. We concluded that Turkish officials left the hole open and rubble uncleared as a message.

In Washington, the purported insurrectionists tweeted. They shouted. They stormed into the Capitol. They took pictures sitting in the speakers’ chairs on the House and Senate chamber floors, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. One woman, apparently a rioter, was shot and killed — it’s not clear by whom. The circumstances are unclear. That’s a tragedy. It’s not a coup. None of it. It’s a riot. A political riot.

Many shaken liberals and Democrats insist otherwise. Rep. Jackie Speier, R-Calif., said Trump was “fomenting a coup d’état” today. She knows about political violence.

Trump has ignored all decorum. He and his allies have used every possible legal challenge he can find to protest the election result. He has lied at every opportunity about the actual result of the election he lost. As recently as this morning, he told supporters that “we will never give up; we will never concede.”

It’s still not a coup.

Journalists and pundits have spent four years shouting how much that words matter. Trump’s disregard for decorum, his family and his staff’s disregard for truth and facts matter. His looseness with labels matters. And those critics were right. They should hold themselves to the same standard they desired from Trump.

Wednesday afternoon in Washington was sickening and astonishing. It was more than uncouth. It was violent. It was deadly. It was defiant of the Constitution and the rule of law.

By 8:09 p.m., the joint session of Congress that had been interrupted by the violence was gaveled back into order by Trump’s most loyal sidekick, Vice President Mike Pence. Regular order had resumed.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Ky., in his speech resuming the session, called it a “failed insurrection” and “criminal behavior.” He then resumed the business of deliberating as Americans do. With their words.

“We will certify the winner of the 2020 presidential election,” McConnell said, echoing his earlier vow to reject Trump’s political maneuverings, and speaking just hours after a special election as Georgia cost him his seat as majority leader.

“These war rioters and insurrectionists. Goons and thugs. Domestic terrorists,” said Schumer, who will assume McConnell’s position as majority leader later this month. “Violent extremists.”

“This mob was, in good part, President Trump’s doing, incited by his words, his lies.”

Members stood one after another late Wednesday evening demanding that those who fomented and committed today’s crimes — and those who were so unprepared for it — be held accountable. The rioters, the vandals, the assaulters, the plotters, the Capitol Police, the senators, and the president. The investigations to come, and what the forthcoming Biden administration and Democratic Congress does about it, all will be on trial. The rise of homegrown extremism will be tried. The rhetoric will fly. It will get worse. How U.S. national security leaders approach these crimes will set a tone for what is permissible and not, where the line is between dissent and insurrection. The penalties for sitting in Pelosi’s office chair for a cheeky photo are a lot different than the penalties for treason.

Mob. Riot. Terror. Extreme. There are lots of words to describe this dark day. Coup, is not one of them.

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Biden Selects Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin for Defense Secretary, Reportedly

Kevin Baron — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 10:23:11 -0500

President-elect Joe Biden will announce that Lloyd Austin, retired four-star general who led the closing year of the Iraq War, will be his nominee for defense secretary, according to multiple news reports.

Before his retirement from the Army, Austin was commander of U.S. Central Command, the military’s geographic command for all almost U.S. troops from Syria to Afghanistan. Prior to that, the West Point graduate notably was the final commanding general of the Iraq War, presiding over Operation New Dawn from September 2010 to December 2011. Austin commanded troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Panama.

In Iraq and at CENTCOM in Tampa, Austin built a reputation as a solid-footed leader who bristled at the press, politics and public affairs.

Biden's selection was first reported by Politico. Michele Flournoy, former under secretary of defense for policy, was the presumed favorite for the post until recent weeks.

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As Spotlight Fades, What's Next for Special Operators?

Kevin Baron — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 10:43:23 -0500

As the long campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn down, the most vaunted and revered stars of the show — America’s special operators — have largely faded from the spotlight. Now, they are looking for a new identity and raison d’être in the era of great power competition. They have been hindered, not helped, by the Trump administration’s insistence on appointing a series of obscure and unremarkable placeholders as the Pentagon civilian in charge of special operations forces.

Until last week, I bet, you couldn’t name one of them. It’s no disrespect to them, as much as it is a combination of two factors: one, the big war years have wound down, which is a good thing; and two, it shows how few senior national-security leaders care to serve Donald Trump.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This job was once held by living legend Michael Vickers, who went on to become defense undersecretary for intelligence and receive the Presidential National Security Medal and the OSS Society’s William J. Donovan Award. But when the 2010s brought a chance to offer greater recognition and status to two groups — the National Guard and special operation forces — the Guard was given a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and SOF was left behind. Some wanted the commander of Special Operations Command, already a four-star billet, elevated to sit with the Joint Chiefs. Others suggested SOCOM be its own service branch, like how the Air Force was forced to branch off a new Space Force. Instead, in 2017 Congress approved a Pentagon request to elevate the top SOF post to be kinda, sorta on par with the Army, Navy and Air Force secretaries.

Except it isn’t. The post is officially “assistant secretary of defense of special operations and low-intensity conflict.” That’s three levels below the defense secretary. The job’s not even close to a service secretary. Largely because it has never been filled with a personality who could force the Pentagon to treat it as such, but also because it can’t wish itself to be what it’s not. And there are plenty of senior leaders who don’t agree with the idea, believing even elite forces are just small groups among many types of specialties that serve the larger service branches.

Under Trump, this post has changed hands eight times between seven people. Four took the seat in the administration’s first year, including Owen West, a former Marine platoon commander better known to that point as the son of Bing West, a Reagan-era assistant defense secretary for international security affairs-turned-author. The younger West held the post for an unremarkable year and a half, almost as invisible in Washington as the elite fighters he represented. His replacement was acting ASD SO/LIC Mark Mitchell, a respected former operator who helped revamp hostage policy and worked on Obama’s National Security Council. Mitchell lasted just four months. He was replaced in November by Thomas Alexander, the Pentagon’s counter-narcotics chief. Alexander had little relevant experience, and was not even appointed as “acting,” but as “performing the duties of” the job.

And so, when SOF executed its highest-profile mission in years — the January killing of Iran’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani — Alexander wasn’t a factor. SO/LIC veteran Luke Hartig explains why that matters: “The short answer is that the ASD SO/LIC combines expertise in operational oversight with foreign policy judgement to ensure that our operations are conducted as prudently as possible. This is essential because special operations almost always have strategic and political ramifications that go beyond the military’s execution of them.”

In May, Mitchell wrote an op-ed about the idea of giving the ASD SO/LIC a service secretary-like role. “Sadly, that effort has met much resistance within DoD, and half-hearted implementation has produced limited effects,” he wrote. Instead, he argued that the enterprise needed an even higher ranking leader: “I believe we need an undersecretary for special operations and irregular warfare.” He didn’t get it.

Around that time, Trump finally asked the Senate to confirm someone to the job: self-described “Harley riding, tequila-drinking Navy SEAL” Louis Bremer. But Alexander didn’t wait for Bremer to be confirmed, departing in June.

So who stepped into the role? A retired Green Beret-turned-contractor named Chris Miller. He lasted two months. In August, Miller was bumped up to run the National Counterterrorism Center, where he lasted, you guessed it, two months. Then Trump fired Mark Esper and named Miller his fourth acting defense secretary.

Meanwhile, Bremer’s confirmation hearing in August went rather poorly, and when Miller left, White House insider Ezra Cohen-Watnik was tapped to “perform the duties” of acting ASD SO/LIC. Bremer’s nomination is collecting dust in the Senate.

Last Wednesday, Miller declared that it was time for a change. With less than two months left in the Trump presidency, the acting SecDef beelined it to Fort Bragg, the North Carolina home of Army special operators, where he declared that the Pentagon would enact new “reforms” — including making the ASD SO/LIC “report directly to me...as Congress intended.” Four years after Congress told the Trump administration to do it in the 2017 defense authorization act, special operations was getting its due.

The Pentagon was so unimpressed it informed the press of the event five minutes after it had started.

“Welcome home,” said Cohen on Wednesday, standing in front of Bronze Bruce, the Green Beret statue at U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Introducing Miller, he declared they were “elevating special operations to a level on par with military departments.”

“By the historic reforms we have enacted today, we will ensure special operations forces has [sic] a civilian advocate commensurate to the secretaries of the other military departments. I am honored to serve as your service secretary.”

Many SOF veterans have welcomed the move as long overdue. Others, from global strategists to intelligence veterans, find it curious, insignificant, or downright ill-timed.

“His perspective, I think, is very much through the prism of counterterrorism operations and Special Forces,” John Brennan, former CIA director, told me on Wednesday in an interview during the Soufan Center’s Global Security Forum. “Despite his admirable past service, he is very, I think, inexperienced and unqualified to serve as acting secretary of defense. It's clear.” Brennan said Miller’s “quick elevation” move “may be cathartic” and “could be something that’s worthwhile to consider,” but he suggested the incoming Biden team should take a more holistic look at special operations and all Pentagon forces.

There will be a role for SOF in great power competition. Some predict a return to asymmetric Cold War-like tactics and proxy conflicts as the United States keeps China and Russia at bay.

But as Miller “elevated” special operations forces this week, his boss was racing the clock to end its most important era. On Tuesday, Miller announced the Pentagon would carry out Trump’s final order and pull additional troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving behind a token 2,500 in each, with no clear mission and no stated justification other than Trump’s desire for a political score back home. Even so, it’s presumed by all that one group of Americans will continue to be sent into Afghanistan whenever they are needed: special operators.

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Viewpoint: The Danger of Treating National Security Like a Political Sideshow

Kevin Baron — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 11:28:33 -0500

What will it take for Americans to start taking national security seriously again?

Much of America’s national security establishment has condemned, opposed, or resisted President Donald Trump in one form or another. By Election Day, hundreds of them, active and retired, were pleading with the American people not to reelect Trump for a long list of reasons, from his erratic troop withdrawals to his attacks on NATO allies and his support for racist Confederate symbols — in short, a person too feckless to be entrusted with the nation’s defense.

On Monday, President Donald Trump gave the nation a new reason for serious concern when he fired Mark Esper, his fourth defense secretary in four years. With virtually nobody in the Republican national security world still willing to serve him, Trump tapped a little-known Pentagon civilian about four notches below the SecDef’s office. Chris Miller will sit atop the chain of command for the entire U.S. military, just under the commander in chief, nuclear weapons and all.

