By John F. Di Leo: There isn’t much left in this regime to shock the consumer of news. We have grown accustomed to the daily cavalcade of assaults on American freedoms in the Federal Register; both the autocrat-in-chief and his press secretary have mainstreamed the practice of lying about virtually every issue. They attempt to take both sides of foreign policy issues within the same speech, claiming to be supporters of Israel while supporting Hamas, claiming to be opposed to the risk of nuclear war while encouraging Iranian nuclear advancement.
What is left to shock us, in such an environment? Well, sometime Friday, January 5, the story developed that Lloyd Austin, the 70-year-old Secretary of Defense, was in intensive care, at Walter Reed Hospital, and had been for four days – without anybody notifying anyone in the regime. In fact, not only did the Department of Defense keep his hospitalization a secret from the White House and the National Security Advisor, DoD personnel specifically lied when asked, claiming that Mr. Austin had been “working from home.”
Now, we must of course stipulate, before we go any further, that Lloyd Austin isn’t exactly a standout in his role. Like everyone else in the Biden-Harris regime, he’s been lackluster at best, dreadful at worst. He bears at least partial responsibility for many of the foreign policy and military disasters throughout this dumpster fire of a presidential term.
Austin has issued orders to the military in support of convoluted leftist re-definitions of extremism in an effort to drive Republicans out of the military. Austin implemented mandatory use of untested COVID vaccines and supervised the dismissal of servicemen who refused, even on religious grounds. Austin was in charge of the DoD when it so severely mismanaged the pullout from 2021 Afghanistan, leaving tens of billions of dollars’ worth of sensitive equipment behind, not to mention abandoning thousands of employees and allies to the Taliban. And that’s just the highlight reel of his disastrous tenure.
Even if none of these decisions were his choice, an honorable Secretary of Defense would have resigned his office and left the administration rather than agreeing to implement such positions. Lloyd Austin made them his own, implementing every leftist, anti-American decision that the Biden-Harris regime came up with.
But all his failures notwithstanding – the Secretary of Defense remains a critical element of the decision process, whenever the United States has to make a quick policy decision. Even when it’s just being the person to say the cursory “yes, of course, make it so” to an obvious question – still, he is the one to say it, the one who has to say it. And that means both the DoD and the White House have to be able to reach him at a moment’s notice. THAT!
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On the totally dismissive other hand, this is what happens when the Administrative State is running things. Things keep happening automatically because the ones in charge are not needed. No one is responsible or accountable. The machinery runs unseen and unchecked. Oil it with enough cash and feed it enough power, and it will last seemingly forever. For one thing, totalitarian governments don’t expose their weakness to commoners.
On the contrary, this sorry excuse of a secdef shames the millions who gave their best years to the defense of America. To cut to the chase, either the SCOTUS euthanizes the efforts of the political mongrel dogs installed in the DC government, or Americans lock and load. In America the Second Amendment exists and it was put into place not so the people can go deer and duck hunting. It was ratified to keep the Federal Government polite which the citizens, themselves, can no longer be expected to remain.
Americans worry not as much about the clarity of the Constitution as they do about compromised judges, chief of which appears to be the Chief justice. America’s future will be about the SCOTUS rulings, the very Court that failed us the last time, or a country which disassembles violently. And the SCOTUS will not retain immunity from the Pandora Box occupants that they did not seal the lid on in 2020. We have seen what happens in other countries where the populations are nowhere near as endowed with abilities and facilities to achieve retribution against their governments.
The District of Columbia is now a pariah. THAT!
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And this is what the first week of 2024 proved, to Washington watchers all around the world. The chiefs at the DoD, both Hatched and un-Hatched, didn’t feel any need to tell anyone else about their figurehead of a Secretary’s illness and indisposition. They didn’t keep a secret as their boss was shuttling between confidential meetings across the globe, or anything similarly job-related. The man was just in a nearby hospital, sedated, with a possibly life-threatening condition, and they didn’t tell his bosses, the press, or the American people, all of whom deserved to know.
Some things are obvious. This shows their cockiness and irresponsibility; they didn’t tell a boss they don’t respect, or a press they don’t respect, or a public they don’t respect. Lots of people should be offended today. But even more than that, this shows more clearly than anything else how independent, how rudderless, how powerful our bureaucracy thinks itself to be. All the conservative accusations of the past half century are proven true by this one situation. We say that the bureaucracy has gotten too big for its britches, that the deep state behaves as if it’s independent of the political system and the will of the people.
And sure enough, the biggest department – the one with the guns, the one that our Founding Fathers would definitely have said was the most important one to keep under heel – doesn’t respect the concept of “civilian control” enough to even report the incapacity of its Secretary up the chain of command.
The Leviathan has indeed developed an ego that needs to be reined in, before it’s too late. THAT – over and OUT!
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By John F. Di Leo: