“THE PRESIDENT THREW US UNDER THE BUS”: EMBEDDING WITH PENTAGON LEADERSHIP IN TRUMP’S CHAOTIC LAST WEEK: Throughout the final, frenzied days of the Trump administration, a reporter rode shotgun with the outgoing acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, the man who, under the distracted eye of his commander in chief, became America’s de facto guardian. - "Sitting on his couch at the end of a surreal week, he finally took off the gloves. His target? The Defense Department itself, the largest organization in the world—and one he has served in various ways since he was 18. 'This fucking place is rotten. It’s rotten.' Miller’s gravest concern, he said, involved a bedrock principle of American democracy: civilian control of the military. 'When the system is weighted towards the Joint Staff and the geographic combatant commanders against civilian control, you know, we’ve got to rethink this.' He expressed a belief that by 'idolizing and fetishizing' the top brass, members of Congress had ignored an erosion over time in the chain of command.
"'We’re in a crisis mode,' Cohen had told me earlier. He said he and others had discovered that the Joint Chiefs were creating their own 'security compartments' containing operational planning details 'for the express purpose of hiding key information from career civilian and political leaders in the Pentagon'—up to and including the secretary of Defense. Talk about a deep state. 'That means that policymakers were basing their decisions on partial information. It’s very dangerous and irresponsible, and that’s something I’ve actually highlighted in my conversations with [Biden’s] transition team.' I’ll admit it sounded loopy. To me it had all the elements of a Trump fever dream: The military and intelligence establishment was somehow scheming against the renegades. That is, until two other senior national security officials—with Miller and company—confirmed Cohen’s assertion."
Episode 5: The secret CIA plan
Want to understand the GOP’s problem? Look at its newly elected extremists. - "The most ambitious Republicans, even those who are themselves quite smart and well-educated, see their path to success as pandering to the dumbest and most deluded people in their party. Witness Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas (Princeton, Harvard Law) and Josh Hawley of Missouri (Stanford, Yale Law), who made themselves leaders of the effort to overturn the presidential election, promoting what they absolutely, positively know are lies about widespread fraud.
"But wait, you may say, aren’t there equivalents on the Democratic side? Don’t they have their own extremists? There’s a profound difference, which is that the people in Congress who are far to the left — especially those who get the most attention — spend more time thinking about policy in a given week than the likes of Cawthorn and Boebert have in their entire lives.
"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y), for instance, is a social media star, but she also has a lengthy policy agenda, including workers’ rights and the Green New Deal. Rep. Katie Porter (Calif.) has gone viral with videos in which she wields her whiteboard against hapless corporate executives in hearings, but those are confrontations in which she uses her deep understanding of economics and finance to show — with math! — how profiteering hurts consumers and workers.
...
"There are some Republican members of Congress who care a great deal about policy and would love to become media stars by showing off their creative ideas for trade agreements or tax reform. But that’s not going to get you on Fox News, because their voters don’t really care."
No comments:
Post a Comment