The problem is Joe, not Lloyd

By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Just think. How does the President of the United States go three days without talking to the Secretary of Defense?

I guess National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan did not, either. We are talking about a time when tensions are running high. Again, aren't U.S. forces under attack in the Far East and Middle East and Navy assets occupied with Houthis too?

Did I tell you about North Korea, China and Russia?

So how do you address such an obvious example of irresponsibility?

First, you can't fire the president, so we have to wait for an election on that one.

Second, you can fire Secretary Austin.

I agree with Fred Kaplan:

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin might well be gone from the Pentagon by the end of the week. A good case can be made that he should be.

In the new year’s strangest bureaucratic mystery (and one of the strangest in any year), Austin, who is 70, was hospitalized on Jan. 1, but nobody in the White House—not even President Joe Biden—knew of the fact until Jan. 4. The deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, who would stand in for him in an emergency, didn’t know until Jan. 3, and even then, she didn’t know he was in the hospital.

This is no minor lapse. U.S. military forces are on high alert in the Middle East; two aircraft carriers were moved into the Mediterranean, as a deterrent to Iranian intervention in the Israel-Hamas war, and those carriers and other vessels have come under fire. If Biden wanted any of those forces to take offensive action, his orders to the regional combatant commander would go through the secretary of defense. If Biden or his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called a “Principals Meeting,” Austin would represent the Defense Department.

Certainly Austin, like any other Cabinet secretary, even like the president himself, is entitled to take time off for a medical emergency, but he needs to tell the commander in chief, as well as his stand-ins and everyone else around him, what’s going on.

If Austin were a vital member of Biden’s national-security team, if he were deeply enmeshed in decision-making on the wars in Ukraine or the Middle East, excuses might be made and tolerated. But the fact that Biden learned of Austin’s absence only after four days—i.e., the fact that Biden hadn’t been in touch with his secretary of defense for four days during a period of round-the-clock military operations and crisis—suggests that Austin is far from essential.

Yes, maybe Secretary Austin is far from essential but what about President Biden? Is he calling the shots or up to speed?

Beyond office politics, this is an embarrassment for the country and for a president who looks more detached every time he goes public.

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Image: Screen shot from the White House website // government work