Tag Archives: Joint Chiefs of Staff

Can We Please Get Back To Merit-Based Promotions?

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You have to admit that the Biden administration is diverse. There are people in high positions representing all sectors of society. However, there seems to be a lack of people qualified to do their job. We have had supply chain problems, airline problems, train problems, etc., while the Transportation Secretary tells us that highways are racist. Was he appointed because he was the most qualified person or because he represented a minority sexual orientation? Actually some highways are racist. The parkways on Long Island were specifically built with bridges too low for buses from New York City to go through. The people who lived on Long Island did not want the city residents taking buses to the beaches there. That is racist, but that is also the1950’s–before the civil rights movement. There are other examples of questionable cabinet appointments in the Biden administration, but I am sure you get my point.

On Sunday, The Daily Caller reported that General Mark Milley is retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff later this year.

The article reports:

  • Air Force chief of staff Gen. Charles Q. “C.Q.” Brown and Marine Corps commandant Gen. David Berger have emerged as the top contenders to replace Gen. Mark Milley as President Joe Biden’s top adviser on military issues after Milley’s retirement in October.
  • The Biden administration’s perception of China’s military designs will dictate his decision more than anything else, experts said.
  • “I think General Berger would be more unflappable but that General Brown might be more inspirational,” Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific security chair at Hudson Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Both contenders to replace Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff later this year are focused on change to counter China, but one is prone to radical changes while the other affirms the administration’s ideological priorities, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

With Milley, a Trump appointee, set to retire by October, President Joe Biden is expected to announce his pick to replace the outgoing Army four-star soon between top prospects Air Force chief of staff Gen. Charles Q. “C.Q.” Brown and Marine Corps commandant Gen. David Berger, according to The New York Times. Both would differ from Milley’s gregarious leadership style, but while Brown has experience in a key area of operations and satisfies the Biden administration’s focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in public service, Berger has shown the grit to make radical, if difficult, changes necessary for coming great power conflict, according to defense experts and media

Is it racist to point out that one of the candidates is black? Does that give him an edge? If he is appointed, will it be because he is the best man for the job or because of the Biden administration’s focus on diversity? The problem with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda is that you never know if the person you are dealing with got the job because he was qualified or because of some other factor. That is unfair to the person who got the job and unfair to the people who did not get the job. DEI is racism disguised as equality.

 

 

 

Another Voice In The Current Scandal

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The Red State Observer reported yesterday that former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, who was in charge of the Pentagon during the time General Milley made his calls to Chine, has stated that he never authorized those calls.

The article reports:

In a statement to Fox News, Miller said that the United States Armed Forces, from its inception, has “operated under the inviolable principle of civilian control of the military.”

“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military officer whose sole role is providing military-specific advice to the president, and by law is prohibited from exercising executive authority to command forces,” Miller said. “The chain of command runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense, not through the Chairman.”

…The book (“Peril,” co-written by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa) claims Milley contacted Li after he had reviewed intelligence that suggested Chinese officials believed the United States was planning an attack on China amid military exercises in the South China Sea. The authors of the book also claim Milley contacted Li a second time to reassure him that the U. S. would not make any type of advances or attack China in any form, as Milley promised, “We are 100% steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”

But Fox News spoke with multiple individuals who were in the room during the two phone calls Milley had with Li. The calls, in October, were coordinated with then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s office.

“They were not secret,” a U. S. official told Fox News about the calls, which took place over video teleconference.

The article continues:

Fox News has learned there were about 15 people present for the calls. Sources told Fox News that there were multiple notetakers present, and said the calls were both conducted with full knowledge of then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller – something Miller denied.

“If the reporting in Woodward’s book is accurate, it represents a disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination by the Nation’s top military officer,” Miller said, adding that if the story of Milley’s “histrionic outbursts and unsanctioned, anti-Constitutional involvement in foreign policy prove true, he must resign immediately or be fired by the Secretary of Defense to guarantee the sanctity of the officer corps.”

