Trump administration removes senior defense officials and installs loyalists, triggering alarm at Pentagon

The Trump administration has carried out sweeping changes atop the Defense Department's civilian leadership structure, removing several of its most senior officials and replacing them with perceived loyalists to the President.

The flurry of changes, announced by the Department of Defense in a statement roughly 24 hours after President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, have put officials inside the Pentagon on edge and fueled a growing sense of alarm among military and civilian officials, who are concerned about what could come next.

Four senior civilian officials have been fired or have resigned since Monday, including Esper, his chief of staff and the top officials overseeing policy and intelligence. They were replaced by perceived Trump loyalists, including a controversial figure who promoted fringe conspiracy theories and called former President Barack Obama a terrorist.

A senior defense official told CNN late Tuesday that "it appears we are done with the beheadings for now," referring to the wave of ousted civilian leaders, including Esper.

But the moves will likely only add to the sense of chaos within the Pentagon following Trump's firing of Esper. The President jettisoned him two days after his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, was projected as the winner of the presidential election, a conclusion that Trump has refused to accept. Concerns are growing that a chaotic transition period could undermine national security.

While top officials have been dealing with Trump's unpredictable decision making since he took office, the current level of uncertainty has risen steadily since the election.

Knowledgeable sources told CNN's Jake Tapper Tuesday that the White House now seems focused on going after Esper's under secretaries at the Defense Department in the wake of his firing on Monday. Esper was replaced by Christopher Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

The sources said the effort may be because Esper and his team were pushing back on a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan that would be carried out before the required conditions on the ground were met, and other pending security issues.
"This is scary, it's very unsettling," one defense official told CNN. "These are dictator moves."

dictator moves?

he is making the deep state angry again

to withdraw troops is a bad thing eh?

nunativs must like war

Quote
fresh


nunativs must like war

Don't be silly, Paradise on Earth is the polar OPPOSITE of War...

Then you'll be happy to know that Biden has been on his phone talking to all the Foreign Leaders setting up the plans they all have for all We Peon Citizens of the world as far as 'Foreign Policy', intrigue, nefarious wars go. Remember that's what he's all about - Ukrane, Hunter, China, all the Foreign Stuff; that's his thing. He'll make Trump look like a peacenik. In fact, they'll probably give Biden the Nobel Peace Prize like they did Trump who took all Bush's wars to a whole other level. Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his Middle East peace treaties, but do you think The Left will ever give it to Trump - ha!

Ben Rhodes: Biden "Having Phone Calls" With Foreign Leaders About "The Agenda They're Going To Pursue"

[www.realclearpolitics.com]

Former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes said the Trump administration is in for a "rude awakening" while talking about the incoming Biden administration on MSNBC Monday.

"The center of political gravity in this country and the world is shifting to Joe Biden," Rhodes declared. "Foreign leaders are already having phone calls with Joe Biden, talking about the agenda they're going to pursue on January 20th. If that reality hasn't sunk in yet for some people in the White House, it will sink in when they have to leave on January 20th. And they're going to be in for a rude awakening here."

*********

It'll be fun watching The Libs defending Biden's Wars, although they all already went from being Anti-War to Warmongers under Obama.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2020 02:05AM by Jennifer.

These are NOT boring times!

NN

then don't post things without comment

seemed like another trump criticism

Quote
fresh

then don't post things without comment

seemed like another trump criticism

Dude you do that constantly, at least I copy/paste highlight pertinent to me phrases. Yes, I'm worried about what he's got on tap...

no comment means i agree with the sentiment

or it's amusing

i comment when needed.

so you're worried

that's not life affirming.

get in the lifestream

the basis for your post is pulling out of wars

you're making it about something else


so my comment was on point.

Quote
Jennifer

Then you'll be happy to know that Biden has been on his phone talking to all the Foreign Leaders setting up the plans they all have for all We Peon Citizens of the world as far as 'Foreign Policy', intrigue, nefarious wars go. Remember that's what he's all about - Ukraine, Hunter, China, all the Foreign Stuff; that's his thing. He'll make Trump look like a peacenik.

It'll be fun watching The Libs defending Biden's Wars, although they all already went from being Anti-War to Warmongers under Obama.

From the Libertarians at Mises -

With a Biden Win, The War Party Will Be Back in Full Force

[mises.org]

If Democratic candidate Joe Biden is elected America’s forty-sixth president, what happens to the mandate to end the endless wars? It doesn’t go away, but rather falls on the Democrat-controlled House and (presumably, for now) Republican-controlled Senate.

President Donald Trump was elected partly due to his promise to rein in the US government’s military intervention abroad. He managed to not start any new wars, but he hasn’t ended any either. That may be changing in Afghanistan now. Only time will tell, but it’ll have to be be sooner rather than later.

However dissatisfying Trump’s contributions to peace and a nonintervention foreign policy have been, his policies have also enraged the War Party, which went all in for Biden.

With a long list of war hawks as his backers and Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, there is no hope that Biden will embrace Trump’s foreign policy agenda, let alone be a more antiwar version of President Barack Obama.

Neoconservatives Back Biden

In June 2020, nearly three hundred former Bush officials announced they were backing Biden as president by launching a PAC.

Hoping to mobilize disaffected hawkish Republicans who felt marginalized due to Trump’s win, the group added dozens of former senator Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign staffers as well as more than a hundred former staff members of deceased senator John McCain’s congressional offices.

The alliance was so effective in bringing neoconservatives together with the sole purpose of beating Trump’s foreign policy that more than seventy former US national security officials joined the effort.

To them, Trump’s term proved crippling to America’s national security. A Biden presidency, on the other hand, would mean a return to a fully bellicose America.

“Very capable foreign policy advisers stood by him during the election campaign,” former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, famous for his role in terror bombing Vietnam and Cambodia, said recently.

Nothing in Biden’s record or campaign offers any sign that he will run things differently from Trump’s recent predecessors. Biden has supported virtually every war that the US has waged during his near forty years in office, including while he was the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War. Furthermore, his campaign has claimed Biden will initially use diplomacy to force Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to “share power.” In other words, a Biden/Harris administration would actively seek to bring yet another Middle Eastern leader down.

None of this was made an issue in the media this year. Instead, the Commission on Presidential Debates removed foreign policy from the final debate. Reporters covering Biden never grilled him on his foreign policy stances, and his campaign released little information on what the candidate intended to do with the troops stationed in the Middle East.

That doesn’t mean the American people don’t care about foreign policy. In addition to the ascendant progressive caucus of the Democratic Party, Trump also improved on his support from 2016 and so did Republicans running who embraced his America First agenda. The wars abroad remain unpopular.

What remains to be seen is whether Congress will collapse under pressure from the War Party or seize upon the disconnect between Biden and the American people. Unfortunately, recent history all but guarantees that some congressmen and senators will deem the former more advantageous for their political careers.

"War Caucus"

In early 2019, Trump announced he was planning on pulling US forces out of Syria. The Islamic State had been defeated, he explained, and there was no reason why US troops should remain in the region. Going against intelligence officials, he ordered the military to lay the groundwork for troop removal, beginning with half of the fourteen thousand US forces that at the time remained in Afghanistan.