Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Wetsuit optional.

The revolution will be supervised.

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Shelter in place is one thing. Shelter in pants is quite another.

Gastritis broke my calculator.

What fresh hell is this?

Everybody saw this coming.

This blog goes to 11…

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn – Nancy Pelosi

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

The willow is too close to the house.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Tick tock motherfuckers! Tick fucking tock!

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Han shot first.

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail

We still have time to mess this up!

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Breaking: President-elect Biden Has Chosen GEN (ret) Lloyd Austin as His Nominee To Be the Next Secretary of Defense

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CNN has just reported that President-elect Biden has selected GEN (ret) Lloyd Austin to his Secretary of Defense.

President-elect Joe Biden has selected retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the former commander of US Central Command, to be his secretary of defense, a source familiar with the decision told CNN on Monday.

If confirmed by the Senate, Austin would be the first Black man to lead the Department of Defense.

In addition to serving as commander of United States Central Command, Austin previously served as the vice chief of staff of the Army.

Politico was first to report on Biden’s selection of Austin.

Austin would need a congressional waiver to be confirmed for the civilian post because he retired from active-duty service only four years ago. Federal law requires seven years of retirement from active duty before taking on the role.

I think this is selection is the result of the previous relationship that President-elect Biden has with GEN (ret) Austin. When President Obama decided to replace Secretary Mattis as the commanding general of US Central Command, he selected GEN (ret) Austin for that position. As the commanding general of the Geographic Combatant Command (GCC) with the most active area of responsibility (AOR), GEN (ret) Austin would have been in regular contact, often several times a day, with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and their senior national security advisors. As a result, President-elect Biden likely has a very good feel for GEN (ret) Austin and, as seems to be the case with almost every one of his selections so far, is going with senior, qualified, experienced people that he is comfortable with based on prior relationships. There was reporting several weeks ago that President-elect Biden did not have much of a personal relationship at all with Michelle Flournoy, who was being reported as the leading candidate for this nomination, and that this was an issue for the President-elect. The selection of GEN (ret) Austin would seem to confirm this.

GEN (ret) Austin is more than qualified and capable to run the Department of Defense. But, as CNN reported, he has only been retired for four years and will, as a result, require the same waiver from Congress that Secretary Mattis required. Hopefully, unlike Secretary Mattis, GEN (ret) Austin will be able to overcome a 40 plus year career’s worth of conditioning to be overly deferential to the President as commander in chief of the military. Given that he has a very different personality and temperament than Secretary Mattis, and that President-elect Biden is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Trump, this will hopefully not be a problem for the Biden administration as it was for the Trump administration.

Open thread!

Full disclosure: I know GEN (ret) Austin, but not well. I met him in Iraq in 2008 when he was the Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division. The brigade combat team my team was assigned to had been split off from the rest of 1st Armored Division in Multi-National Division North and sent south and east of Baghdad to Multi-National Division Central. 10th Mountain Division fortunately took over Multi-National Division Central two months into our deployment. I met GEN Austin when he came to our FOB as part of his initial battlefield circulation. I was introduced to him, he spoke to me for about 90 seconds, and my part of his briefing lasted about two minutes tops. I also provided support to him when he was the Commanding General of CENTCOM via his Command Sergeant Major, who was my point of contact in the CENTCOM command group. He might recognize my name, but if I was standing next to him he would most likely not know me from Adam and I am Adam!

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A Retired General Officer or Flag Officer Should Not Be the Next Secretary of Defense

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Yesterday, in response to a Newsweek article about whether or not President-elect Biden should pick a retired general officer, specifically GEN (ret) Austin, to be the next Secretary of Defense, Senior Chief Nance had a very strident response:

GEN (ret) McCaffrey then replied attesting to GEN (ret) Austin’s character and experience. Senior Chief Nance co-signed that by tweet.

What GEN (ret) McCaffrey did not do, however, was explicitly endorse GEN (ret) Austin for the position of Secretary of Defense, though this tweet from 28 November might be taken as an implicit endorsement.

While I appreciate Senior Chief Nance’s enthusiasm, as well as his concern about the think tank world inside the Beltway, I think he’s wrong regarding the appointment of another general officer/flag officer to the position of Secretary of Defense. While the Newsweek article’s focus, specifically the focus of the people that provided statements to the reporters on this possibility, all seem to focus on reestablishing the Civilian-Military relationship, I think there’s another reason for President-elect Biden to be cautious about appointing a retired general or admiral to be his Secretary of Defense: a 40 plus year career of acculturation, socialization, and indoctrination to deferring to the president as the commander in chief of the military.