In any other time, with any other president, Senate Republicans — hell, anyone in the Senate or GOP — would be howling and doing everything in their power to block this move. No offense to Acting Defense Secretary Miller but — who? Miller, as of today, has legal control of the Pentagon and everything that comes with it, from nuclear weapons to troop movements, secret hunt-and-kill missions, pending billion-dollar contracts, sensitive weapons developments, relationships with key allies, and, oh yes, those Confederate base names. Miller, a retired Army officer, has civilian government leadership experience of all of two years. He’s not a total rookie, having served as civilian leader for special operations and as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. But the leap to the SecDef’s E-ring office is Olympic record-breaking.

In four years, all of Trump's defense secretaries have gone down in flames. Jim Mattis, a revered general with no prior political or civilian experience, quit because he opposed Trump’s isolationist tendencies and had enough. Pat Shanahan, a Boeing executive with no prior government experience, resigned his acting post amid scandal. Richard Spencer, investment banker-turned-acting secretary for a few weeks, was later fired as Navy secretary for opposing Trump. Esper, today, fired.

By comparison, two-term President Barack Obama appointed Robert Gates, a Republican holdover from the George W. Bush administration during wartime with a lifetime of global security experience as head of CIA and deputy national security advisor; Leon Panetta, CIA director during the Osama bin Laden raid, White House chief of staff, and Congressman; Chuck Hagel, a longtime Republican U.S. senator and Vietnam vet who mentored then-Senator Obama on foreign policy; and Ash Carter, who ascended after serving as the Pentagon’s No. 2 and an entire career in and out of the Defense Department.

The United States military, intelligence, and law enforcement establishment has done its best to survive the Trump era with its dignity and credibility intact. Luckily, Trump’s own conspiracy-laden attacks on the Defense Department, CIA, and FBI have helped to paint those agencies (to anyone other than Trump’s most fawning base) as enemies to his power grabs and as stalwart security agencies on which U.S. allies can still rely. At the Pentagon, Trump’s succession of replacements mostly have tried to keep the military “apolitical” — meaning, they’ve tried to keep the military from being harmed by this president’s constant attempts to usurp it — with varying degrees of success. Ultimately, Mattis, Shanahan, Spencer, and Esper all failed. With barely 70 days left in his office, Chris Miller will now have legal control of the world’s most lethal fighting force, at a moment in history when China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are doing all they can to find and exploit cracks in America’s armor.

This is a dangerous day. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were unprepared for it, CNN’s Barbara Starr reported; they called an emergency meeting with the combatant commanders who govern U.S. troops worldwide. The service secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force were “blindsided,” reported Fox News producer Lucas Tomlinson. So were Senate and House Armed Service Committee leaders, according to several journalists on Capitol Hill.

Americans should want better than this. For an entire 2020 presidential campaign, voters and media evinced alarmingly minimal interest in debate or discourse about anything beyond their borders. While Americans fought their culture and partisan wars; fought over how to treat immigrants, women, minorities, and each other; fought over the coronavirus pandemic and the economy; fought over patriotism and flags; and fought over truth and lies, the national security community tried, and largely failed, to draw public attention to threats lurking abroad. Would, or should, Americans even want to lead the world again?

Trump’s lame-duck firings may just be beginning. Reportedly, he has FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel also in his sights. Why? Because they, too, have failed to swear loyalty to Trump instead of to the country, its Constitution, and its national security. If the still-president follows through with these firings, then he might finally install atop the Pentagon, CIA and FBI — the foundational institutions of U.S. national security — Trump loyalists who could turn them into the personal security services he’s always envisioned them to be.

Inauguration Day is 71 days away. That possibility should be enough to make even Senate Republicans care, even if Americans won’t.

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From Racism to Russia, Top General Says Army Must Change

Kevin Baron — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 10:04:59 -0400

After a contentious summer of nationwide social unrest that thrust the military into uncomfortable spotlights, the Army’s top general said his branch is working hard to maintain the trust of the American people and build a force free of racism, extremism, and other influences that could hurt the unity of its soldiers, from Confederate flags to QAnon conspiracy theorists.

The sum of it all, or at least the intent, according to Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, is to maintain a service ready to defend the nation and hold its qualitative edge over China and Russia.

“I think any type of racism or extremism in the U.S. Army needs to be totally eliminated,” McConville said, in a wide-ranging online interview with Defense One on Tuesday. A virtual audience member asked about QAnon conspiracy theorists in the ranks. “Racism and extremism — we just cannot have that in the United States Army,” McConville answered. “There’s just no room for that. It breaks down cohesion in our Army. Any type of extremism, any type of racism, any type of people that aren't willing to treat their fellow soldiers with dignity and respect and not willing to take care of each other cannot serve in our Army.”

Racism and cohesion in the ranks has become a priority issue for the chief as an extension of the nation’s own discussion and civil protests that have sometimes turned violent. Americans on city streets from coast to coast have confronted camouflage-wearing military forces sent to maintain President Donald Trump’s declaration of “law and order.” Critics say Trump politicized the military, using them to protect his personal and political interests, or encouraging state governors to use their National Guard forces to discourage or disband protests against his policies. Openly, veterans and partisans have battled in op-ed pages over what role the military should play in the coming elections, if any.

The military’s front-page moments in the news this summer also have raised long-simmering issues in military circles like flying Confederate flags on bases, renaming Army bases in the South that memorialize Confederate generals, and what to do about American extremists outside of the military who dress like U.S. military personnel as they seek to counter-protest the Black Lives Matter movement, sometimes violently.

“We live in a political environment but we’re an apolitical organization, and I think it really must remain that way, especially with an election coming up,” McConville said.

“The job of the American military is to protect the nation, not to police the nation. That’s why we have police officers, that’s why we have law enforcement,” he said. When local, state, and federal law enforcement has broken down, using the regular Army, he said, “is a last resort and my best military advice is only in the most extreme conditions should that be considered.”

He continued: “We should never take for granted the trust of the American people…when we have issues, whether it’s racism or anything else that divides our country and also our military, it’s something that we would take immediate action on.”

Pentagon leaders up to and including Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a West Point graduate and previously Trump’s Army secretary, have tried with mixed success. When a move to ban the Confederate flag and change Army base names met resistance at the White House, Pentagon leaders rolled out what seemed a clever workaround for the flag. Defense Department leaders declared that in all service branches troops and civilians could display only certain authorized military related flags and symbols. But in doing so they inadvertently blocked troops from displaying the Pride flag, favorite sports teams, or anything else.

“What we want to do is take a look at where the policy could be adjusted,” McConville said. “That’s a question of, ‘Hey, we didn’t have this flag; was that the intent of what we were trying to do?’ and I think that discussion is ongoing.”

The inadvertent ban on the Pride flag is not just a Beltway issue, he said — actual soldiers care. “We have heard from some soldiers and some families, the concern about what flags fall into the policy. But the intent — at least with the Army that I can speak of — we want to make sure that everyone feels included and everyone belongs.”

“We’re looking for things that are going to bring people together long term. What’s the best way to bring the force together, to make everyone feel like they’re an integral part of the team.”

To that end, Defense One reported in July, Army leaders were working on a plan much wider than changing the names of Army bases named for Confederate generals. Trump killed that idea with tweets and other public statements, saying he would not whitewash history, which also upended some of the Army’s efforts at building unity in its ranks. McConville said he’s heard mixed opinions from soldiers about renaming the bases.

“I think depending on your perspective, depending on some soldiers I’ve talked to, it’s a very emotional issue. For other soldiers, they don’t even realize the names of the people on the bases they’re at. So I think we have to take a look, but at the end of the day — what we want to do, at least as the leadership of the Army, is identify those things that may divide us and take a look at and come up with solutions that can bring us together.”

The soldier who became the unwitting poster child for unwanted military intervention in domestic partisan politics has been McConville’s predecessor, now boss, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley. McConville and Milley served together in Iraq once, and Afghanistan twice. Milley has said publicly that while he was fighting on the ground in the Battle of Fallujah, he received life-saving cover fire from McConville and his Apache attack helicopter in the air. This summer, Milley was harshly criticized as a willing or unwitting partner to Trump’s violent crackdown on protesters in Washington, D.C., which the chairman later said in a speech he was wrong to do and vowed to keep the military out of politics. The leader who became a villain to some in the Black Lives Matter movement, if temporarily, McConville spoke of reverently.

“He and I spent a lot of time together over the last 15 to 18 years. He’s a great combat leader,” McConville said. “There is no one that is braver or who is more courageous in combat. You know, that day on the west side of Baghdad, it was no different than any other day. He was out there with his troops, leading his troops. He got kind of blown up in an IED, a small one, and there was an ambush and we just happened to be available in attack helicopters, to survive this, for what he needed. It was not a big deal. It was nothing heroic. We did that every single day, supporting troops on the ground.”

Milley and McConville are continuing with their no-big-deal, apolitical roles. This week, while the public and pundits in the media have harshly criticized Trump for not condemning Moscow after a series of apparent Russian provocations at American forces in Syria and elsewhere, McConville confirmed that Milley has made his concerns clear.

“The chairman has talked to his counterpart and made it very, very clear about the concerns that he has about these interactions — and we are very, very concerned at our level,” he said. “I think we should make sure we confront them when these things happen and find out what was the intent behind the confrontation.”

The United States has the obligation to protect its troops, he said, and “it’s very, very dangerous when you have armed troops who have the right to self-defense.”

In all, the future of the Army is clouded with division at home and threats abroad. McConville said he hopes Americans have faith in their soldiers.

“This has been a very challenging time for the country,” he said, with COVID, unemployment, and unrest. “And yet young men and women continue to raise their right hand and serve.” The Army is concerned about China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and violent extremism, but also wildfires in the west, hurricanes, the pandemic, social unrest, “and the things that are breaking this country down.”

Through it all, he said, the Army is going to to work with the American people “to do what we do, and that is protect the nation.”

