XPost: alt.security.terrorism, alt.politics.nationalism.black, talk.politics.guns
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics
Anyone following how weak and passive the United States has been in the
face of provocations from our adversaries in the Middle East might
conclude that the secretary of defense has gone missing.
And at least for a few days last week, he literally was.
In an age when it’s nearly impossible to go off the grid, Secretary of
Defense Lloyd Austin managed it.
He failed to notify the White House and other key players that he was hospitalized in the intensive-care unit.
This, needless to say, is not an incidental detail about his life — like,
say, that he routinely does his grocery shopping on Saturday afternoons or
is taking the Kansas City Chiefs and giving the points this weekend.
If the principal deputy assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity went missing, presumably only her personal assistant would
notice and the country would be better for it.
The secretary of defense, in contrast, is a rather consequential position
in the US government. He is in charge of the largest and most important
part of the executive branch and second in the chain of command only to
the president of the United States.
He is central to any number of scenarios crucial to US national security, including the decision to launch a nuclear strike.
If a US destroyer gets hit in the Red Sea, you don’t want US commanders
and high US officials wondering where the SecDef is.
Although much remains unanswered, we know that Austin had an elective
medical procedure at Walter Reed hospital Dec. 22. Back home, he
experienced severe pain and returned to the hospital Jan. 1 and was put in intensive care.
Somehow even Austin’s deputy secretary, who picked up some of his duties, didn’t learn of his whereabouts until four days after his hospitalization.
Loose lips may sink ships, but spectacularly dysfunctional lack of communication at the top of the US government is its own problem.
Just as no Harvard freshman could get away with the copying that Claudine
Gay engaged in, no private first class could go AWOL and expect to remain
in the military.
The Pentagon says it couldn’t notify other VIPs like, you know, the
president of the United States, because Austin’s chief of staff was also
ill.
Are we really supposed to believe that no one else at the Pentagon has
access to a phone or email?
We are obviously not living through an era of great bipartisanship, so it
was notable that the Austin absence resulted in a joint statement from the Republican chairman and the Democratic ranking member of the House Armed Services committee pointedly asking for more information about the days in question.
The White House, naturally, immediately made clear its “complete trust and confidence in Secretary Austin.”
In fairness, once someone has presided over the pullout of Afghanistan
without getting fired, it’s hard to cashier him for anything short of
losing some other country in humiliating fashion.
This fiasco could simply be Austin’s own unbelievable personal lapse. But
it’s hard not to see the controversy in the context of an administration
that when it comes to national security cares as much about fashionable ideological fixations — from DEI to the climate — as the essentials
involved in maintaining a highly capable war-fighting machine.
And the most important lack of transparency about health is happening
before our eyes. It doesn’t involve any cabinet official but the commander
in chief himself.
We are told that Joe Biden is robust and energetic when he is increasingly rickety and, seemingly, easily confused.
We can be sure if the president gets worse, the White House — adopting the Austin policy — will do everything in its power to hide the ball.
Meanwhile, we’ve conducted a real-time experiment regarding Biden foreign policy. With a war on in Gaza and Iranian proxies attacking US interests throughout the Middle East, the secretary of defense disappeared, and it
didn’t matter.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/08/opinion/lloyd-austins-vanishing-act-is-an- indictment-of-the-biden-admins-uselessness-and-sneakiness/
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