Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went into the hospital both before Christmas and on New Year’s Day, apparently not informing the White House and Congress on either occasion. Other than the president as commander-in-chief, SecDef Austin is the senior civilian in the U.S. military’s chain of command.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin looks on during a joint press conference with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at Israel’s Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, Israel December 18, 2023. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura/File Photo
Austin’s medical condition is serious, most recently requiring four days in an intensive care unit. A blindsided president has already declared he won’t fire Austin, nor will Austin resign. No big deal, then?
I’m amazed. One of the first and most valuable lessons I learned in the military was to keep your boss informed. Tell her if the project is behind schedule. Tell him if you’re missing critical spares that would hamper the combat performance of your unit. Don’t let your boss be blindsided. Most obviously, under combat conditions, failing to keep your boss informed of critical information is an almost certain way to get your people killed.
When I was a lieutenant, I served on the “battle staff” for exercises in Cheyenne Mountain. This was in 1986 at the tail end of the Cold War. During one exercise, a friend of mine, another LT, witnessed the commanding four-star general chewing out a colonel on his staff. The colonel had failed to tell the general that AWACS planes were unavailable during the exercise. (Remember, this was an exercise, i.e. “fake.”) My friend told me the general reamed the colonel a new one for failing to inform him of what in wartime would have been a critical piece of information.
Lloyd Austin, it seems, has been MIA for several days without keeping his immediate superior, Joe Biden, in the loop, potentially threatening the national security of our country. Yet Austin has no plans to resign and Biden has no plans to take action.
It’s a bad example to our military that something so critical as a failure to respect the chain of command is being dismissed as a trivial matter. A blindsided Biden should not turn a blind eye here. If Austin has honor, he should resign to avoid further embarrassment to his boss. If he doesn’t, Biden should fire him.
Incremental Genocide and Displacement and Replacement in Gaza
Courtesy of OpenSecrets.org, I saw a chart on AIPAC contributions to U.S. senators that showed that all 100 senators have taken AIPAC money. Leading the way are senate “giants” like Mitch McConnell (nearly two million dollars) and Chuck Schumer (roughly $1.7 million). Talk about bipartisanship! I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the U.S. Senate is so strongly pro-Israel. It obviously has nothing to do with the power of AIPAC and all that money.
Bipartisanship and no divisiveness. Who says we have a dysfunctional and divided Congress? Nonsense!
Here’s how AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) describes itself on its own web site:
The Largest Pro-Israel PAC in America
WE STAND with those who stand with Israel. The AIPAC PAC is a bipartisan, pro-Israel political action committee. It is the largest pro-Israel PAC in America and contributed more resources directly to candidates than any other PAC. 98% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their general election races in 2022.
That last sentence is a killer. AIPAC is reminding Members of Congress that if you want to be elected, or win reelection, you very much want AIPAC on your side. And if you don’t kowtow to their agenda, they will do everything in their power to defeat you.
Imagine if there was an American Palestine Public Affairs Committee, an APPAC, that contributed hundreds of thousands if not millions to every U.S. senator and that boasted of a 98% success rate in getting APPAC-anointed candidates elected or reelected. Do you think maybe the U.S. Senate would have a different position on Gaza and the West Bank?
Speaking of Gaza, I watched Chris Hedges interview Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian. Pappé put it simply and clearly: Israel is engaged in “incremental genocide” against the Palestinian people, a genocide in slow motion, a strategy of “displacement and replacement.” The “displacement” of the Palestinians is done by mass bombing, mass destruction, mass death, and (hopefully for the Israelis) mass migration, and the “replacement” will come when Jewish settlers take possession of Gaza (after a lot of munitions cleanup and infrastructure redevelopment, I suppose, probably paid for by the U.S. taxpayer).
There’s an Orwellian term for this. For mass death followed by forced expulsion, Israel is using the term “voluntary migration” (or “voluntary” emigration). But of course there is nothing “voluntary” about any of this.
If U.S. government officials appear clueless about what’s happening in Gaza, they’re not. They’re just bought and paid for.
Yesterday, Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign by visiting Valley Forge and echoing the dark times of George Washington in 1777-78 during the American Revolutionary War. In a campaign speech that lasted about 30 minutes, Biden declared that “Democracy is on the ballot,” by which he meant Trump is on the ballot. Biden denounced Trump and his MAGA supporters for the “insurrection” they launched on January 6, 2021, when “hell was unleashed” at the Capitol. We nearly lost America on that date, Biden opined, due to the Trump-inspired “violent assault” on democracy.
As a teenager, I loved to collect stamps, just like FDR did
Going further, Biden described Trump as “sick” and “despicable” and noted how recent language about “vermin” and “poison” echoed that of Nazi Germany. Trump and MAGA, Biden said, seek to “bury history” (or “steal” it) and “ban books,” with Trump himself being a sore loser who refused to admit defeat. Biden reminded the audience that being president is about duty and service to your country, including the willingness to walk away peacefully, relinquishing power gracefully when you lose.
All in all, it was a coherent speech that Biden read competently from the teleprompter. He occasionally came across as angry, especially when shouting for emphasis, but overall Biden, though he looked his age, appeared to be committed and engaged.