While deference to those above one in the chain of command isn’t confined to generals in relation to the President, we have reporting that indicates this was a major problem for Secretary Mattis in his relationship with Trump. Specifically, when Trump threw a temper tantrum at Secretary Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (now retired) Gen. Dunford, and the Joint Chiefs in the Tank at the Pentagon in the summer of 2017 when they, along with Secretary of State Tillerson and Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, tried to hold an explanatory briefing for Trump about the United States national security commitments and posture. This was the meeting where Trump lost his shit and screamed at Mattis, the Joint Chiefs, and the rest of the military personnel in the room that:

“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.

Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

What happened in response is not just telling, but it provides us with the central reason why a general officer/flag officer may not be the best choice to be the Secretary of Defense (emphasis mine):

Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren’t you saying something?”

But, as he would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis was genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no matter what nonsense came out of his mouth.

Others at the table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it another minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to make money off U.S. troops.

“No, that’s just wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.”

Tillerson’s father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of their service.

“The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,” Tillerson said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom.”

There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.

“He’s a f—ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.

Secretary Mattis is considered to be the most highly regarded Marine of his generation. His Marines affectionately called him the Warrior Monk because of his scholarly, self contained, bachelor lifestyle. He calls himself CHAOS (Colonel Has An Outstanding Suggestion). Those who don’t know him, and don’t realize he hates it, call him Mad Dog. But my Marine teammates all speak of him in the highest regard. Those of my former teammates that know him and have served with and under him all have their own unique stories about him and why he is held in such high regard. Unfortunately, over a forty plus year career Secretary Mattis had been socialized, acculturated, and indoctrinated to defer to the President as the commander in chief. Just as he and every other officer in the Marines, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, had been socialized, acculturated, and indoctrinated to defer to those above them in the chain of command. This is a real problem. One of the now retired general officers that I was assigned to as cultural advisor/senior civilian advisor used to refer to the problem as the Legion of Frightened Men. Colonels and lieutenant colonels and even in some cases general officers who wouldn’t speak up when the most senior general officer in the room asked if anyone had anything to add, any suggestions, any concerns. Not because they didn’t have anything to add or any suggestions or any concerns, but because they had been taught and trained to defer to those who ranked above them in seniority.

I’ve got no dog in the fight over who does or does not become the next Secretary of Defense. Each of the people whose names have been floated – former Undersecretary of Defense Flournoy, former DHS Secretary Johnson, GEN (ret) Austin, and Senator Duckworth – would each be a vast, vast, vast improvement over Secretary Esper and the current acting SecDef. The former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Kath Hill, who is running the DOD transition team for President-elect Biden would also be a vast, vast, vast improvement. But the bulk of my career for the better part of the past 15 years has been serving as a senior civilian advisor to senior Army leaders, from colonels commanding brigade combat teams to lieutenant generals commanding Army Service Component Commands. And I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been either permanently or temporarily assigned to an excellent batch of senior leaders. It is important to realize, though, that they’re professionally raised differently than civilian senior leaders. I watched one general officer I was assigned to, who was senior in overall time of service, defer to a higher ranking general officer on an issue – a general officer who lied to his face about what was going to be done to deal with that issue – because of socialization to the chain of command. Because that’s what a more junior officer, even if that junior officer is a general or an admiral with more time in service, does when given an order or guidance by a more senior leader. And there is no more senior leader for the US military than the president.

As I wrote the other day:

I know GEN (ret) Austin, but not well. I met him in Iraq in 2008 when he was the Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division. The brigade combat team my team was assigned to had been split off from the rest of 1st Armored Division in Multi-National Division North and sent south and east of Baghdad to Multi-National Division Central. 10th Mountain Division fortunately took over Multi-National Division Central two months into our deployment. I met GEN Austin when he came to our FOB as part of his initial battlefield circulation. I was introduced to him, he spoke to me for about 90 seconds, and my part of his briefing lasted about two minutes tops. I also provided support to him when he was the Commanding General of CENTCOM via his Command Sergeant Major, who was my point of contact in the CENTCOM command group.

I barely know GEN (ret) Austin, but what I know of him indicates he’s an excellent general officer. However, given the dynamic we’ve seen with the retired senior military leaders – generals and admirals – appointed to senior positions over the past four years by Trump, many that required Senate confirmation, my professional opinion (for what it’s worth) is that if a highly qualified, exemplary civilian senior leader can be appointed as the next Secretary of Defense, then she or he should be nominated instead of a retired general officer/flag officer. This does not mean that retired senior military leaders are unfit for senior civilian appointments, it just means that they should be appointed to the right positions otherwise they are being set up for failure.

I was very glad when Secretary Mattis was nominated to become Secretary of Defense given the possibilities that Trump could have come up with for nominees. I think he did as good a job as he possibly could have under the circumstances. But it is very clear, as reported by multiple sources in long form news reporting and books, that he was unable to transcend what he always was – a Marine and a Marine general officer – during times when the Nation needed more from him and for him to be more. That isn’t his fault. Asking and expecting him or anyone else to be other than who they are is an unfair expectation. But his tenure as Secretary of Defense, as well as his relationship and interaction with Trump, should stand as a stark warning about making sure that the right person is designated for nomination as the next Secretary of Defense. And given the evidence we have from the last four years, the right person may not be a retired general or admiral no matter how exemplary they are as a national security professional and as a person.

