Fixing the Pentagon
The commander-in-chief began a shakeup at the top that should bring needed changes.
Surely, General Charles Q. Brown had already packed his bags by the time the ax fell on Friday night. As expected, Donald Trump fired the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and five other DEI-promoting Pentagon officials. It’s all part of Trump’s strategy to drop a bomb on DOD DEI and recalibrate America’s military to avoid left-wing social engineering and refocus on readiness.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump thanked Brown “for his over 40 years of service to our country,” adding that he’s “a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader.”
That praise notwithstanding, Brown was appointed to the post by Joe Biden in 2023 as part of his quest to remake every part of government in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mold. Brown may have been an improvement over his predecessor, General Mark Milley, but that’s a low bar. He also had a record of race-based promotions, having used his Air Force tenure to promote DEI.
It’s time to move on.
As the next chair of the Joint Chiefs, Trump has nominated Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine, a rather unconventional choice given that he has not held any of the positions required by U.S. Code. Trump can and will waive those requirements, and Caine must be confirmed by the Senate.
In the aforementioned Truth Social post, Trump called Caine “an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.” He added, “During my first term, Razin was instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate.” Pending Senate confirmation, Trump concluded, “Alongside Secretary Pete Hegseth, General Caine and our military will restore peace through strength, put America First, and rebuild our military.”
In a statement, Hegseth agreed: “Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars.”
That should elicit a one-word response: Duh.
What else should the United States military be doing? Of course, it hasn’t been that simple under the administrations of Joe Biden and Barack Obama before him. Whereas Bill Clinton hampered military readiness with significant budget cuts and submission to UN peacekeeping missions, Obama and Biden rotted the core of the military by pushing leftist ideology in the ranks. That destroyed morale and, in the last couple of years in particular, caused recruitment numbers to collapse. During that recruitment crisis, Biden chose to kick out healthy and capable young people because they didn’t get the COVID vaccine.
Fortunately, a needed reversal has already begun.
Democrats hate it, of course. Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, complained, “This appears to be part of a broader, premeditated campaign by President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to purge talented officers for politically charged reasons, which would undermine the professionalism of our military and send a chilling message through the ranks.”
Precisely the opposite is true. Trump and Hegseth are primarily interested in merit, readiness, and the military’s core mission.
Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Allen West likewise disagrees with Reed and other complainers. “For all the leftists and politicized military pundits lamenting the dismissal of General Charles Q. Brown, where was your wailing about national security when Barack Hussein Obama fired nearly 200 Generals in five years?” he asked. “General Brown was released because he felt it more important to delve into matters of social justice than national security. He also commented that he preferred only a certain percentage of pilots be white in the Air Force. He was an acolyte of cultural Marxist philosophy known as DEI/CRT.”
CRT stands for critical race theory, and West is right that it’s Marxist. CRT and DEI are politically charged methods and beliefs. Getting rid of them is just what the U.S. military needs, and that change will have to happen up and down the chain of command.
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