To me, the main problem with Biden’s speech was that it focused almost entirely on Trump. The essence was “Trump bad,” therefore vote for me, Joe Biden, to secure America’s future, with that “future” left entirely unspecified. The Trump future would be violent, racist, and divisive, marked by vitriol and vengeance, so Biden claimed. A Biden future wouldn’t be that, apparently, but no other details were offered. Biden offered no positive vision.
Biden closed his speech with the usual boilerplate: that America is “the greatest nation on the face of the earth” and “the greatest nation in the history of the world.” Biden said “We know America is winning,” but what exactly we’re winning was left unspecified. Rhetorically, Biden asked “Who are we?” then enjoined us “Just remember who we are.” Huh? Then he said we’re the people who emerge stronger after every crisis. Does that mean we should wish for another Trump crisis so we can emerge stronger still?
Finally, Biden used a phrase that Hillary used to use for us commoners: “everyday people.” Remember when presidents used to say, my fellow Americans, when addressing us? Now we’re “everyday people” as opposed to what, exactly? Someday people? In Washington, I gather there are special people, the elites, the best and brightest, like Joe Biden, and then there are the masses, the everyday people, like you and me.
And I think that’s a big problem for the Beltway crowd: the “everyday people” might just prefer Trump and the chaos he represents. Come November, we’ll find out.
What will historians say decades or centuries from now when the U.S. empire collapses into ruin? How will they explain it?
Consider the United States in the big picture. I see a country with unique strengths. Two wide oceans protecting us. A long secure border with Canada. A securable border with Mexico, the current immigrant “crisis” be damned. Canada and Mexico aren’t our enemies. No invasion is coming from them. As a country, the USA occupies a geographical/global position that is uniquely safe and advantageous.
Why are we so fearful? Why do we spend a trillion dollars (or more) each year on national “defense”?
How incredibly lucky we are! (Credit: Tom Van Sant/Geosphere Project, Santa Monica/Science Photo Library)
Of course, I put “defense” in quotes because the USA is an empire with a military configured for offense. Global reach, global power, was the motto of my service, the U.S. Air Force. The U.S. military strives for full-spectrum dominance, meaning total control of the land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, justified in the false name of “defense.” The cost of this febrile quest for dominance is, I believe, ultimately unbearable. Why do we persist in such folly?
What country would dare to attack the USA? Other than small terrorist networks like Al Qaeda, no country, no people, no leaders in their right mind would dare attack us, let alone invade us. They know they’d likely be obliterated if they did. Does anyone truly fear an attack on the USA from China? Russia? Iran? North Korea? Given America’s belligerence, evidence of our unbridled vengeance after Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and our vast arsenal of highly destructive weaponry, including thousands of nuclear warheads, anyone attacking the U.S. would be pursuing a death wish.
I am not afraid of Russia, a regional power that is stuck in a quagmire war against Ukraine. I am not afraid of China, a regional military power and economic superpower that is tied to us in global trade and has no intent, near as I can tell, to attack my country. I am not afraid of Iran, or North Korea, or similar “threats” of the moment. So why is my government constantly exaggerating these threats and telling me to be afraid?
Of course, I know all about Ike’s military-industrial-congressional complex. I write against it all the time. It’s not just the MICC and its pursuit of profits and power, however. It’s the corporate interests that say Taiwan must be “protected” for its microchips, the Middle East must be “protected” because of its oil, that Ukraine must be “protected” for its rich agricultural wealth (even as Russia’s gas pipelines to Germany are destroyed) and the riches to be had once the war is over and Ukraine is rebuilt. I know there’s nothing new about this; I’ve read my Smedley Butler.
When I first signed up for the U.S. military in 1981, and then went on active duty in 1985, I thought the U.S. did face a possible existential threat: the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and Communism. By 1991, that threat was largely gone. Even Cold War hawks like Jeanne Kirkpatrick wrote enthusiastically of the U.S. becoming a normal country in normal times. WTF happened? Why didn’t we?
Here we are, more than 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. government is selling Putin’s Russia as a serious threat again. When we see clear evidence that Putin has more than enough to handle with Ukraine, we’re told to look toward China as the Next Big Threat. Meanwhile, irrational, indefensible, blank checks of support given to Israel in its murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza threaten a wider war in the Middle East, a war some in our government seem to be spoiling to fight, knowing of course that they and theirs won’t be fighting it.
We Americans need to get a collective grip on ourselves and our own government. Stop feeding the Pentagon brass with money: it only encourages the bastards. Stop listening to the fear mongers. Turn off the mainstream media and ignore all the threat inflation. Look within yourself and control the fear and divisiveness they try to instill in you.
As Senator George McGovern, a war hero, said in 1972 when he won the Democratic nomination for the presidency: Come home, America. Close most of the military bases that America has overseas. Make deep cuts to the Pentagon war budget. Let other peoples settle their differences without our meddling, without our depleted uranium shells, without our cluster munitions, without our Hellfire missiles, without our mendacious rhetoric about a “rules-based order.”
Come home, America. We have a vast country with vast potential—and serious problems. Time to tackle them instead of seeking to dominate the world.
Or, as the Good Book says, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3 NIV) Yes, indeed. Let’s remove the planks from our own eyes, which should keep us very busy for decades, rather than globetrotting to remove the sawdust from the eyes of other peoples who’d prefer us to stay home and leave them alone.
Bracing Views 