“Pursuit of partisan politics and individual self-interests are a violation of an officer’s sacred duty and have no place in the United States military,” Miller said, adding that “a lesser ranking officer accused of such behavior would immediately be relieved of duty pending a thorough and independent investigation.”

“As secretary of defense, I did not and would not ever authorize such conduct,” Miller said.

I should note here that sources in the Defense Department (and our military) are not always reliable.

The article notes:

And former chief of staff for the Department of Defense Kash Patel told Fox News that “the law governing the Joint Chiefs of Staff specifically forbids the chairman from exercising any operational command authority.”

“Congress put this in the statute because the U. S. military is to be led by a civilian, the commander-in-chief,” Patel continued. “Furthermore, by law, the national command authority goes from the president to the secretary of Defense to include anything relating troop deployments, operations in theaters of war, and nuclear command.”

Patel added that if the calls with China are true, Milley “has violated the law regarding operational authority.”

Stay tuned.

This Seems Odd To Me

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The New York Post posted an article today about a memo written by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to every member of the U.S. military.

The article reports:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a rare warning to every member of the US military, damning the Capitol riots as an illegal “assault” on democracy — and forewarning that “violence, sedition and insurrection” will not be tolerated.

“The violent riot in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process,” the military’s top leaders told troops Tuesday in an internal memo, calling it “inconsistent with the rule of law.”

While the seven generals and one admiral — including chairman Gen. Mark Milley — did not directly accuse military members of involvement with the “unprecedented” siege, it was a clear warning against involvement in feared plans for more revolts.

“As service members, we must embody the values and ideals of the nation. We support and defend the Constitution,” the Joint Chiefs reminded troops.

“Any act to disrupt the Constitutional process is not only against our traditions, values and oath; it is against the law,” they wrote.

“The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection.”

Some military veterans have been charged over the riots, including a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel photographed holding zip-tie handcuffs on a chamber floor.

An Army psychological warfare officer is among the active-duty members known to be being investigated after she admitted to taking at least 100 people to President Trump’s rally before the siege.

My understanding is that as long as she was not in uniform, she had every right to take part in the rally. Obviously she had no right to take part in what went on in the Capitol, but there is no evidence that she took part in that. If she is punished in any way for taking part in the rally, then we have a problem. Her First Amendment rights as a private citizen have been violated. There is a valid lawsuit here.

I’m Grateful We Didn’t Know About This When It Happened

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On Tuesday The Daily Telegraph posted a story about some events in the White House during the Clinton presidency.

The article reports:

For several months during Bill Clinton’s administration, a former top military officer says the White House lost the card with a set of numbers for opening the briefcase containing the codes for a nuclear attack.

Gen Hugh Shelton, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, said in his new memoir, “Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior” that “the codes were actually missing for months. That’s a big deal – a gargantuan deal.”

…A similar claim was made by Lt Col Robert Patterson, a former aide, in a book published seven years ago. He was one of the men who carried the briefcase, known as the “football”, and he said that the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that he made a routine request of the president to present the card so that he could provide an updated version.

“He thought he just placed them upstairs,” Lt Col Patterson recalled.

“We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and he finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen them.”

The article also notes:

Former president Jimmy Carter was rumoured to have once left the “biscuit” in a suit that was sent to the dry cleaners.

Please follow the link above to the article–there are some very interesting quotes at the end. Meanwhile, it seems as if the people concerned about Donald Trump having the nuclear codes might want to check the skeletons in their own closets.

I Don’t Know Why This Makes Me Crazy, But It Does

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Military.com reported last Thursday that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review ethics training and to brainstorm on ways to steer officers away from trouble. This is the same Leon Panetta that was President Bill Clinton‘s White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997. One wonders if he every made a similar recommendation for ethics training for Presidents.

The article reports:

Panetta told Dempsey to work with the chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to review ethics training for officers to determine whether they are adequate, and to provide views on “how to better foster a culture of value-based decision-making and stewardship” among senior officers and their staffs. That is another way of saying Panetta wants a game plan for ending the string of bad behavior.

