Year in and year out, of all of our nation’s great institutions, our military since the founding has been among the most cherished. Its members, current, former, deceased, and retired are honored and revered. Its traditions are deeply respected and its deeds proudly recounted, not just by Americans but by free and once oppressed people around the world.
And synonymous with the broad term ‘military’ is the entity known as “The Pentagon”, where the values are enshrined, the strategies developed, the nation’s commitments directed and carried out.
Whenever a decision related to our national defense or the US military is reported, it is usually announced as a “Pentagon” action.
This past week has seen press report after press ‘analysis’ related to the ‘resignation’ of Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis…the ‘boss’ of the “Pentagon”.
Some news outlets have suggested that the greatly admired Mattis’s resignation was received with grave concern and criticism of President Trump by “the Pentagon”. Reports include anecdotes on how distressed were folks ‘at the Pentagon’.Mattis has been portrayed by many in the media as the “adult” in the presidents’ Cabinet, suggesting he may be the only one in Washington capable of advising and implementing effective military strategy in these ‘troubled times’.
News stories, reporting on some President Trump foreign affairs action, often notes that ‘many in the Pentagon expressed concern” when Mattis departs.
We have noted here previously that Secretary Mattis deserves a great deal of respect and admiration for an extraordinary military record. But we also agree with Mattis’s own words that President Trump ‘deserves’ a Secretary of Defense, and we’d add, a Cabinet, whose members share his aims, the commitments he has made to the American electorate, and who will work to advance them.
Despite all the praise and widespread stories of how dire the nation’s condition will be when the secretary departs the Pentagon, the fact is “Mad Dog” Mattis did not share or support much of Trump’s agenda. We have previously noted many of the things on which the SecDef opposed the president.
And thus so, did “The Pentagon”!
But the American people must realize that their admired and beloved “Pentagon” is not ‘what it used to be’.
Sitting in key desks throughout the massive 5 sided building in Arlington, VA, are many people whose views of our nation’s history and place in the world is far different than it has been throughout our history until a little over a decade ago.
We would contend that mainly due to the 8 year reign of Barack Obama, the “Pentagon” has undergone a “fundamental transformation”, as have most of our federal government’s key agencies, bureaus, and departments.
Of the Generals and other high-ranking officers and aides who now occupy the major roles there, many have risen to their lofty positions during that time, carefully chosen for their ideology and for more their political acumen than for their warrior prowess. (General Mattis, however, in our view, was somewhat an exception to the Obama blueprint as both a proven warrior and an astute political maneuverer, whose instincts, however, are more in sync with the Obama agenda.)
On some key issues, Mattis publicly supported the aims of his predecessor, “Ash” Carter and people like former Obama Navy Secretary Ray Mabus… social experimentation over basic mission support…gays and transgenders in the military, women in front-line infantry combat, the “Green” movement and all its ‘national defense initiatives’, featuring costly budget expenditures for “renewable” fuels to power our warships, wasteful spending on initiatives like diversity training rather than ‘mission’ training, etc.
Mattis sometimes sounded more like John Kerry than the majority of America, identifying “climate change’ as a bigger ‘national security threat’ than global terrorism. He did not support the use of the military in any meaningful way, to repel the ‘silent’ but real invasion on our sovereign borders.
In these ways, we suggest that Mattis was reflecting more vividly today’s “Pentagon” and the people who run it than the values and traditions which created it.
How many recall that under Obama, nearly 200 of our highest ranking and most accomplished war fighters were purged from the military in the first five years of Obama. (For the chilling details on who and for what reasons, a 2013 editorial in Investors’ Daily provides them).
And it is from those carefully culled ranks, that the “political Generals” rather than the “Warrior Generals” remained to fill the key positions in the “new” post-Obama Pentagon!
No America! The sprawling tribute to excellence and sacrifice of our military still sits on almost 29 acres in Arlington, Virginia and 26,000 people work there, but the spirit of today’s impressive structure doesn’t reflect your ‘father’s Pentagon’. DLH