Everyone is different. GEN (ret) Austin is not Secretary Mattis. He may be able to overcome his socialization and acculturation to deferring to the president as the commander in chief of the military and if he can, then he’d be an excellent pick. But if he can’t, then someone else – Flournoy, Johnson, Duckworth, Hill, someone who hasn’t been publicly speculated about yet – should be chosen to avoid recreating the situation that Secretary Mattis found himself in. Not doing so would be setting not just GEN (ret) Austin up for failure as the Secretary of Defense, but President-elect Biden up for failure in regards to building the Department of Defense back better. And if GEN (ret) Austin isn’t the best fit for Secretary of Defense, I would hope that President-elect Biden would find an appropriate senior appointment for him and, should he be willing to return to service, that GEN (ret) Austin would accept that appointment and excel at it.

Edited to Add (ETA):

I want to clarify a point or two as there seems to be some confusion in the comments. I am not arguing that GEN (ret) Austin would not be a good Secretary of Defense. Nor am I arguing that one of the other people whose names have been floated as a potential choice are better choices. What I am arguing is that if GEN (ret) Austin is selected by President-elect Biden, he will have to overcome the same career’s worth of conditioning to defer to the President as commander in chief of the military that Secretary Mattis could not overcome. While GEN (ret) Austin is not Secretary Mattis – they are very different senior military leaders – this will be a key challenge. Of course, as a number of you have pointed out in your comments, President-elect Biden is not Trump, so the dynamic between Secretary of Defense and President would be very, very, very different from the start.

Open thread!

 

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Schroedinger’s Secretary of Defense & the Reality of Building Back Better

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There’s been a lot of coverage, much of it somewhat angsty or gossipy, playing out over who President-elect Biden is going to select as his Secretary of Defense. Most of the coverage appears to be in Politico,  with Axios, whose founders were also Politico’s founders, getting one scoop in. The reporting largely focuses on former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Flournoy. Flournoy founded the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), served as President Obama’s first Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and then, when she left government, founded a national security consulting firm with Secretary of State designee Antony Blinken. The news stories include reporting that the Congressional Black Caucus is pushing for the first African American to be appointed Secretary of Defense to GEN (ret) Loyd Austin* and former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson being the African Americans under consideration for the position to suggestions that she might not get the nomination because President-elect Biden doesn’t know her well to questions about Flournoy’s clients and work in the private consultancy she founded and ran with Blinken to Flournoy’s charitable work with CARE.

The reporting is somewhat interesting in an inside baseball sort of way if you like that sort of thing. It is also a clear indication that Politico and Axios are looking for anything even remotely controversial within the Biden-Harris transition, which itself would seem to indicate that no one at those publications, as well as others, have learned anything over the last five years.

The reality for whomever will be the next Secretary of Defense, just as the reality for whomever will be appointed to the requiring Senate confirmation principal and deputy positions across the executive branch is going to be triage. What the Department of Defense is going to need, just as every other department, agency, bureau, and office within the executive branch, is someone who both knows how to run a large organization and recognizes that the job is going to be overseeing a rapid assessment of the damage done by Trump’s appointees, or, in some cases, lack of appointees, and that is still being done through the transition. This includes identifying which of Trump’s political appointees have been burrowed into senior civil service positions where they are intended to prevent President-elect Biden and his appointees from making repairs, changing policy, and revising strategy. It will then be necessary to strip these burrowed in political appointees of all responsibility, basically pay them to do nothing, until the long, slow process of removing them from the civil service is worked through so they can be fired. President-elect Biden’s senior appointees and their teams will then have to shore up what can be shored up and repair what can be repaired so that the different executive branch elements can begin to function properly again. They will then need to develop plans to build something better to replace those parts of the executive branch that have been broken beyond repair. And, in the case of the Secretary of Defense, all of this will have to be done will maintaining readiness, conducting all the ongoing missions, being ready and able to conduct missions to deal with events that haven’t even happened yet and that not even the people on the Futures teams can anticipate.