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Service Chiefs Acknowledge Racism in the Ranks, Pledge Dialogue, Change

Kevin Baron, Marcus Weisgerber, and Bradley Peniston — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 11:02:30 -0400

After a week of widespread civil unrest, U.S. military leaders of every service branch have emerged from a Pentagon-imposed silence to speak out publicly about racism in society and within the ranks — and obliquely, about the proper role of armed forces in a country roiled by protest.

Their statements came after President Donald Trump vowed on Monday to put “heavily armed” U.S. troops on city streets to confront protesters and quell violence, had National Guard and federal security personnel forcibly clear peaceful protestors away from the White House, and then surprised onlookers by walking with Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and other administration officials through Lafayette Square for a photo op.

Esper, following intense criticism for calling the protests a “battlespace” and participating in the stunt, stepped out to cameras at the Pentagon briefing room on Wednesday morning to claim he was not privy to the decision to clear the park, nor to the plans for Trump’s photo op. Then he announced he had sent a memo to the force about racism, which he hoped would give “space” for other leaders to do the same.

“Racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it,” the secretary said.

Esper’s decision to increase attention on racism also came with an unexpected pushback on Trump’s Monday threat to send “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers” to quell violence in the nation’s streets. Such an order would likely take place under the 1807 Insurrection Act.

That law should only be invoked “as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire situations,” Esper told Pentagon reporters. “We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”

This marks the second time in Trump’s presidency that military leaders have tried to ease national tensions about race by making the rare move of speaking up. In 2017, five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued statements soon after the violent protests in Charlottesville, Va.

Air Force leaders were the first among their cohort to speak out about George Floyd, who on May 25 became the latest unarmed black man killed by law enforcement officers. Floyd’s death has sparked widespread protests, as well as disturbances and looting, across the country. On Monday, Chief Msgt. Kaleth Wright, the Air Force’s top enlisted official, posted a series of tweets in which he wrote that his “greatest fear” is “that I will wake up to a report that one of our Black Airmen has died at the hands of a white police officer.”

On Tuesday, Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, joined Wright in a video posted on the service’s social media channels. “I’ve been really outraged, not just for the last week,” Wright said. “It drew up a lot of rage and a lot of anger from the past because I’ve just watched this over and over and over again.”

Goldfein and his fellow service chiefs were reportedly told twice last by Defense Secretary Mark Esper not to speak out on the unrest and its cause — at least until Esper did so. The secretary broke his own silence on the matter in a Tuesday memo that said, “I, like you, am steadfast in my belief that Americans who are frustrated, angry, and seeking to be heard must be ensured that opportunity.”

Later that day, U.S. Space Force’s commander and top enlisted leader, Gen. John Raymond and Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman, released a letter “to the Men and Women of Our Nation’s Air and Space Forces. It began: “The tragic death of George Floyd is wrong and goes against the founding principles of our it also serves as a stark reminder that racism and the unequal treatment is a reality for many and a travesty for all.”

On Wednesday, the other service chiefs followed suit, issuing their own calls to eradicate racism from their ranks.

Just after midday, the Army released a joint statement from Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. James McConville, and Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston. In it, they said: “Our ability to defend this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, is founded upon a sacred trust with the American people. Racial division erodes that trust. Though we all aspire to live by the Army values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage, the Army has sometimes fallen short. Because just as we reflect the best of America, we reflect its imperfections as well. We need to work harder to earn the trust of mothers and fathers who hesitate to hand their sons and daughters into our care. How we respond to the anger that has ignited will chart the course of that trust.”

Later, in a self-filmed video, Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations, said: “over the past week, after we’ve watched what is going on, we can’t be under any illusions about the fact that racism is alive and well in our country. And I can’t be under any illusions that we don’t have it in our Navy.” The admiral urged sailors to start by reaching out to colleagues “and just listen.”

Commanders and senior enlisted leaders of the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet and Naval Forces Europe/Africa also issued a message, telling sailors “to have the courage to discuss this challenging situation with your colleagues, so we can all gain a better understanding of underlying concerns, as well as find ways to work together to develop and put in place lasting solutions.”

On Wednesday evening, the Air Force’s Goldfein became the first chief to hold a service-wide discussion on the recent events. In a two-hour Facebook town hall, he pledged “a commitment to a campaign, a long-term focused effort on better understanding of each other, a better understanding of what some of our teammates have been living with their entire lives and ensuring that we make the meaningful change that we have to as a profession of arms that the nation depends on in time of crisis.”

“This is not a Minneapolis issue, this is an Air Force issue,” Goldfein said at the beginning of the online gathering. “What goes on on the streets of America, we know is going on to a certain extent inside our Air Force. We’re not perfect. We have to do better and the only way to do better is to take ownership of a problem.”

By early evening, the U.S. Marine Corps commandant and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps had posted and tweeted their statement. “Marines and Sailors, last summer, in my planning guidance, I stated there is no place in our Corps for racists,” said the statement issued by Gen. David Berger and Sgt. Maj. Troy Black. “Current events are a stark reminder that it is not enough for us to remove symbols that cause division – rather, we also must strive to eliminate division itself.”

And at 8:37 p.m. on Wednesday, the service chief whose forces are most entwined with the efforts to quell the protests issued a statement of his own.

“I am sickened by the death of George Floyd," wrote National Guard chief Gen. Joseph Lengyel in a memo tweeted out by the National Guard Bureau. "And I am enraged that this story…keeps happening in our country, where unarmed men and women of color are the victims of police brutality and extrajudicial violence."

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62% Disapprove of Trump’s Coronavirus Response, Reader Survey Finds

Kevin Baron — Fri, 15 May 2020 08:12:50 -0400

Nearly 62 percent of respondents disapprove of how President Donald Trump has responded to the spread of the coronavirus, 88 percent said they still remain concerned about contracting COVID-19 in the coming months, and 41 percent think their state is reopening too soon, according to a survey of Defense One readers that includes federal government employees, Defense Department and military personnel, government contractors, and other private-sector workers.

Sixty percent of all respondents said that “President Trump’s handling of COVID-19 has made me feel” less safe — nearly half said “much less safe” — while only 25 percent said they felt more safe. Just 34 percent approved of Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s COVID-response efforts.

Defense One commissioned the survey, which was conducted by Government Business Council, a division of Defense One’s parent company, Government Executive Media Group. The survey was conducted May 8-14 and received 677 responses, yielding a 5 percent margin of error. Of the respondents, 362 self-identified as working in the federal community: 107 as DOD civilians or active military personnel, 135 as non-DOD federal workers, and 120 as government contractors.

Federal, defense, and intelligence industry workers have been a bit more insulated from the effects of pandemic-related shutdowns than other sectors of the U.S. economy. While some office spaces are closed or granting limited access, many classified or sensitive jobs prevent employees from working from home; they must continue commuting to work in secure locations. For weapons makers and other businesses related to military and intelligence activities, the Pentagon has fast-tracked dollars into supply streams, keeping many of those workers employed in factories and labs, boardrooms and battlefields. Some large defense firms are still hiring even as the rest of the country plunges into Depression-level unemployment.

Perhaps as a result, the troops, federal employees, and defense contractors who responded — call them the "federal community" — responded somewhat differently than other respondents. There is less concern about economic hardship, and slightly higher support for the COVID-response efforts of their employers and for returning to work than other the total of respondents. These workers, 37 percent of which said they are still required to travel to their workplace, also were slightly more likely than the whole group to indicate heightened concern for their own health, a family member’s health, access to testing, and mental health. They were less likely than the whole group to be concerned about financial or job insecurity, salary reductions, or healthcare costs.

Still, 61 percent of those in the federal community said they disapproved of Trump’s COVID-19 response efforts — nearly identical to the total survey result — with only 31 percent approving.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper drew less decisive ratings among the federal community, with 37 percent approving of his COVID-response efforts, 26 percent disapproving, and 36 percent remaining neutral. Esper has been criticized by lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who fired off a lengthy letter in April alleging that the secretary demonstrated “dangerous misunderstanding” of the virus’s threat and issued confusing guidance to the force about it.

Esper has also appeared to ignore his department’s guidelines on protective masks and social distancing. On Friday, he wore no mask when he stood next to World War II veterans in their 90s. On Saturday, Esper and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met without masks inside the White House’s Situation Room. Afterwards, generals were seen speaking in a close circle without masks.

The federal community gave higher marks to the Defense Department’s response than did other respondents, with 53 percent approving, 17 disapproving, and 28 percent remaining neutral.

Some 90 percent of the federal community also said the Pentagon’s guidance was some degree of helpful, but 41 percent responded that it has been only “moderately” so. Thirty percent said their manager’s COVID guidance was not in line, or hardly in line, with the White House’s.

Almost half — 49 percent — of those workers said they did not yet think it was safe to return to their normal work station, 5 points higher than all respondents. And while 31 percent of all respondents felt it was safe to return, only 28 percent of federal community workers felt so.

Similarly, nearly 85 percent of federal community respondents — five points higher than total respondents — said they were concerned “that returning to your normal work environment could place your family members at risk of contracting COVID-19.” Roughly 11 percent said they were not concerned about that risk.

Among all respondents, 41 percent said their state was opening or reopening “too soon,” while 36 percent said it was the “right time,” and 18 percent said “not soon enough.”

When offered a chance to describe other concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, respondents mentioned personal health, frustrations with political leaders and the media, concerns about China’s advantage and a decline in U.S. world leadership, and praise for first responders. Among the responses: “Mental & emotional abuse from office supervisors,” “Loss of civil liberties,” “loss of business,” “Mental health of my kids,” “Loss of Freedoms,” “political discord-media fabrications,” “Exposure to Trump supporters in the workplace who refuse to social distance, wash hands, or wear masks,” “Destruction of the US economy & the shredding of the US Constitution,” “Can't work out at gym” and “media bull crap!!!”

Related podcast:

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Aircraft Carrier Captain Fired For ‘Poor Judgement’ In Sending Coronavirus Letter

Kevin Baron and Bradley Peniston — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 10:57:00 -0400

Updated, 7:18 p.m.

The commander of USS Theodore Roosevelt, who sounded the alarm about a COVID-19 outbreak aboard his aircraft carrier, has been relieved of command by the acting Navy secretary.

Capt. Brett Crozier “demonstrated extremely poor judgement in the midst of a crisis” by sending a four-page request for urgent help to people outside his chain of command, Thomas Modly told reporters Thursday afternoon.

