It’s time we face an unpalatable reality. Nothing less than the national security of the United States hangs in the balance.

The truth is we are in the midst of the third Obama-Biden administration. The cumulative damage is incalculable as we are reaping the whirlwind of having elected in 2008 Barack Obama -- a man who, in a moment of hubris-driven candor on the eve of his first presidential election, declared the incipient “fundamental transformation” of America.

As president, Obama did as much as he could get away with to morph the nation. Domestic policies eroded our constitutional order and the freedoms it guarantees. Remember his pronouncement that “I have a phone and a pen,” his pretext for taking actions he had previously acknowledged he could not legally do?

Among the worst of his enduring legacies is that, far from being the promised post-racial president, Obama deliberately and repeatedly exacerbated race-relations.

Obama-Biden 1.0 and 2.0 pursued foreign policies characterized by appeasement and emboldening of foreign enemies that dangerously diminished our nation’s standing in the world. They brought us, for example, “apology tours,” unenforced red-lines, and disastrous initiatives like the Iran nuclear deal, embracing the Muslim Brotherhood which led to the toppling of friendly (if imperfect) Mideast regimes and acceding to the Chinese Communists’ seizure of atolls that would, in short order, be turned into bastions for their controlling the strategic South China Sea.

The first two terms also populated the government with a cohort of radical leftists. Many started out as political appointees but wound up as senior members of the permanent bureaucracy. From that vantage point, they were able to undermine, betray and otherwise stymie the Trump presidency and set the stage for a restoration of the Obama-Biden regime in 2020. 

To those who would assert that Joe Biden is the president now, not his former boss, I would simply say: really? It is no longer possible to ignore Biden’s obvious physical and mental incapacitation. Someone else is clearly running the U.S. government. 

Barack Obama has boasted that the Biden White House staff is comprised of his people. The same is true of myriad individuals now serving in cabinet and sub-cabinet positions. Additionally, he previously expressed a desire to run things without having actually to be president. 

What especially imperils the national security now is the fact that the subversive legacy of the previous Obama-Biden terms is becoming manifest in the U.S. military, as well. It is, arguably, the last national institution to undergo the Marxist makeover Barack Obama set in motion. But, thanks to officers aggressively promoted during his 1.0 and 2.0 presidencies becoming senior commanders, it is perilously devastating morale, retention, recruitment, and readiness.

A particularly important and topical example is the current nominee to succeed the disastrous Gen. Mark Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Air Force General Charles “C.Q.” Brown. An accomplished combat aviator, Brown has in recent posts -- including his present one as the top Air Force officer -- become a champion of the full Obama-Biden transformational agenda, including substituting racial quotas for the armed forces’ renowned, and necessary, meritocracy, social engineering to accommodate, among others, psychologically disordered transexuals, and the indoctrination of future military leaders with critical race theory.

To date, Gen. Brown’s disqualifying attachment to such radical notions has not been properly vetted by the Senate. During his confirmation hearing only two of its Armed Services Committee’s twenty-five members asked him questions that touched on his own positions, let alone the damage those so-called “woke” policies are doing to the military. An urgent request by thirty-one national security practitioners and other public policy leaders for Brown to be closely questioned about both thus went largely unheeded. With the committee voting out the nomination last week, this seriously defective promotion now awaits final action by full Senate.

I suspect the reason for such kid-gloves treatment is that Gen. Brown is Black. And many in the Senate and elsewhere are responding to the prospect of his becoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as we did Barack Obama’s candidacy for the presidency -- namely, with the hope that it will banish racism. Sadly, as with Obama, Brown is certain to inflame it instead.

As a shooting war with Communist China looms, this is no time to indulge in wishful thinking about bringing the full Obama-Biden “hope and change” bait-and-switch next to our armed forces. We must stop the military’s Marxist transformation now, and the place to start is by rejecting the appointment of C.Q. Brown to be its next top officer. 

Frank J. Gaffney formerly acted as an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan. He is currently the Executive Chairman of the Center for Security Policy and host of “Securing America.” Opposition to the Brown nomination can be conveyed to your Senators at www.SecureFreedom.org.

Image: USAF