Frankly, whomever is Biden’s first Secretary of Defense is likely to be gone in two years. Not because they aren’t a quality appointment, nor because they aren’t committed to the President-elect’s vision, but because this is going to be an exhausting, thankless job. As I’ve written about here, as well as other places, despite the massive amounts of money we spend on the Department of Defense and the Services, we have a readiness problem. Some of that is personnel related. Too much tail and not enough tooth combined with recruitment issues. Some of it is material related. The Government Accountability Office just released a report that found that the vast majority of military aircraft have fallen short on readiness over the past decade. This lines up with what Lt Gen (ret) Deptula stated in January 2017:

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has been at war not just since 9/11, but since 1991.  After 25 years of continuous combat operations, coupled with budget instability and lower-than-planned top lines, have made the USAF the oldest, smallest, and least ready it has ever been in its history. The average USAF aircraft age is 27 years—the youngest B-52 is over 50 years old. Going into Operation Desert Storm, the USAF had over 530,000 active duty personnel, today that number is 320,000—40 percent less, and the USAF has almost 60 percent fewer combat fighter squadrons today (55) than it did during the first Gulf War in 1991 (134).  Today, over 50 percent of USAF forces are not sufficiently ready for a high-end fight against near-peer capabilities posed by China or Russia.

Despite spending over $700 billion a year on the Department of Defense and the Services, we are, to use the colloquialism, out of Schlitz. While the Budget Control Act, d/b/a The Sequester, was waived every year for the DOD and the Services, the reality is that it was used to justify all sorts of bizarre decisions not to spend money. I cannot tell you how many DOD and Service civil service positions were allowed to go unfilled when people retired, in fact when people were incentivized to take early retirement, in order to meet budgetary targets resulting from the sequester, even though the sequester was waived every year. I cannot tell you how much of this work was pushed to the contract side and then those contracts were never finalized – start work orders never issued – because of the time it takes to run through the contracting process either providing contracting officers with excuses to claw back money because it hadn’t been spent promptly or because the start work orders got pushed back until the contract awards conflicted with the 80/20 rule for when money has to be spent by or clawed back. And more contract awards than ever are now being contested, and in some cases litigated, by the companies that lose the bid, which further compounds the problem.

And if you think the Department of Defense has it bad, let me tell you about the Department of State and USAID. Secretary of State designee Blinken is inheriting a pair of agencies that have been gutted. Whomever is named to be the next Attorney General has a morale and professionalization issue that is going to be hard to address at the Department of Justice and the FBI. The DNI nominee and, eventually, the Director of Central Intelligence nominee have similar problems as whomever will be the next Attorney General. Secretary of the Treasury designee Yellen is going to have a huge task in cleaning up the mess made by Mnuchin, as will whomever is nominated to take over at Commerce, Interior, HHS, Agriculture, etc.

At the end of the day what is going to matter is who President-elect Biden is comfortable with and how they get along with their key counterparts. For instance, how the Secretary of Defense gets along with the Secretary of State** and the National Security Advisor. Or how the Secretary of the Treasury gets on with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. The first two years of the next four years is going to be a massive undertaking of assessing what condition the executive branch is in, what can be quickly fixed, what can be patched while longer term repairs are planned and undertaken, and what can’t be repaired and has to be replaced with something new.

Build back better isn’t a campaign slogan, a motto, or a mission statement. It is a recognition of a very grim reality. A grim reality that will wear down even the best of people.

Open thread!

* Full disclosure: I know GEN (ret) Austin, but not well. I met him in Iraq in 2008 when he was the Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division. The brigade combat team my team was assigned to had been split off from the rest of 1st Armored Division in Multi-National Division North and sent south and east of Baghdad to Multi-National Division Central. 10th Mountain Division fortunately took over Multi-National Division Central two months into our deployment. I met GEN Austin when he came to our FOB as part of his initial battlefield circulation. I was introduced to him, he spoke to me for about 90 seconds, and my part of his briefing lasted about two minutes tops. I also provided support to him when he was the Commanding General of CENTCOM via his Command Sergeant Major, who was my point of contact in the CENTCOM command group.

** Given that Michelle Flournoy and Antony Blinken are friends and have been working together – inside and outside of government – and are co-owners of a national security consultancy in DC, I expect that this will have some bearing on the final decisions as to who will be chosen to become the next Secretary of Defense. I don’t know Flournoy, but in many ways she is an almost perfect example of the right make, model, and type you’d want to be the Secretary of Defense right now. I don’t know if that and her relationship with Blinken will be enough and I’m sure whomever President-elect Biden selects will be an exemplary candidate.

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Come Out Fighting! The 761st Tank Battalion’s Legacy Lives Through the Generations

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The 761st Tank Battalion's Legacy Lives Through the Generations

During his remarks yesterday, Antony Blinken, who is President-elect Biden’s designated nominee to be the next Secretary of State, took a few moments to share something very personal about his family and their relationship with America. Specifically he related how his stepfather survived the Holocaust by managing to escape his NAZI captors, flee, and hide within the tree line. When he heard a tank approach he looked and saw the markings were American, not NAZI and then broke cover and ran to the tank for help. Let’s listen to him tell it:

Unless something really strange was going on with personnel assignments, that tank and that African American tanker were part of the 761st Tank Battalion, known as The Black Panthers. The National World War II Museum provides us with a summary of their history:

The 761st Tank Battalion’s motto was “Come Out Fighting.” And that it did, from its first engagement at the little Belgian town of Morville-les-Vic in November 1944, and through heavy combat right through to the end of the war. But the 761st’s fight was not just against the Germans. As a segregated African American unit, it took part in the struggle for racial equality—a struggle in which the men of the 761st—the so-called “Black Panthers,”—would engage for the rest of their lives.

