February 21, 2021
How the Biden Administration is Politicizing the Military
By James S. Corum
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made it absolutely clear that the U.S. military’s top priority is not facing external threats, such as the Chinese or Iran’s aggressive strategy in the Middle East or foreign terrorist groups. Instead, Austin sees the main threat as coming from within the U.S. military. In his confirmation hearings, Austin said that he would make it his priority to combat racism and extremism in the United States military. Once confirmed as defense secretary, he ordered a two-month stand-down of the American military in order to examine the problems of extremism among military personnel.
National defense is supposed to be a bipartisan endeavor, yet never before has a defense secretary made such overt moves to politicize the military. Austin’s order to remove all Trump appointees to the 42 Defense Department advisory boards is unprecedented and downright stupid. I have some experience with advisory boards in a military organization and find them very useful. Advisory boards are a second set of eyes from outside the organization to review policies, planning or course curricula and offer suggestions. Often outside advisors spot a problem your organization overlooked or offer good ideas for better policy implementation. And it’s useful to have a diversity of ideas for policy review. But cutting off all input from anyone connected to Trump (representing 74 million voters) and accepting advice only from Biden loyalists will ensure only party line thinking will be allowed in the military. Two notable defense secretaries were famous for not listening to advice or tolerating debate on policy as they insisted it was “their way or the highway†in defense decisions. Those secretaries were Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld, and both led our armed forces into military disaster. Lloyd Austin seems bent on choosing the worst defense secretaries in our history as his leadership models.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/how_the_biden_administration_is_politicizing_the_military.html