The carrier pulled into Guam on Friday after several COVID-sickened sailors had been medevaced off the ship. Crozier soon began sending sailors ashore to accommodations where they could isolate themselves, but became concerned that a lack of rooms on Guam was slowing the evacuation. A total of 114 Roosevelt sailors have tested positive for the coronavirus, and the ultimate number will probably be "in the hundreds," Modly said.

Modly said Crozier could have “walked down the hall” to his immediate boss, the admiral in charge of the carrier’s strike group, or expressed his concerns in one of his conversations with Modly’s chief of staff. Instead, Crozier sent his March 30 letter over unsecure email to multiple Navy leaders in and outside his chain of command, and it made its way to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it on Tuesday.

Modly denied that the letter and its intense media coverage spurred the Navy into quicker action. And he denied that Crozier’s firing was “retribution,” praising the captain for looking out for his crew and sounding alarms.

“It was the way in which he did it," said Modly.

Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, said he agreed with the decision.

Modly said the letter made it look as if the Navy was not helping Crozier. The acting secretary repeated his Wednesday denials that the Navy only took action after the letter, and reiterated that preparations for evacuating the majority of the crew had already begun at that point.

In the six days since the ship tied up in Guam, Modly said, the Navy has arranged shore-based accommodations for almost 3,000 sailors.

“And that’s what’s frustrating about it: it created the perception that the Navy’s not on the job, and the government’s not on the job,” the acting secretary said.

Modly added that Crozier had not properly prepared his chief petty officers — the ship's senior noncommissioned officers — to discuss his plans to put some 90 percent of the crew ashore as fast as possible. The secretary alleged it created “a mini-panic” among the crew and their families.

One former senior military spokesman found that hard to believe.

“The idea that it got out there and it created panic among families — you don't think the families didn't already know what was going on on that ship? You don’t think the sailors weren’t already telling their families what was happening on the ship? That’s ridiculous,” said David Lapan, retired Marine Corps colonel who served as the top spokesman for the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Marine Corps.

“It’s more believable that the letter would cause the families to be upset that the Navy wasn’t taking the right steps to protect their loved ones.”

The decision to relieve Crozier of command drew quick criticism, including from one member of Congress.

“I have a really hard time believing this. This deserves investigation,” tweeted Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic presidential candidate from Hawaii, whose district includes Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor.

John Kirby, a retired rear admiral who served as the State Department's head spokesman from 2015 to 2017, tweeted, "I understand the 'trust & confidence' argument. It’s sacrosanct in the Navy. But based on justification put forth by acting SECNAV for why he lost trust & confidence in the TR CO, hard to see it as anything other than an over-reaction & unwarranted at a vital time for the ship."

Said Lapan, “There are so many flaws in how the Navy is explaining this that it’s causing people to question what the real reasons are."

Of Modly's suggestion that Crozier should have contacted him directly, Lapan said it directly contradicts the secretary's reasoning for the firing.

“You’re the acting secretary of the navy. You're going to suggest an O-6 ship captain coming directly to you is not going outside the chain of command? Everyone above that O-6 would have been furious,” said Lapan.

Modly said Crozier also misrepresented the state of affairs aboard the carrier to him. Asked how, he said the skipper told him that “50 sailors would die,” which the secretary said was not based on facts. Modley alleged that Crozier told him the handful of ventilators aboard the ship was sufficient, which the secretary said was inconsistent with the alarm being sounded.

Modly said the letter also created the misperception that the aircraft carrier was not ready to fight if necessary.

In his letter, Crozier wrote that the carrier could still go into battle and win, because “in combat we are willing to take certain risks that are not acceptable in peacetime. However, we are not at war, and therefore cannot allow a single Sailor to perish as a result of this pandemic unnecessarily.”

Modly had indicated on Wednesday he was not inclined to fire the captain. But during Thursday's brief press conference, he said he had informed Defense Secretary Mark Esper that he was leaning toward relieving Crozier, and he said Esper had promised to support him in whatever decision he made. Modly also said there had been “absolutely no pressure” from the White House.

An hour after Modly spoke, President Trump was asked at his own early-evening press conference whether the skipper was being punished for trying to help his sailors. "No, I don't think so at all," Trump said. "I don't agree with that at all. Not at all, Not even a little bit."

The acting secretary added that he doesn’t want or expect Crozier's relief to chill other commanders who might need to sound an alarm.

“We want that information coming up to us through the chain of command,” he said.

Lapan said it sends mixed signals, at best.

“What signal does this send to the fleet?” he said. “Relieving that commander under these conditions makes it appear to be retaliation. It makes it appear the Navy is more interesting in not being embarrassed rather than taking care of sailors.”

Especially, he said, when one day earlier Modly was calling for commanders to be honest about what they need.

“It makes it appear that you really don’t want them to be honest.”

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Pentagon Bars Most Guests, Travelers Starting Monday

Kevin Baron — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 11:31:05 -0400

The Pentagon will shut its doors Monday to all unofficial visitors, and restrict entry for international travelers and large groups, the latest in a series of significant restrictions on military personnel and access to U.S. bases and installations.

On Friday night, the Defense Department issued a statement outlining several rules designed to limit the spread of COVID-19, or the coronavirus virus. Among them, all international travelers will not be allowed into the massive building before a 14-day waiting period after their return to the United States. Retirement and promotion ceremonies -- a regular occurance at the military’s official headquarters -- also will be halted.

Foreign delegations will be considered “on a case-by-case basis” by senior leaders.

Earlier in the week the Pentagon ceased public tours.

At 3.7 million square feet, the Pentagon is the enormous headquarters of the U.S. military, in Arlington, Va. It is also the terminus of a large metro bus system that carries thousands of Washington-area commuters to and from the Pentagon’s metro rail station. Completed in 1943, the Pentagon now houses more than 25,000 workers and sees about 100,000 visitors each year and has three times the floor space of the Empire State Building. It’s one of the few military installations that hold more officers than enlisted men and women, and is a no-saluting zone.

The restriction extends to other Washington-area office buildings, “including the Mark Center, Defense Health Headquarters, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and DOD leased facilities.”

The full statement is below:

Effective midnight on Sunday, March 15, 2020:

. All unofficial visits are suspended, to include personal guests and friends of DOD personnel and contractors. All large gatherings, such as retirement and promotion ceremonies, shall cease. All Pentagon Tours have been suspended since March 12, 2020.

. All official visits by international partners and visitors are suspended. Exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Chief Management Officer (on behalf of the Fourth Estate), Director of the Joint Staff, as delegated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretaries of the military services.

. Any individual, DOD civilian, military service member, contractor, or official visitor with recent international travel may not enter the Pentagon Facilities within 14 days from the date of their arrival back to the United States. Access may be restored on the 15th day, if the individual remains asymptomatic.

. Sponsoring offices for visits to the Pentagon building, Mark Center, Defense Health Headquarters, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and other Pentagon facilities must register official visitors at least 24 hours in advance through the Pentagon Force Protection Agency Visitor Management System. Official visits to DOD leased facilities will be managed by the designated officials or security managers.

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General Takes Blame for ‘No Injuries’ Declaration After Jan. 8 Iran Strike

Kevin Baron — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 10:10:04 -0400

The top commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East said he was “solely and completely responsible” for declaring that there were no U.S. casualties after Iran’s Jan. 8 missile strike on al-Anbar air base in Iraq. It was the first such statement in public by Gen. Frank McKenzie.

For roughly two months, President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials who echoed McKenzie’s assessment have been accused of covering up the truth about the extent of American injuries, in part to justify not returning fire with a potentially escalatory strike inside Iran.

Testifying before Congress on Thursday, McKenzie said that at no time did President Trump or any other official pressure him to make the assessment, which was quickly repeated by Trump and others. The commanding general of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, said his determination was based on medical evaluations on site immediately after the strike. But when reporters were granted access to the base to assess its extensive damage the following week, some troops said they complained of concussions. On Jan. 16, Defense One first reported that 11 U.S. troops had been flown out of Iraq and diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI, including concussions, sparking a flurry of allegations that White House and Pentagon officials had hid the truth, which officials denied vehemently. Pentagon officials soon began issuing regular public updates as more troops came forward with symptoms. In its last public count, of Feb. 21, the Defense Department said 110 service members in the attack had been “diagnosed with mild TBI.” In total, 35 of them were evacuated out of Iraq.

As more reports of concussions emerged in late January, Trump said he did not consider concussions to be equal to physical injuries, saying they were “not serious” and similar to “headaches.” And he continued to insist that neither he or his administration had undersold the injuries to the public.

Late in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the CENTCOM budget on Thursday, Michigan Democrat Gary Peters, a U.S. Navy Reserve veteran, pressed McKenzie about the perceived “miscommunication.”

“Was CENTCOM forced to give a rushed assessment, or did the White House make an announcement without having any facts?” the senator asked.

“Senator, thank you for the question, I actually would like to talk about that,” McKenzie began. “I am solely and completely responsible for the first notification that there were no casualties. I am the officer who gave that report, based on my assessment of what happened at al-Asad. There was no pressure on me to give that report. That was what we thought in the immediate hours after the attack, because it was not evident to us that there had been concussion injuries.

“You know, maybe if we were smarter we would’ve picked up on that. But there were no kinetic injuries, no one was bleeding, no bones were broken. So, it was our assessment and the assessment of my commanders on the ground but I am the single person who passed that report, so I bear total responsibility for that, with no one else.”

McKenzie continued, saying symptoms of brain injuries can take months to appear. “As you know, Senator, that is not an injury like a broken arm or a broken leg that can be immediately diagnosed on the spot.”

He repeated, “I was never under any pressure at any time to shade this reporting. The secretary of defense never said anything to me about it, the chairman” of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “never said anything to me about it, the president never said anything to me about it.”

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Now It's 64. Wounded Troop Tally from Iran Missile Strike Rises Again

Kevin Baron — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 16:14:17 -0500

This story has been updated to reflect new information released by the Pentagon.

The number of U.S. troops who suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI, in the Jan. 8 Iranian missile attack on an Iraqi military base rose to 64, according to a Defense Department spokesman.