Brought into existence on April 1, 1942, at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, the 761st Tank Battalion trained amid the restrictions and racism of the Jim Crow South. First Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson of the 761st, an athlete who would become one of the greatest baseball players of all time, lost his chance to see combat when he refused to move to the back of a segregated military bus during an incident at Fort Hood, Texas in July 1944. The 761st battalion’s commander, Lt. Col. Paul L. Bates, refused to prosecute Robinson, but his superiors got around that by transferring the lieutenant to another unit, where he was court-martialed. Robinson was later acquitted, but too late to rejoin the Black Panthers.

The 761st arrived in France on October 10, 1944, coming ashore at Omaha Beach and moving into Belgium at the beginning of November. General George S. Patton famously gave the Black Panthers a pep talk, saying in part: “Men, you’re the first Negro tankers to ever fight in the American Army. I would never have asked for you if you weren’t good. I have nothing but the best in my Army. I don’t care what color you are as long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sonsofbitches. Everyone has their eyes on you and is expecting great things from you. Most of all your race is looking forward to your success. Don’t let them down and damn you, don’t let me down!” Privately, however, Patton harbored the same doubts that many white officers had about black soldiers, and he was reluctant to commit them to combat.

On November 7, 1944, the Black Panthers finally got their chance as they attacked the German-held town of Morville-les-Vic in support of the 26th Infantry Division. Bates, wounded the night before the engagement, was not present; nor were many of his white senior officers. Instead, the first thrust into the town was commanded by African American Capt. John D. Long of B Company, who followed behind the lead Sherman tank commanded by Sgt. Roy King. “I am sure my men thought I was a bastard and hated my guts but they followed me,” later recalled Long, a no-nonsense officer who hailed from Detroit. “They were a well-greased fighting machine.”

Right inside the town, King’s lead tank was knocked out by a German panzerfaust. Two of King’s crew were wounded; their comrades dragged them to safety behind the tank and then went on to kill the soldier with the panzerfaust and also the crew of a German anti-tank gun. King ran to the aid of a white infantryman and was wounded in the process but refused evacuation; he would be killed in action 12 days later. At the end of the battle in Morville-les-Vic, a German officer would tell Long that the conduct of King and his crew “was only equaled by that of a Russian tank crew under similar circumstances.”

The Black Panthers captured Morville-les-Vic on November 7. Three days later, as the advance continued, Sgt. Warren Crecy’s Sherman was knocked out by a German anti-tank gun. Crecy jumped out, took charge of a machine gun on a nearby American halftrack, and used it to wipe out the enemy gun crew. On the following day, leading another tank, Crecy again dismounted under fire when his vehicle became stuck in the mud and worked to extricate it. While he was doing so, he saw an enemy machine gun take some of the 26th Division infantry under fire. Without hesitation, Crecy climbed up to his turret machine gun and used it to suppress the enemy. He would use the same gun again many times that same day—exposing himself to enemy fire and knocking out German machine gun nests and an anti-tank gun. He too would receive a Silver Star for gallantry in action.

Capt. Long proudly summed up his pride for the Black Panthers and their conduct. “Not for God and country but for me and my people,” he said. “This was my motivation pure and simple when I entered the army. I swore to myself there would never be a headline saying my men and I chickened. A soldier, in time of war, is supposed to accept the idea of dying. That’s what he’s there for; live with it and forget it. I expected to get killed, but whatever happened I was determined to die an officer and a gentleman. . . . The town of Morville-les-Vic was supposed to be a snap but it was an inferno; my men were tigers, they fought like seasoned veterans. We got our lumps but we took that f***ing town.”

Here’s a documentary on the 761st:

On 10 APR 1978, President Jimmy Carter* awarded the 761st Tank Battalion the Presidential Unit Citation for their extraordinary heroism in World War II.

For those interested, Kareem Abdul Jabbar has written an excellent history of the 761st.

I want to contrast the effect that Blinken’s family history in coming to America has had on him and his approach to public service and the similar history of Jared Kushner. Kushner’s grandmother, Rae, and her family escaped the Novogrudok ghetto and fled to the forest where they were eventually taken in by the Bielski brothers who ran one of the most successful partisan groups of World War II. It was during her time with the Bielski Partisans that she reconnected with her future husband with whom she would eventually immigrate to the US after the end of World War II. I find it exceedingly interesting that four years into the Trump administration and six years since the start of the Trump campaign, never once has Jared Kushner given the types of remarks that Antony Blinken gave today. I have no idea, nor do I actually care, how devout Blinken may or may not be in his Judaism. But I do know that for all of Jared Kushner’s often remarked about adherence to modern orthodox Judaism, he seems to be unable to comprehend the real gift he inherited from his grandparents, which is the same gift that Blinken inherited from his parents.

