The (civilian) cavalry is coming
after the staggering, maddening incompetence
December 30, 2020
Like many of you, I have spent the past months worrying about the health of close relatives. My mother in Kansas had covid in November, and recovered at home. My husband and our older, teenage daughter are currently mostly recovered from covid, which we only learned they had last weekend, three days after they got tested at a nearby DC firehouse.
I am anxious for my father, who moved into a nursing home in the Kansas City area this past fall, to get vaccinated, and it is going frustratingly slowly. (Maybe in the next week or two, we heard last week, and again this week, when every day in America, more than 3000 people are dying of covid. Where is the sense of urgency?...)
Ten, eleven months into the pandemic, it is shocking that it takes three days to get covid test results back. …
Separate and beyond any of its policy positions or endless spectacles and personalities, the breathtaking incompetence of the outgoing Trump administration is staggering. It is hard to fathom the sheer magnitude of the loss of life that has been occurring and continues in this country, even in Trump’s final weeks in office. Chernobyl is happening here.
I know many others of you have suffered great loss the past year, and I extend my sincere sympathies. I send all of you and your families my heartfelt best wishes for a healthy, happy new year.
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The (civilian) cavalry is coming
We will soon be more competently led.
Today, the Biden-Harris transition announced it will nominate Dr. Kathleen Hicks to be Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Dr. Colin Kahl, who served as Biden’s national security advisor when Biden was Vice President, to be Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the #3 Pentagon position.
“Dr. Kath Hicks and Dr. Colin Kahl have the broad experience and crisis-tested judgment necessary to help tackle the litany of challenges we face today, and all those we may confront tomorrow,” President-Elect Biden said in a statement announcing the nominations. “They will be trusted partners…as we work to restore responsible American leadership on the world stage.”
“They share my strong belief that we need empowered civilian voices serving alongside military leaders at the Department of Defense to ensure we are always accountable to the American people,” Biden’s Secretary of Defense nominee, retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, said in the statement.
Representative Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), a former Pentagon, NSC and CIA official, urged Austin to enhance civilian control of the military by bringing the civilian Undersecretary of Defense for Policy to the Pentagon leadership table, among other recommended steps conditioning a Congressional waiver for Austin to take the top Pentagon job despite having left the military less than seven years ago.
“The last four years have brought the further erosion of civilian-military relations across the Department of Defense,” Slotkin wrote in a Dec. 18 letter to Austin, signed by a half dozen members of Congress.
“It will therefore be important that the next Secretary of Defense take the lead role in rebalancing this relationship,” Slotkin continued, asking Austin to meet with the members and confirm “a commitment that the most significant decisions for the Department, typically handled by the ‘Big Four’ of the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary, Chairman and Vice Chairman, be expanded to include at least one more senior civilian, such as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.”
Hicks currently leads the Biden-Harris Defense Agency review team, and previously served as Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the Obama administration, among many other positions.
Kahl, in addition to serving as National Security Advisor to then Vice President Biden and Deputy Assistant to President Obama from 2014 to 2017, previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East from 2009 to 2011. He has also been serving on the Biden-Harris NSC review team.
The new defense nominations were announced as the Biden-Harris transition again warned today that Trump appointees at the Pentagon and the Office of Management Budget are obstructing meetings and information from the transition and thereby endangering US national security and Americans’ health.
Transition officials “have encountered obstruction from political leadership at various agencies, most notably at the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget,” Yohannes Abraham, executive director of the Biden-Harris transition, told journalists in a virtual briefing today.
In the past 11 days, Trump appointees installed at the Pentagon after Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and other confirmed Pentagon leadership after he lost the election last month, have blocked all but three meetings with the transition, a deeply insufficient tempo, Abraham said.
“Make no mistake, this lack of cooperation has real-world implications, most concerningly as it relates to our national security,” Abraham warned. “This intentionally generated opacity makes it harder for our government to protect the American people moving forward.”
(Photo Credit: AP).
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