The tally includes 14 new diagnosed cases of TBI since the Pentagon's last report on Tuesday, seven of which were treated in Iraq and returned to duty. In total, 21 troops have been sent to a military medical center in Germany for further treatment and eight to the United States. At least 11 more are awaiting transport to those locations for evaluation and treatment.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Thursday press conference with Defense Secretary Mark Esper that the number of TBI cases was "growing," as time passed from blast and more service members showed signs of injury.

As of the evening, 39 troops of the 64 troops diagnosed with injuries had returned to duty.

"This is a snapshot in time and numbers can change. We will continue to provide updates as they become available," said Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell, in the evening statement.

The severity of the injuries Americans sustained in the attack — and how seriously the Trump administration takes those injuries — has come under scrutiny after it was first revealed that 11 troops had been flown out of Iraq for treatment related to concussions and TBI symptoms, nearly one week after 11 missiles hit al-Assad air base. On Tuesday, officials said the number of affected troops had reached 50.

“We take this issue very seriously,” Esper said, in his opening statement. “We do everything we can to identify, treat, and help our service members recover and return to duty.”

President Trump and senior Pentagon leaders initially said no service members were killed or wounded in the attack. Last week, after several news reports from the base revealed that troops were being seen for concussions and other TBI symptoms, Trump downplayed the brain injuries, saying that he was told troops at the base had “headaches” and that he did not consider them to be as “serious” as physical wounds he had seen on other troops recovering at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside of Washington, D.C., from unrelated injuries.

Pressed by reporters, Esper said on Thursday that he has spoken with Trump and that the president "understands the nature of these injuries."

"He’s very concerned about the health and welfare of all of our service members, particularly those that were involved in our operations in Iraq,” Esper said.

Esper said he would not comment on whether he thought Trump was now better informed about these injuries, but said that “everybody” could use a refresher on TBI. The secretary said he is speaking to members of Congress and Pentagon is sending “teams of briefers” to Capitol Hill beginning Thursday to help members understand these kinds of wounds.

“This is an injury we need to keep educating everybody about,” he said.

Military leaders in the past two weeks have released several detailed updates on the number and status of those wounded. They also rejected theories that Trump or military officials concealed initial injury reports to tamp down any tensions with Iran, and assured the public that they take TBI injuries seriously — carefully evaluating and treating attack survivors as symptoms continue to emerge.

“The chairman and I spent most of the night [of Jan. 8] going over casualties and understanding what happened on the ground, with [U.S. Central Command’s] Gen. [Frank] McKenzie and others — I think the reporting was accurate at that time. At that time, as was reported, there were no casualties,” Esper said. “You learn these things over time.”

Related: Eleven US Troops Were Injured in Jan. 8 Iran Missile Strike

Related: 34 Injured in Iran Attack, Pentagon Now Says; Launches a Review of Reporting Procedures

Related: As Toll Mounts, Trump Downplays Injuries Suffered in Iranian Attack

Earlier this week, Pentagon officials said the number of troops reporting TBI symptoms had grown to 50. On Thursday, Milley and Esper said that they expected the symptoms of those troops already being tracked could worsen, and more troops with symptoms to emerge as time passes.

"It's too early to tell,” said Milley. “Mild traumatic brain injury, that's the diagnosis that's been reported to us so far."

Milley said the Defense Department for its own purposes rates traumatic brain injuries in one of three categories: very seriously injured, seriously injured, or not seriously injured. “These individuals are in the NSI category, at this time…. That’s not to minimize or dismiss or anything.”

He added: “There were thousands of people at al-Assad airbase. Those that were within the distance of the blast, these are thousand-, 2,000-pound munitions that were coming in, with heavy over-pressure, et cetera, — all those people are screened, and we got a certain number, and that number is growing.”

Milley said he did not want to reveal what new air or other defenses the Pentagon may be sending into Iraq, other than new Patriot anti-missile batteries requested by the regional combatant commander. Those are being held up by foreign red tape, and operational decisions of where they should be placed, he said.

“We need the permission of the Iraqis,” Esper said.

Milley added, “a Patriot battalion is not a small organization,” adding: “Could they have shot down these [Iranian ballistic missiles?] That’s what they were designed to do. Can’t say for certain.”

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Eleven U.S. Troops Were Injured in Jan. 8 Iran Missile Strike

Kevin Baron — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 09:53:58 -0500

Nearly one dozen American troops were wounded in Iran’s Jan. 8 missile attack on Iraq’s al-Asad air base. This week, they were medically evacuated to U.S. military hospitals in Kuwait and Landstuhl, Germany, to be treated for traumatic brain injury and to undergo further evaluation, several U.S. defense and military officials have confirmed to Defense One.

Senior military and Trump administration officials had said on Jan. 8 that 11 Iranian missiles had caused “no casualties, no friendly casualties, whether they are U.S., coalition, contractor, et cetera.”

In the past week, news organizations that were granted access to the base to film the damage and interview military personnel have reported that no Americans were killed, wounded, or “seriously injured.” But the New York Times reported on Monday that some personnel had been treated for concussions.

In a Jan. 16 statement, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in Baghdad said, “As previously stated, while no U.S. service members were killed in the Jan. 8 Iranian attack on Al Asad Air base, several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, some service members were transported from Al Asad Air Base, Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, others were sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for follow-on screening,” said Col. Myles Caggins, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. “When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq following screening. The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual's medical status.”

A separate U.S. defense official speaking on background confirmed eleven Americans had been sent out of Iraq for treatment.

"As a standard procedure, all personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injury, and if deemed appropriate, are transported to a higher level of care. At this time, eight individuals have been transported to Landstuhl, and three have been transported to Camp Arifjan," said the official.

Later Thursday evening, Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees all military in the region, confirmed those details in a similar on-the-record statement emailed to reporters.

According to a fourth senior U.S. defense official, “About a week after the attack some service members were still experiencing some symptoms of concussion.” The official expected more information would be released soon. “We only got wind of this in the last 24 hours.”

Initial reports about the attack speculated that Iran had tried to avoid areas of the base that housed military personnel. But U.S. officials soon rejected that notion. In a Jan. 8 press conference, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said, “The points of impact were close enough to personnel and equipment, so on and so forth, I believe, based on what I saw and what I know, is that they were intended to cause structural damage, destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft, and to kill personnel.”

Still, several news organizations soon reported from al-Asad that U.S. troops had been alerted to the attack hours in advance, and told to head for bunkers 15 minutes before the missiles began to strike. Many U.S. troops, however, manned exposed positions, including at least one group of drone operators who stayed in an above-ground building to get their drones aloft and avoid ground damage. The leader of an Army drone team told NPR that he was “knocked off his feet by the blast.” Others told the New York Times that missiles damaged the building they were in.

On Thursday, Pentagon chief spokesman Jonathan Hoffman declined to say what tipped off the Americans. He did deny reports that the warning came from somewhere besides the United States or Iraq.

This article has been updated to include the additional statement provided by U.S. Central Command.

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Pentagon Vows to Guard the Syrian Oil That Trump Wants to Seize

Kevin Baron and Katie Bo Williams — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 10:01:37 -0400

The U.S. military mission in Syria includes defending Kurdish-run oil fields from Russia and Syria as well as ISIS, senior Pentagon leaders said, raising further questions about the future of a mission former officials say was already on shaky legal footing.

The “fundamental purpose” of securing the oil fields is to prevent ISIS from claiming them from the U.S.-allied, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley told Pentagon reporters during a brief press conference on Monday.

Asked if that mission includes denying access to the Syrian regime and its Russian backers, “the short answer is yes,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said.

“It presently does because in that case we want to make sure the SDF does have access to the resources in order to guard the prisons [of ISIS fighters], in order to guard their own troops, in order to assist us with the defeat-ISIS mission,” Esper said.

Legally—under both international law and domestic law—the United States is in Syria only to fight ISIS. At home, the U.S. relies on congressional authorizations passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to prosecute the war on ISIS. Internationally, the justification for the U.S.’s incursion into Syria is a 2014 request from Iraq for collective self-defense against ISIS.

But Trump put an extreme strain on the legal justification for the oilfields mission on Saturday, when he told reporters at the White House that the United States “should be able to take some.”

“[W]hat I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly,” he said.

Former defense officials and legal analysts say would be patently illegal under both domestic and international law.

Esper’s remarks on Monday that the mission encompasses Russia and Syria further strain the legal explanation for the mission, analysts say.

“Protection against Russian and Assad regime forces where U.S. forces are on the ground would fall under inherent self-defense authorities, and is entirely appropriate,” said Brett McGurk, the former State Department envoy for defeating ISIS, who resigned in protest in December over the Trump administration’s Syria strategy. “Being on the ground for the express purpose of denying those countries access to natural resources, however, would likely require a new legal basis, as it does not fall under the 2001 AUMF.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has also hinted that the oilfield mission is broader than denying access to a reconstituted ISIS. After a briefing with Pentagon leaders last week, he told reporters that the Pentagon was developing a plan that “may give us what we need to prevent ISIS from coming back, Iran taking the oil, ISIS from taking the oil.”

There is no congressional authorization for direct or sustained military action against Iran.

Even seen through a strictly counter-ISIS lens, using U.S. military assets to safeguard the oil fields on behalf of the SDF is on a “wafer-thin legal basis,” said one former defense official, because the SDF is itself not a sovereign nation. From the Syrian perspective, “seizing state territory, giving territory to a non-state paramilitary,” the former official said, “would be like the U.K. aiding the Confederacy in 1862.”

“I’m not saying the SDF relationship is wrong, per se,” the former official said. “I’m saying it gets ugly when we talk about the long-term purpose of these oilfields.”

Robert Chesney, a national security professor at the Texas University School of Law, said it is “definitely an issue if the mission is to keep Syria or Russia out of the oil fields, as opposed to keeping IS out.”

“Anything that has no real relationship to fighting the Islamic state or Al-Qaeda raises a question regarding the legal basis for using military force there,” Chesney said in an email. “Occupying oil fields in Syria to keep the Syrian government as well as the Russians out of those oil fields sure looks like something that does not fit with the past examples” of the use of military force under the 2001 authorization.

Meanwhile, Trump has insisted that the broader U.S. withdrawal from Syria is ongoing despite the announcement that troops and armor would remain in Tanf, on the border of Jordan, Iraq and Syria, and in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, where the oil fields are.