That gift is the promise of America. A gift that Trump, Jared, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and the rest of the neo-nationalists and white supremacists and nativists and xenophobes that Trump and Miller have salted away throughout the executive branch do not understand. And they don’t understand it because, like the wicked son, they are inherently incapable of understanding it. That promise is what we see in asylum seekers and refugees. No one leaves everything behind, grabs their children, and walks hundreds and thousands of miles over land or traverses the same distances on the ocean, just because they want a chance to earn a few more dollars. The people that take these most desperate of measures, do so because as dangerous as it is, it is less dangerous than staying where they are. And they do so with only these thoughts in mind: at the end of the journey is safety, at the end of the journey is hope, at the end of the journey is the United States!

It is also the gift – the promise – that the African American Soldiers of the 761st Tank Battalion recognized. That America, the same America that denied them their equal rights as citizens, that denied them their equal humanity as people, that required them to serve in segregated units if they chose to serve, could be much, much, much more than that crimped, small minded, narrow, and shallow understanding of America that allowed the Jim Crow system to thrive. And the historical irony in the 761st fighting to end the NAZI’s racist, fascist regime of terror and genocide is that the NAZI system was modeled on the Jim Crow system put in place to overthrow reconstruction and politically, socially, religiously, economically, and culturally enshrine white supremacy as the de facto law of the land in the former Confederate states and, through terror and intimidation, spread it as far outside of the former Confederacy as possible.

Blinken and President-elect Biden and the surviving veterans of the 761st Tanker Battalion understand this, Kushner and Trump do not.

Open thread.

* Full disclosure: I interned at the Carter Presidential Center between my junior and senior years at Emory.

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Veteran’s Day 2020: A Long Overdue Honor

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Yesterday the US Senate passed legislation providing a statutory exemption to the time limit for awarding the Medal of Honor. This exemption is for one very specific soldier: Sergeant 1st Class (SFC) Alwyn Cashe.

From The Washington Post:

The Senate passed legislation on Tuesday that clears the way for President Trump to award the nation’s highest award for valor in combat to Army Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, who repeatedly entered a burning vehicle in Iraq to save six fellow soldiers and an interpreter from harm and died a few weeks later.

The legislation, passed by unanimous consent, waives the legal requirement that the Medal of Honor be awarded within five years of a service member’s acts of valor. Cashe has long been considered one of the war’s great American heroes and would be the first African American to receive the award for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Former defense secretary Mark T. Esper supported the move in a letter to Congress in August after years of deliberations within the Army.

The Senate bill was introduced on a bipartisan basis following the approval of similar legislation in the House last week. In both cases, lawmakers said they wanted to move quickly.

The approval of the Cashe legislation in both chambers leaves Trump’s approval as the only hurdle to Cashe receiving the award. The president has not commented on the case, but Cashe is often cited within conservative circles as worthy of the award. A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the open case, said before the legislation’s passage in the Senate that Trump would be supportive.

Cashe, 35, of Oviedo, Fla., was deployed to Samarra, Iraq, with the 3rd Infantry Division when the armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle he was in rolled over an improvised explosive device on Oct. 17, 2005. He was slightly injured by the explosion and drenched fuel, and realized the vehicle’s fuel cell had erupted and the vehicle had burst into flames.

Cashe made numerous trips into the vehicle to recover fellow soldiers, suffering burns in the process. He died about three weeks later on Nov. 5 at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, which is known for its unit treating burns suffered in combat.

Cashe was initially approved for the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor in combat. His commanding officer, then-Lt. Col. Gary Brito, later said that he did not initially have a full understanding for what Cashe did and has sought an upgrade for years. Brito is now a three-star general and the Army’s deputy chief of staff for personnel.

“Without regard for his personal safety, Sergeant First Class Cashe rushed to the back of the vehicle, reaching into the hot flames and started pulling out his soldiers,” the Silver Star citation said. “The flames gripped his fuel soaked uniform. Flames quickly spread all over his body.”

Cashe continued to assist others, even after he was on fire, the citation said. He suffered burns over 72 percent of his body.

Cashe’s sister, Kasinal Cashe White, said in phone conference with reporters recently that she did not believe discrimination had a role in the Army’s failure to award the Medal of Honor sooner. She cited a conversation that she had with Brito, who also is Black, in 2007.

Brito, she said, told her that no one in the 3rd Infantry Division had received anything higher than the Silver Star and that he knew from the information he had at the time that Cashe merited one.

