Exactly so

Newsflash: America Actually Doesn't Need a Defense Secretary

David Strom

The Secretary of Defense can disappear, and nobody notices.

During several wars, a crisis in the Red Sea, American troops and assets abroad getting attacked, the Secretary of Defense could disappear for a week, and nobody noticed.

Apparently, we don’t actually need a Secretary of Defense. I bet you thought he was an important part of the chain of command in the world’s most powerful military, armed with nukes.

Nope. No big deal at all that he went missing and nobody knew. Not even his Deputy. Who was out of the country.

… If the country doesn’t need a president, it can do without a Secretary of Defense. Right? How often is Biden on duty?

… Lots of interesting questions pop into my mind. Since I doubt that no military or national security decisions were made during the past week, it seems pretty clear that Austin is nothing but a figurehead. Literally, nobody in the national security establishment thought to get advice from Austin about anything, even though the US was putting together a military coalition to defend shipping in the Red Sea, and we are deeply involved in wars in Ukraine and Israel.

This puts an exclamation point on the fact that, as Beege wrote a couple of weeks ago, the White House is running the show in the Red Sea without using any military advice. Nobody cared to know what the SecDef thought about anything for a week. It never occurred to anybody anywhere in the government to check in with the guy.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was able to go an entire week without knowing that the Secretary of Defense was AWOL. Naive people might think that the NSA would chat once or twice a week with the SecDef in the middle of crises, military strikes, and negotiations with other countries’ militaries.

Nope.

… It would be a mistake to view this absurd scandal in isolation. It is a symptom of the systemic problem that is the Biden Administration. The president is a figurehead. The Defense Secretary is a figurehead. Pete Buttigieg is nothing but a figurehead. Do you remember him being on leave during the height of the supply chain crisis? All the people you think are in charge are simply figureheads these days.

Who really runs things? A bunch of people in the shadows of the administrative state — almost certainly those leftovers from the Obama Administration who populate the Biden Administration — run things. The Biden Administration is like the late Roman Emperors, who were figureheads for the Praetorian Guard. Today, the Praetorian Guard is the Obama Alumni who populate the Biden Administration.

It would be interesting to see phone logs–how many calls to figures in the White House come from Barack Obama and his cronies outside the White House. And by that, I don’t mean Obama calls to Biden or cabinet members, but to the Deputies and Assistant Deputies who have their fingers on the buttons and who get things done.

Sullivan may not have thought to talk to Austin last week…but what do you want to bet he talked to Obama?

Think about that…and what it means regarding who actually runs the country.