The administration announced a complete withdrawal earlier this month and have been moving forces out of northeastern Syria over the past two weeks, despite concerns from Pentagon and State Department officials that the withdrawal would allow ISIS to rise again.

“We’re out. But we are leaving soldiers to secure the oil,” Trump said Saturday. “And we may have to fight for the oil. It’s okay. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they’ll have a hell of a fight.”

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ISIS Leader Baghdadi Killed Himself During U.S. Special Ops Raid, Trump Confirms

Kevin Baron and Katie Bo Williams — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 09:34:17 -0400

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the elusive head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is dead.

President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Baghdadi was the target of a U.S. special operations forces raid in Syria on Saturday and killed himself, confirming Defense One's original reporting.

U.S. intelligence and special operations forces had been tracking Baghdadi for weeks to a location in northwest Syria, Trump said. The raid began with eight helicopters flying low and fast to a compound with underground tunnels. In unusually frank and gruesome detail, Trump recounted how U.S. operators chased Baghdadi into a dead-end tunnel where he detonated his vest, killing himself and three of his children.

"They were led to certain death. They reached the end of the tunnel as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast," the president said.

Baghdadi died, Trump said, “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way.”

Several other ISIS fighters were also killed and captured in the mission, Trump said. There were no casualties among the U.S. troops, who were in the compound for about two hours, he said.

"These savage monsters will not escape their fate and they will not escape the final judgment of God," he said.

Top national-security priority?

Said Trump, "Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration."

There is no evidence for this. Trump has never said this in public, according to a Factba.se search, nor tweeted it. Baghdadi's name appears only once before today on the White House site: a mention in the 2017 State of the Union introducing his order to keep open the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. His lone tweet mentioning the ISIS leader sprang from a disputed Fox News report.

Public-facing Pentagon documents mention Baghdadi's name a dozen times in passing since Trump became president; it does not appear in the National Defense Strategy.

A mention of the ISIS leader's name was elicited in a March press conference with the U.S. envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition. Amb. James Jeffrey was asked: "Do you have any update on the whereabouts of Baghdadi, and to what extent is it a priority to do the man-hunting now?" He responded, "No, we don’t know where he is, and finding the top leadership of ISIS or other terrorist groups is always a priority."

Watching the raid

Trump said he watched the raid unfold from the White House Situation Room with Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Vice President Mike Pence, and other unnamed "generals." Trump described with marvel the clarity of the picture "as if you were watching a movie" and the performance of U.S. top special operators. He said he heard Baghdadi screaming.

"When he blew himself up, the tunnel collapsed," he said.

One dog was injured in the blast. A robot was available but was not used, he said. "We were moving too fast."

As they approached, U.S. forces returned incoming fire, killed ground fighters from the air, Trump said. They went in through a side door because the front door was believed to be booby trapped. Two of Baghdadi's wives were killed by U.S. forces before they could detonate their own suicide vests, he said. Their bodies were carefully removed.

Trump said U.S. lab technicians were brought on the mission and tested Baghdadi's DNA on site after he blew himself up. "They have his DNA," Trump said, adding that pieces of his body were "brought back" along with sensitive information.

The mission follows two weeks of major Trump policy shifts on Syria, starting with the president's abrupt Oct. 8 decision to pull U.S. forces out of northern Syria after Turkey said it would invade in pursuit of Kurdish forces. Turkish armored forces quickly moved on the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, killing hundreds of fighters and an unknown number of civilians, the SDF claims. Trump was accused by critics globally of abandoning the SDF, who had done the vast majority of fighting against ISIS to retake territory across Syria.

After two days of fighting, Turkey agreed to give the SDF five days to evacuate a 20-mile-wide border zone, and negotiated a patrol agreement with Russian and Syrian regime forces. That ceasefire was made permanent on Wednesday, but the SDF has alleged that Turkish and Russian forces have continued to attack their positions.

Trump said that none of the events of the past few weeks interfered with the mission to find Baghdadi.

Iraqi officials have claimed that they provided intelligence to the United States about Baghdadi's location. Trump said the SDF also provided "helpful" information but the raid was carried out solely by U.S. forces. Russia was asked in advance to clear the airspace and complied, Trump said, without knowing the full purpose of the mission.

The president said the United States will continue to pursue "the remaining ISIS terrorists to their brutal end," and other terrorist groups. He then recounted ISIS's bloody trail of the past four years: "They are likewise in our sights. Baghdadi and the losers who work for him —and losers they are, they had no idea what they were getting into — in some cases they were very frightened puppies, in other cases they were hard-core killers. But they killed many, many people. Their murder of innocent Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller were especially heinous. The shocking publicized murder of Jordanian pilot, a wonderful young man...he was burned alive in a cage for all to see, on the execution of Christians in Libya and Egypt, as well as the genocidal mass murder of Yazidis ranked ISIS among the most depraved organizations [in] the history of our world."

"The forced religious conversions, the orange suits prior to many beheadings, all of which were openly displayed for the world – this was all Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s work. He was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying," Trump said, reading his prepared statement.

Unusual detail about special operations

Trump's White House statement, and the following press conference, was an unusual way to disclose the operation. Previously, those details would come from Pentagon officials and spokespeople taking care to not reveal operational details of Joint Special Operations Command and intelligence methods.

“Something very big has just happened!” President Donald Trump tweeted at 9:23 p.m. ET on Saturday.

Joseph Votel, the former Army four-star who led U.S. Central Command until March, said in a statement: "This is an important milestone — not just for the campaign but especially for the families and communities who Baghdadi victimized through his leadership of ISIS. All credit goes to the men and women who orchestrated this successful mission. President Trump deserves credit for making the decision to execute — these types of operations come with a lot of risk, and he accepted all that. I don’t think it means the end of ISIS; these organizations are resilient and we have to keep the pressure on them, but this was an important operation. I don’t think it means the end of problems in Syria either; that will have to be done through a political process."

Bradley Peniston contributed to this report.

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Trump Declares Victory in Syria, Claims Credit for It All

Kevin Baron — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 09:43:38 -0400

In a defiant speech built on questionable analysis and a few outright falsehoods, President Donald Trump declared diplomatic and strategic victory in northern Syria on Wednesday after Turkish and Syrian Kurdish leaders promised to hew to a permanent ceasefire.

Trump claimed credit for it all — for his snap decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the area after Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to attack U.S.-backed rebel groups, which he and administration officials say has defused a longstanding conflict between two warring factions, forced regional players to manage their own security, and removed U.S. troops from an unnecessary intervention — all without spilling additional American blood.

But the entire premise of the president’s speech was sharply rejected by Republican and Democratic lawmakers who called Trump’s actions a shameful capitulation to Moscow and ISIS.

Trump also announced that “a small number of U.S. troops” would remain in northeastern Syria to protect oil-related sites while his team determines how to withdraw the balance of a U.S. force that until recently numbered around 1,000. Republican lawmakers had reportedly pressed Trump to keep some forces there, some walking him through a map of the country.

“This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else, no other nation. Very simple. And we're willing to take blame, and we're also willing to take credit,” the president said in the White House’s Diplomatic Room.

Trump read slowly from a prepared statement, stopping at times to praise himself and scold his national-security critics for doubting his decision, which he said succeeded where decades of previous U.S. policy in the Middle East had failed. Trump scoffed at a proposal to send a larger U.S. force to help America’s Syrian Kurdish partners to face down Turkish troops.

“I don’t think so,” Trump said, noting Turkey is a NATO ally and claiming that the United States has a “very good relationship” with Erdogan.

“The same people that I watched and read — giving me and the United States advice — were the people that I have been watching and reading for many years. They are the ones that got us into the Middle East mess but never had the vision or the courage to get us out. They just talk,” he said. “How many Americans must die in the Middle East in the midst of these ancient sectarian and tribal conflicts? After all of the precious blood and treasure America has poured into the deserts of the Middle East, I am committed to pursuing a different course — one that leads to victory for America.”

“Through much work, we have done things that everybody said couldn’t be done. Today’s announcement validates our course of action with Turkey that only a couple of weeks ago were scorned, and now people are saying, ‘Wow. What a great outcome. Congratulations.’ It's too early to me to be congratulated, but we've done a good job. We've saved a lot of lives.”

Trump did not mention the hundreds of Kurdish fighters and civilians allegedly killed by Turkish-backed forces in the wake of his Oct. 8 phone call with Erdogan. But he thanked Mazlum Abdi, who leads the rebel Syrian Democractic Forces, for understanding his plans.

Just after the president finished speaking, Mazlum issued a carefully worded statement on Twitter: “We THANK President Trump for his tireless efforts that stopped the brutal Turkish attack and jihadist groups on our people.”

Nor did Trump address concerns, including ones expressed by fellow Republicans, that he had ceded land and influence to dictators in Turkey, Syria, and Russia.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., said in a statement that he wants the U.S. to “continue to control the skies over Syria” and continue to keep “a small but capable” force with the SDF. “I do not trust or believe that Turkey, Russia, or Assad have the capability or the desire to protect America from radical Islamic threats like ISIS.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., without directly criticizing Trump, said in a tweet, “Erdogan has NOT agreed to stop all military operations in #Syria.” He predicted that Russia would remove Kurdish forces from areas beyond the Turkish border zone, including from Kurdish-majority cities.

Democrats were more direct. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, of New Jersey, said in a statement: “As if clearing the way for a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Syrian Kurds wasn’t enough, President Trump seems determined to keep handing political and military victories to Russia and Syria, kowtowing to Turkey, and opening the door for further Iranian expansion in the region. Today, the murderous Syrian regime and the Russian security forces continue to rejoice over their control of almost all remaining autonomous Kurdish territory, in some cases literally standing in abandoned American military posts. It is inconceivable that a self-described ‘deal-maker’ would lift sanctions on Turkey without any kind of concrete commitments that their ceasefire will be permanent.”

“The only question remaining is whether President Trump is acting directly at the behest of Russian and Turkish leaders, or whether he is willfully blind to his own failures. Today’s press conference of President Trump standing over the smoldering wreckage of our Syria policy and American leadership to declare victory is the epitome of his devastating approach to our national security,” Menendez continued.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., tweeted, “Trump’s celebration of the Putin-Erdogan deal represents his total surrender of American leadership and the treacherous betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish allies. It is also a recipe for the resurgence of ISIS. Congress must fill the leadership void.”