“What I feel is that the information did not get back in time,” she said.

White added that she “won’t allow anybody to make it a race thing.”

“He did what he did not because he was Black, but because he was a soldier and because he loved his men,” she said. “And I believe they loved him in return.”

I expect that if the President, in a fit of pique over how the election went, refuses to sign it, it’ll be quickly resubmitted in the next Congress and President-elect Biden will sign it and then make the award.

I did not know SFC Cashe as I didn’t go to work for the Army until 2007. However, I do have a connection to him and know of his heroism. When I deployed to Iraq in 2008 with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division (2BCT/1AD), the Iron Brigade, our operating environment (OE) included one (command) forward operating base (FOB), four combat outposts (COP), and a number of patrol bases (PB). Our armor battalion, 1st Battalion/35th Armor Regiment (Task Force Iron Knights) was located just outside of Jisr Diyala on a combat outpost that was divided into a north and south base. This base’s name is COP Cashe; specifically COP Cashe North and COP Cashe South. I spent a lot of time during my deployment working with the 1/35 Armor Soldiers, as well as their Civil Affairs Team-Alpha (CAT-A), and their National Police Training Team (NPiTT) and, as a result, spent a good amount of time living and working off of COP Cashe South. There was a large portrait of SFC Cashe in the entryway to the tactical operations center (TOC) and a description of his heroism hung beside it.

This award is well deserved and too long overdue. And it is fitting that the Senate bestirred itself to actually act on this in advance of Veterans Day.

And, so that I don’t get yelled at in the comments, here’s some appropriate Veterans Day music.

Open thread!

Veteran’s Day 2020: A Long Overdue HonorPost + Comments (96)

The Former Special Operations Bubbas Sought To Provide Private Security in Minneapolis On Election Day Are Going To Be Breaking All Sorts of Laws

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The Washington Post is reporting that:

A private security company is recruiting former U.S. military Special Operations personnel to guard polling sites in Minnesota on Election Day, an effort the chairman of the company said is intended to prevent left-wing activists from disrupting the election but that the state attorney general warned would amount to voter intimidation and violate the law.

The recruiting effort is being done by Atlas Aegis, a private security company based in Tennessee that was formed last year and is run by U.S. military veterans, including people with Special Operations experience, according to its website.

The company chairman, Anthony Caudle, posted a message through a defense industry jobs site this week calling for former Special Operations forces to staff “security positions in Minnesota during the November Election and beyond to protect election polls, local businesses and residences from looting and destruction.” He said in an interview earlier this week he is planning to send a “large contingent” to Minnesota but did not specify the numbers.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) said in a statement Friday that he joined election officials in “strongly discouraging this unnecessary interference in Minnesota’s elections, which we have not asked for and do not welcome.”

“Federal law and state law are both clear: No one may interfere with or intimidate a voter at a polling place,” he said. “The presence of armed outside contractors at polling places would constitute intimidation and violate the law. I request this company cease and desist any planning and stop making any statements about engaging in this activity.”

Ellison added that “we don’t expect to have to enforce our laws against voter intimidation, but we will use every resource available to us and all the power of the law if we have to.”

Caudle did not respond to a request for comment Friday on Ellison’s statement.

Much more at the link.

I just checked out Atlas Aegis’s “Our Team” page, their Chairman, Anthony Caudle is not part of the Special Operations community. He was in the 1st Battalion/509th Airborne Infantry Regiment, which serves as the Opposing Force personnel at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk. It is not attached to or part of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is garrisoned at Ft. Bragg. 1st Battalion/509th ABN INF is not an operational unit or element it is a training unit/element. Moreover, he indicates he was in their Headquarters and Headquarters Command Company, which means he was part of a group of Soldiers responsible for paperwork, bunks, showers, equipment, and meals. Is he Airborne? Yes. Does his bio indicate any operational deployments as an Airborne Soldier? No, not it does not.

Of the remaining four members of the team one is a Green Beret, one served in both the Ranger Regiment and in 1st Special Operational Detachment Delta, and one is a physician who is certified in Undersea Warfare Medicine, which is what is taught at the Navy Undersea Medical Institute. It means he is certified to work as a doctor on a submarine. Naval Special Warfare medical training is done within the Navy Special Operations Medical Institute, which certifies corpsmen and combat medics for the Naval Special Warfare community. So it is unclear if he comes out of the Navy Special Warfare community, ie Navy Special Ops, or if he wore dolphins, not a trident. The final member has no military experience, or even civilian service with the Department of Defense or the Services.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, as reported by The Washington Post and quoted above, has already indicated that what Aegis is saying it has been contracted to do will run afoul of both Federal and Minnesota state laws regarding elections.

It will also run afoul of Minnesota’s laws on unlawful militias.