He said the initial results of the chiefs’ review, along with their recommendations, should be ready in time for Panetta to report to President Barack Obama by Dec. 1. The text of the Panetta memo, which he signed on Wednesday, was provided Thursday to reporters traveling with the Pentagon chief, who was in Bangkok for talks with senior Thai government officials in advance of Obama’s visit here this weekend.

I probably need to apologize for my cynicism, but how come the Defense Secretary, the State Department, and the CIA can’t get a report on Benghazi on the President’s desk by December 1? It would seem to me that Benghazi would have a higher priority?

The article further points out:

Panetta also told reporters he could not rule out the possibility that the Taliban in Afghanistan would try to use Petraeus’ admission of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, for propaganda purposes. Petraeus, who resigned Friday from his post as CIA director, was Allen’s predecessor as top commander in Afghanistan, leaving in summer 2011.

I am sorry that General Petraeus and General Allen did not behave appropriately while they were in Afghanistan. However, I need someone to explain to me why the head of the CIA had to resign over an extra-marital affair and the President of America (Bill Clinton) remained in office after an extra-marital affair. I am more than a little confused.

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Why Al Qaeda And the Muslim Brotherhood Are Winning

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Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are cut of the same cloth. The documents uncovered in the Holy Land Foundation Trial (if you follow the link, the first half is in Arabic, the second half is the English translation) explained clearly that the Muslim Brotherhood was (and is) in the process of implementing a plan to bring America under Sharia Law and create a world-side caliphate. The plan of the Brotherhood is to do this by infiltrating the American government and influencing policy. Al Qaeda has the same goal–they just want to do it by violent means rather than peaceful means.

Breitbart.com reported yesterday that US Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley was condemned by the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and relieved of teaching duties at Joint Forces Staff College for teaching a course judged to be offensive to Islam.

The article reports:

Yet the craziest part of all this is that “the course content, the guest speakers, and the method of instruction” for the course was all approved by the the Joint Forces Staff College “years ago.” 

Former CIA agent Claire M. Lopez commented on the state of things: “All US military Combatant Commands, Services, the National Guard Bureau, and Joint Chiefs are under Dempsey’s Muslim Brotherhood-dictated order to ensure that henceforth, no US military course will ever again teach truth about Islam that the jihadist enemy finds offensive (or just too informative).”

This is how you lose a war.

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Refusing To Fund The Defense Of America

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The Joint Chiefs of Staff, photographed in the...

Image via Wikipedia

Foolishness begins at the top.

Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution states:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and
Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general
Welfare of the United States;

The budget cuts in the defense the President is enacting combined with the move to turn Afghanistan back over to the Taliban will make this nation more vulnerable to attack than we were before 9/11.

Investors.com posted an article on the defense cuts today.

The article reports:

In an unusual appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday, President Obama laid out his plans for a “leaner” military based on the need “to renew our economic strength here at home, which is the foundation of our strength in the world.”

In other words, failed domestic policies require us to cut our military in a dangerous world.

The article concludes:

As a chart produced by the committee shows, the cumulative cuts are real cuts, both in spending levels and in military capability. The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said in written statements released during his recent confirmation hearings, “National security didn’t cause the debt crisis, nor will it solve it.”

We would note that defense is a constitutional imperative — not an optional budget item — and that the question should be what do we need to defend ourselves and our interests, not simply what we can afford as the result of failed administration policies.

This is another move toward turning America into a European socialist country. The reason Europe has been able to spend the amount of money it spends on welfare programs is that America has always been the big guy on the block who would come to their rescue if needed. With America essentially stepping down from her role as a world leader, there is now no one able to protect the freedom of the free countries throughout the world. We may not like to role of defender of freedom in the world, but it was a role put on us because of the blessings we have been given. It’s amazing to me that the people who are always demanding more from the ‘rich’ don’t seem to understand that America is a rich country and has a responsibility to use a part of that wealth to defend freedom.

This is simply foolishness on the part of the President.

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