A senior administration official, speaking on background on a post-speech conference call with reporters, said that “the goal is to have all American troops out of Syria.” The official did not say how many would stay behind, where, and for how long, nor where the withdrawn forces would head next. “Some will go to Iraq, some will go to other places,” the official said.

Turkey and Russia announced Tuesday they would begin joint patrols of territory once held by U.S. and the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, while Syrian forces would begin removing any fighters with the YPG, an element of the SDF.

“Turkey, Syria, and all forms of the Kurds, have been fighting for centuries,” Trump said. “We have done them a great service, and we've done a great job for all of them. And now we're getting out. A long time. We were supposed to be there for 30 days; that was almost 10 years ago. So we're there for 30 days, and now we're leaving. It was supposed to be a very quick hit and let's get out. And it was a quick hit, except they stayed for almost 10 years. Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

It’s unclear to what point 10 years ago Trump was referring; the U.S. returned to fight ISIS in Iraq and into Syria in 2013.

The president then turned toward wider U.S. policy toward the Middle East. He recalled his campaign pledge to withdraw from the region’s conflicts, and said that previous U.S. leaders who chose intervention also want “open borders” for the migrants fleeing those conflicts.

“Across the Middle East, we have seen anguish on a colossal scale. We have spent $8 trillion on wars in the Middle East, never really wanting to win those wars. But after all that money was spent and all of those lives lost, the young men and women gravely wounded — so many — the Middle East is less safe, less stable, and less secure than before these conflicts began,”he said. “The same people pushing for these wars are often the ones demanding America open its doors to unlimited migration from war-torn regions, importing the terrorism and the threat of terrorism right to our own shores. But not anymore. My administration understands that immigration security is national security.”

Trump said he no longer would allow the U.S. military to become “depleted, fighting in areas of the world where we shouldn’t be. When we commit American troops to battle, we must do so only when a vital national interest is at stake, and when we have a clear objective, a plan for victory, and a path out of conflict. That’s what we have to have. We need a plan of victory. We will only win. Our whole basis has to be the right plan, and then we will only win. Nobody can beat us. Nobody can beat us.”

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Viewpoint: The Mattis Two-Step

Kevin Baron — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 22:00:00 -0400

Jim Mattis sure is talking now.

After ducking cameras for most of his term as former defense secretary, the forever general is one week into a book tour on which, through a series of high-profile interviews, he is trying desperately to send Washington and the country a message by talking a lot but not saying too much.

Mattis knows you want him to torch the president. But he has embraced with a G.I. Joe kung-fu grip the sometimes-honored (and not entirely admired) principle that retired military generals should keep out of politics.

“Politics ends at the water’s edge,” he says. “You have to keep in mind that I was the secretary of defense. I protected this currently very raucous country, this experiment that we call America.”

Mattis is a low-talking man with high-falutin’ phrases, humble enough to be filmed shaking hands and having a beer at his local bar in Washington state but equally as comfortable in the Oval Office. This week, his audience was Washington, D.C., the town that most eagerly wants him to unload on President Donald Trump. In 2016, the national security rookie-president hired the retired Marine general with great fanfare; two years later, Trump cast him aside after he resigned over policy differences — most immediately, the surprise tweet-announcement that the U.S. would pull out of Syria. On Thursday, the audience was more intimate. If there is an inner sanctum of Washington’s power elite, very close to it is the living room of Katherine and David Bradley, owner of Atlantic Media (including Defense One), whose frequent gatherings bring together leaders in politics, media, entertainment, and yes, the military. Andrea Mitchell, who had just hours earlier peppered Mattis with questions on her MSNBC show, came to hear more. Others included Bob Woodward, Bill Cohen, Dana Bash, Margaret Brennan, Sally Quinn, Heather Podesta, Margaret Carlson, Mary Louise Kelly, Elizabeth Bumiller, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Helene Cooper, Chris Frates, Philip Rucker, Michele Flournoy, Dan Lamothe, Jeremy Bash, Peter Bergen, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and others who stood at attention a bit more upright when Bradley announced unexpectedly that he told Mattis the requirement for the party was he must take a few questions.

By now, many of those paying attention to Mattis’s public reemergence are likely as frustrated as Atlantic editor Jeff Goldberg, who conducted the first post-Trump interview with the former secretary. Some are angry that Mattis, who was so opaque with the media and the American public while in office, has grown quite talkative now that he has a book to sell. And although he would like to be seen as a quiet sentinel of democracy, he is just picking and choosing when he wants to dip his toe into political issues. By going public, he has shaped the news cycle for an entire week, re-surfacing questions of Trump’s fitness to be commander in chief and inviting reconsideration of Trump administration policy on Syria, negotiations with the Taliban, U.S. military interventions, “forever wars,” the president’s ban on transgender Americans serving in uniform, the treatment of immigrant soldiers, the political theater of dispatching troops and diverting funds to the U.S.-Mexico border, and more.

Ask Mattis about any of these and you get mixed results. He is a book guy. He loves to quote history. He told Bradley’s guests that he wants more historians, not just journalists, to make sense of today’s leaders and what’s happening today. But they wanted him to make sense of recent history.

Why was Syria the last straw? Why a policy disagreement, and not something more “moral”? asked Sally Quinn.

“To me,” Mattis said, “the threat, the tweet, the pullout was a moral decision. I’d just came out, eight days before, from Ottawa, where the 16 troop-contributing nations had met. We all agreed — it was like a huddle, we put our heads, we said we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna stick with it, we’re not going to declare early victory. Some of us here are from the American West and we know what it’s like when you pull the forest-fire crews off the forest fire early. We’d done it in Iraq. We saw the tragedy when the same administration that pulled the troops out against the intelligence community’s recommendation had to put the troops back in. How many millions were made refugees? How many millions had their lives disrupted, tens of thousands murdered, children, girls enslaved? That was strategic — with moral dimensions, that was a strategic policy decision. To have our allies treated that way, as they were taking very tough steps to stick with us? Nations with allies thrive, and nations without them die. And there just came a point where I thought it was the right time to go.”

It’s that point of departure that seems to perplex most. What does Mattis stand for? When asked what most concerns him, he again turned to history and the political turmoil here and in the UK.

“The concern I have is that democracies don’t know what they stand for, or are ashamed of it, or are unwilling to say also what they absolutely will not stand for.”

He believes in America, he says. He thinks the nation is not defined by the racism and fear on display today. His faith in America probably comes from his oft-professed love and admiration for young Marines who sacrifice their lives for it. It’s not the people he worries about, it’s the commitment to each other.

Mattis repeats that the U.S. needs to sort out its global strategy. Generals love to talk about strategy. It seems safely apolitical, but without “wading into politics,” he quickly waded into politics. Without saying “Obama,” he criticized the previous administration, claiming they had no strategy when he arrived on the job for Trump. He’s proud when he says “we” reset the Pentagon to be able to deter “global power competition” from North Korea, Russia, and China. And he had a message about “forever wars” — though he did not use the phrase — for commanders in chief: “Terrorism is an ambient threat. We must continue fighting terrorism. You can want the war over, you can declare the war over — the enemy gets the vote. We’ve seen that before. We got the t-shirt, we’ve got to go back into Iraq. But look at what it cost a lot of people.”

Mattis likes to boast about the informal code that keeps retired military officers apolitical, but he’s cherry-picking. He cites Gen. Omar Bradley about keeping one’s mouth shut, but not the many, many officers who entered politics and political life admirably and with historic impact, like Presidents Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower. Mattis said he’s disagreed with two of his friends for getting into politics on the left and right: John Allen, who endorsed Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, and Mike Flynn, who led Republican cheers of “Lock her up!”, did influence work for Turkey, and became Trump’s first, and shortest-serving, national security advisor. Allen is now president of the Brookings Institution. Flynn is awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI about Russian influence in the Trump campaign. Fellow retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, listened from the back of the room.

Mattis also cherry-picks when to violate his own creed. Sometimes it’s blatant. On Andrea Mitchell’s show, he made a clear case for why Americans should believe climate change is real and make policies to prepare for it, which is the opposite of what Trump is ordering of the Pentagon. Other times, it’s a result of his choice to speak up at all. As Goldberg writes in the Atlantic, “His aides and friends say he found the president to be of limited cognitive ability, and of generally dubious character.”

And that’s the core issue. On Thursday, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly asked Mattis about the line between serving the country and serving the commander in chief.

“The duty and responsibility is to the Constitution, not the commander in chief, not to me,” Mattis replied. “I respect those that disagree with what I’m doing, but you have to go back to General Washington…” and he faded into historical examples. “General Bradley says when a general retires their uniform, they need to retire their tongue, when it comes to political issues. There are hundreds of years of you having confidence in the military that we stay out of this. Just tonight, I’ve been referred to as ‘general,’ when I walked in tonight I was welcomed as 'general'… I can rail against that, I can say my name is Jim, but the fact is I’m a general forever. And if we ever get to the point where the military is seen as saying, ‘We’re better than you. We can tell you what’s right’ — John Allen and Michael Flynn are both friends of mine, and they’ll be friends of mine ’til the day I die, because we served together in combat. But I could not disagree more strongly with what they did in the last [election] — from both sides — you know, talking about who people should be voting for? The military doesn’t do that. We defend this experiment. We don’t do any more. Fortunately, that tradition is still alive. I could very easily be the one most damning to it if I don’t be careful, and so I will retreat west of the Rockies soon and keep the Rockies between me and D.C., but in the interim, I’m not talkin’.”

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General’s Sexual Assault Accuser Was Deemed a ‘Toxic, Self-Centered Abuser,’ New Docs Reveal

Kevin Baron and Marcus Weisgerber — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 09:56:59 -0400

Military officials on Friday released hundreds of pages of documents, some previously unreported on, containing the results of two separate investigations that provide a fuller picture of the sexual-assault allegations made in April against Air Force Gen. John Hyten and of his accuser.

Most notably, they paint Army Col. Kathryn Spletstoser as a “toxic” leader who, more than one year before she accused Hyten of sexual assault, had bullied her coworkers and subordinates; displayed unprofessional, unethical, and unbecoming behavior for a senior officer; and “left a trail of bodies in her wake.”