Does the Second Amendment protect private militias?

No. In fact, the Supreme Court decided in 1886—and repeated in 2008—that the Second Amendment “does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 621 (2008) (citing Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886)).

Is it legal to act as a private militia in Minnesota?

No. All 50 states prohibit private, unauthorized militias and military units from engaging in activities reserved for the state militia, including law enforcement activities. Some, including Minnesota, also prohibit paramilitary activity during or in furtherance of a civil disorder. Minnesota’s laws are described below:

Minnesota Constitution: The Minnesota Constitution forbids private military units from operating outside state authority, providing that “[t]he military shall be subordinate to the civil power.” Minn. Const. art. I, § 14.

Minnesota Statutes

Prohibition on private military units: Minnesota law makes it illegal for groups of people to organize as private militias without permission from the state. It is a misdemeanor for “any body of persons, other than the National Guard, troops of the United States,” military students, and veterans organizations, “to associate themselves together as a military company with arms.” Minn. Stat. § 624.61.

Prohibition on paramilitary activity: In Minnesota, it is a gross misdemeanor to either:

“(1) teach[] or demonstrate[] to any other person how to use or make any firearm, or explosive or incendiary device capable of causing injury or death, knowing or having reason to know that it will be unlawfully employed for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder”; or

(2) “assemble[] with one or more persons for the purpose of training with, practicing with, or being instructed in the use of any firearm, or explosive or incendiary device capable of causing injury or death, with the intent that it be unlawfully employed for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder.” Minn. Stat. § 609.669.

Georgetown University Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) recommends the following actions at the bottom of their fact sheets on the illegality of militias in all fifty states if one sees armed groups and/or individuals near a polling place:

What should I do if I see armed groups near a polling place or voter registration drive?

First, document what you see:

  •  What are the armed people doing?
  • What are the armed people wearing?
  • Are they carrying firearms? If so, what type? If not, are they carrying other types of weapons?
  • Are they wearing insignia? If so, what does it say or look like?
  • Are they bearing signs or flags?
  • Do they seem to be patrolling like a law enforcement officer might do?
  • Do they seem to be coordinating their actions?
  • Do they have a leader?
  • Are they stopping or talking to people outside of their group?
  • Do they appear to be provoking or threatening violence? If so, what are they doing specifically?
  • Are people turning away from the polling station after seeing or speaking with them?Second, call Election Protection at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to report what you see.Assistance in also available in Spanish at 888-VE-Y-VOTA (888- 839-8682), in Arabic at 844- YALLA-US (844-915-5187), and Asian languages at 888-API-VOTE (1-888-174-8683). A video call number for American Sign Language is available at 301-818-VOTE (301-818-8683).

If Mr. Caudle deploys his paramilitary contractors to Minnesota on behalf of unidentified Minnesota business owners with the contract run through a shell company (unidentified business organization/UBO) to obscure who is actually hiring and paying him, they are not only going to run afoul of Federal and Minnesota election law, but also Minnesota’s state laws against private paramilitary units and activities.

As they say in the Ranger Regiment: “That’s a technique!”

Open thread!

Adam L. Silverman, PhD served as a Senior Fellow for Special Operations at the Center for Special Operations Study and Research at US Special Operations Command’s Joint Special Operations University in 2015. He served as the Senior Civilian Advisor/Cultural Advisor, under temporary assigned control, to the Branch Chief at US Army Civil Affairs, which is part of US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), from October 2012 through December 2013. In November 2018 he gave the keynote address at the US Army Psychological Operations Regiment’s 100th Anniversary Regimental Dinner.

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Donald Trump Achieves A First Strike Decapitation Of US NatSec Command-And-Control

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The Plague Rat in Chief’s scabbed and pustulent touch has reached the Pentagon.

Donald Trump Achieves A First Strike Decapitation Of US NatSec Command-And-Control

The US top military leadership have entered quarantine after Admiral Charles W. Wray, vice commandant of the Coast Guard, was diagnosed with Covid-19:

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and other top military leaders are under quarantine after a senior Coast Guard official tested positive for the coronavirus, two U.S. officials said.

Gen. Mark Milley and the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force have tested negative for the virus, but remain under quarantine as a precaution, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information not yet made public. The head of U.S. Cyber Command, Gen. Paul Nakasone, was also among those quarantined.

Up to 14 officials are believed to have been potentially exposed…

This exposure is, apparently, unconnected to the Judge Barrett corona party in the Rose Garden–but  this is the direct consequence of the larger Trump failure to create the procedures and culture in which all Americans collaborate that could contain the virus.

We are all less safe because of that–and now we see that such insecurity extends beyond “mere” personal security to that of the nation as a whole.

Enraged open thread

 

ETA: By popular (sic!) demand…

Image: Anonymous, Three Rats Eating a Fish Head, Edo, 18th c.

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