“Her lack of self-awareness is shockingly profound,” wrote the Army one-star general who investigated multiple allegations into Spletstoser’s behavior in early 2018.

The documents were released in two batches. The first was a 59-page summary, drawn up in June, of the Air Force’s 1,350 pages of exhibits still being reviewed for potential public release. In the summary, officials indicated they could not determine whether Hyten sexually assaulted Spletstoser.

Hyten is commander of U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, which controls the military’s nuclear arsenal, and the president’s nominee to become vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — a position that directly advises the White House and is the second-highest ranking officer in the military.

In the second batch, STRATCOM officials posted a 230-page summary of the AR-15 investigation in January and February 2018 of Spletstoser, the former head of Hyten’s “commander’s action group,” or CAG, an office of internal advisors. A STRATCOM spokesman said they posted the review in response to numerous recent Freedom of Information Act requests. According to that review, Spletstoser was hired to clean up the group, which she said had “disrespected” STRATCOM’s previous commander, retired Adm. Cecil Haney. Some of her coworkers told the investigator she was a bright and knowledgeable leader for the job, but had a micromanaging style that was so harsh, and at times allegedly unethical, that turned her office against her.

Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Bowen, who conducted the 2018 investigation, found that “Col. Spletstoser has displayed a pattern of behavior that is consistent with being both an ‘insensitive driven achiever’ and a ‘toxic self-centered abuser,’” two of five characteristics defined in Army regulations. Bowen wrote that Spletstoser’s “demeaning and disrespectful approach” caused friction in the organization and “left a trail of bodies in her wake,” as she tried to improve morale after taking over several months earlier. Spletstoser denied any bullying.

“The preponderance of evidence does not support her conclusion,” Bowen wrote, citing 10 witnesses of current and past officers in the CAG. Four additional witnesses said they did not witness her bully anyone, but said her “tone and harshness of these public outbursts were beyond what is and should be expected from a senior military officer.”

Spletstoser also previously had been “verbally counseled about her vulgarity” — using curse words — but two witnesses said she continued to employ “common profanity, public beratings, and backstabbing.”

“She publicly demeans her subordinates and others, often personally attacking them for their perceived shortcomings,” Bowen wrote. “One witness quoted her as saying: ‘What the [expletive] do you do all [expletive] day…It’s not like you are [expletive] working. Don’t give me some hot-mess [expletive]…agenda either, this is staff work 101. Jesus Christ, none of you know what you are doing. You can’t accomplish basic [expletive], the most basic [expletive] tasks.’”

Witnesses in Bowen’s report also claimed that “Spletstoser would take credit for the original thinking of others by stripping their names off of emails and sending ideas to [Hyten] as if they were her own.” They also claimed she was “obsessed” with Hyten’s travel details to the point of assigning seats in motorcades.

Bowen wrote that Spletstoser, in interviews, denied most of the claims made against her despite overwhelming evidence and testimony. “Her lack of self-awareness is shockingly profound.”

In July, Defense One reported that in early April, shortly after Hyten was nominated for vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Air Force received Spletstoser’s claim that the general sexually assaulted her on numerous occasions between late 2017 and early 2018. Hyten has denied her allegations while other coworkers have questioned her claims and motive.

Many of the sentiments revealed in the investigation documents released on Friday already had been made publicly by numerous defense officials over the past month. They were among items reviewed by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which two weeks ago approved Hyten’s nomination to be vice chairman, the military’s No. 2 officer, by a vote of 20-7. The full Senate is expected to vote on his nomination next month when it returns from August recess.

During Hyten’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, raised concerns about the general’s leadership.

“I am very concerned that during the process of your time as the STRATCOM commander there had been this CAG director within your command that other people…multiple times went to you, voiced their concerns about the toxic leadership, but you did not acknowledge that. You did not do written counseling statements, you did not advise her any differently,” Ernst said. “You serve within one of the most important positions within our United States military, overseeing our nuclear arsenal, however you could not bring yourself to admit or recognize toxic leadership within your command.”

Ernst said Hyten “did nothing to change that course” until Bowden’s investigation began.

“You continued to endorse her,” Ernst said. “You only did something about it when concerns were raised about your own leadership.”

Defense One contacted Spletstoser’s attorney, who declined to provide comment immediately without consulting her client. But Spletstoser told the Washington Post in an interview Friday that “she felt Hyten and his subordinates tried to paint her as mentally unstable to ‘destroy’ her credibility before she could accuse Hyten of assault.”

The documents also reveal additional information about Hyten previously had lobbied to get Spletstoser jobs at the Pentagon and other top military commands before the period when Spletstoser says Hyten sexually assaulted her. Hyten contacted other top brass, including Gen. Mark Milley, the former Army chief of staff who will become Joint Chiefs chairman next month, and Gen. James McConville, the current Army chief of staff. Milley and McConville told investigators it was common for generals and admirals to advocate career moves for subordinates. Investigators also interviewed Gen. John Murray, the head of Army Futures Command, who had interviewed Spletstoser to be his executive officer.

In the 2018 AR-15 investigation, one of Spletstoser’s superiors, Joseph Anderson, a now-retired Army three-star general who served as a top aide to Milley at the Pentagon, called her “an unstable and irrational person who was headstrong and thought she knew best.” He said her “lack of interpersonal skills caused a lot of problems” for her direct boss, a two-star general.

Spletstroser worked at STRATCOM from May 2016 to July 2018, according to her LinkedIn profile.

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Trump Says U.S. Troops Shouldn’t Be ‘Policemen’ in Afghanistan. So Why Are They There?

Kevin Baron — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:59:22 -0400

President Donald Trump said six times on Monday that U.S. troops should not be in Afghanistan as “policemen,” undercutting his own “South Asia Strategy” and rebuffing the Pentagon’s top generals — including the one he recently nominated to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Trump barely mentions Afghanistan, most days. Think about how often he works toward or talks about Iran, a nuclear deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong un, a trade deal with China’s Xi Jinping, or any deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Think of how often he raises U.S. border security issues as a threat. Think of how often he tweets, talks, calls into Fox News shows, and riffs at his rallies about Democrats or the press. When was the last time you can recall him talking with any substance about the Afghanistan war? Even he admits he doesn’t talk about it much.

It’s not just the president. Congress has shown little recent interest in Afghanistan. In June, senators asked Milley for his thoughts on continuing America’s military mission there. “I think it is slow, it’s painful, it’s hard — I spent a lot of my life in Afghanistan — but I also think it’s necessary,” Milley said, supporting the Trump administration’s strategy. But during Army Secretary Mark Esper’s confirmation hearing last week to become the next defense secretary, senators asked a total of zero questions about Afghanistan.

On Monday, Trump welcomed Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan to the Oval Office for a photo op that turned into an extended impromptu press conference. The word “Afghanistan” appeared some 30 times as Trump complained about the war’s long duration, criticized the use of U.S. aid to rebuild schools, and disparaged the value of the U.S. military mission and presence there.

Here’s the key passage:

I think Pakistan is going to help us out to extricate ourselves. We're like policemen. We're not fighting the war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people. Does that make sense to you? I don’t want to kill 10 million people. [Editor’s note: The population of Afghanistan is about 37 million.]

I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone. It would be over in — literally, in 10 days. And I don’t want to do — I don’t want to go that route.

So we're working with Pakistan and others to extricate ourselves. Nor do we want to be policemen, because basically we're policemen right now. And we're not supposed to be policemen. We've been there — we've been there for 19 years, in Afghanistan. It's ridiculous. And I think Pakistan helps us with that because we don’t want to stay as policemen. But if we wanted to, we could win that war. I have a plan that would win that war in a very short period of time. You understand that better than anybody.

We've been in there not fighting to win, just fighting to — they're building gas stations; they're rebuilding schools. The United States, we shouldn’t be doing that. That's for them to do.

But what we did and what our leadership got us into was ridiculous. But we will — I think we'll have some very good answers on Afghanistan, very quickly.”

Nobody knows what Trump meant by “answers” or “a plan that would win that war in a very short period.” But everyone who has tracked foreign policy since the 1990s knows what that “policemen” line means. The GOP used it against Bill Clinton after he involved the United States in the Balkan Wars and after the “Black Hawk Down” disaster in Somalia. In 2000, George W. Bush used it against Vice President Al Gore. The argument was that the U.S. should not lose sight of big-power threats, like nuclear missiles, nor get entangled in small wars around the globe.

Then 9/11 happened. Suddenly Republicans were very interested in sending U.S. troops around the world to hunt, capture, and kill terrorists.

Then came Trump, who promised to withdraw from such foreign entanglements, and won. Today, a wide swath of politicians on the right and left are calling for an end to “endless wars,” including several Democratic presidential candidates. “Endless wars” effectively is the new “global police.”

But the desire to pull back runs counter to the advice of those that want the U.S. to remain — remain deployed, remain engaged, and remain ready to help with non-military plans and assistance and leadership when the wars are over.

The U.S. mission in Afghanistan, as Pentagon leaders describe it, is to keep limited forces on station to press the Taliban to the table, and to keep forces in South Asia to deter and respond to terrorist groups, especially those plotting attacks on the U.S. homeland.

Trump undermined all of that with his Monday comments. It wasn't the first time. In January, at a Cabinet meeting Trump said he'd just as well let the the Taliban and ISIS fight each other over Afghanistan and pull U.S. troops out.

Meanwhile, the president continues authorizing special operations forces missions to fight in Afghanistan, where they are hunting, capturing, and killing terrorist suspects. They go because they are told to go. Call it SOF missions, call it police action, call it whatever you want. They are sent by commanders and civilian leaders who say it is good for American national security and global security that they go.

If the commander in chief doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and in the missions that U.S. troops are currently executing on his orders, then he should say so, and bring them home now. If he does believe in it, and all of the politically difficult patience it requires, then he should defend it. Either would be better than what he said on Monday.

Trump may not like the Afghanistan war, but Trump owns the Afghanistan war.

Two weeks ago, Special Forces Sgt. Maj. James G. "Ryan" Sartor, was killed in action in Afghanistan, the twelfth to die in the country this year.

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