There is an old saying in the military, “Trust No one above O-6” They are all politicians. The Obama years saw more generals retired or relieved than there had been in years. General Carter Ham was one of the notable ones. Wiki sloughs over his relief about Benghazi.
Ham was in overall command of military forces when the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks were launched on the American consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. According to his June 2013 Congressional testimony, Ham chose not to deploy close air support during the attack, based on a lack of situational awareness about the circumstances on the ground. He denied the allegation by some Republicans that President Barack Obama or others in Obama’s administration had ordered him to “stand down” a planned rescue mission that was ready to deploy.
After a 24-month tour of duty[9] as Commander Africa Command, Ham was succeeded by General David M. Rodriguez.[10] General Ham retired in June 2013.[5]
That is one version.
Snopes, of course, insists “All is Well”
The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.
General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.
Navy Rear Admiral, former commander of the USS John Stennis Strike Group, Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette was also mysteriously relieved of duty, and all the brass will say is he is “under investigation” for, get this, “inappropriate leadership judgment.”
Just another way of saying that the admiral dared differ with the Administration’s Libya policy and perhaps openly defied Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Snopes, of course, disagrees. General Ham retired after 2 years of the 3 year assignment as AFRICOM.
The White House [has] flatly denied that President Barack Obama withheld requests for help from the besieged American compound in Benghazi, Libya, as it came under on attack by suspected terrorists on September 11th.
That’s Snopes’ “Proof.”
On 29 October 2012, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also asserted that this rumor was false:
The speculation that General Carter Ham is departing Africa Command (AFRICOM) due to events in Benghazi, Libya, on 11 September 2012 is absolutely false. General Ham’s departure is part of routine succession planning that has been on going since July. He continues to serve in AFRICOM with my complete confidence.
HR McMasters wrote a book about senior officer cowardice, but he has since joined the war makers. He resigned in protest of Trump’s intention to end the 20 year war in Afghanistan.
Obama appointed generals who showed their loyalty by attacking Trump
Retired military leaders who were nominated to senior positions by former President Obama began speaking out this week against President Trump, as he warned of using the military to end violent riots throughout the nation.
Their speaking out comes as Trump on Monday deployed the D.C. National Guardsmen and called up active duty forces to be on standby to protect the nation’s Capitol, after rioters defaced national monuments, looted, and burned a historic church.
This, of course, was well before the military occupied DC at the order of Nancy Pelosi in response to the January 6 riot. That was very different.
There is a longer list of those fired or retired by Obama.
Since Barack Obama has been in the White House, high ranking military officers have been removed from their positions at a rate that is absolutely unprecedented.Things have gotten so bad that a number of retired generals are publicly speaking out about the ‘purge’ of the U.S. military that they believe is taking place. As you will see below, dozens of highly decorated military leaders have been dismissed from their positions over the past few years. So why is this happening? What is going on right now is absolutely crazy especially during a time of peace. Is there a deliberate attempt to reshape the military and remove those who don’t adhere to the proper ‘viewpoints’ ? Does someone out there feel a need to get officers that won’t cooperate out of the way?
Throughout world history, whatever comes next after a military purge is never good.
If this continues, what is the U.S. military going to look like in a few years?
We now know. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin
Fresh off his confirmation as Secretary of Defense, General Lloyd Austin III took immediate action to clear out members of the Pentagon’s 42 advisory boards. Austin dismissed every single member, including those who were added in the waning hours of the Donald Trump presidency.
That was certainly important. What next ?
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered a “stand down” of the entire US military over the next 60 days in order for commanders to address “extremism” in its ranks.
News of the military-wide pause came in an announcement Wednesday from the Pentagon, with press secretary John Kirby describing the move to reporters as similar to stand downs that units have to do to address safety concerns.
Kirby was Kerry’s spokesman as Sec State. A retired PI Admiral.
“Extremism” can be loosely defined as a Trump voter. During his confirmation hearings, Austin pledged that he would “rid our ranks of racists and extremists,” though he declined to offer details on how he planned to see that through.
Now we know who is not welcome.
Military.com reports that Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier has been relieved of his duties pending an investigation after he appeared on a podcast and criticized the rise of Marxism in the United States military.
Lohmeier served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force before joining Space Force among its first officers and recruits. He has written and self-published a book, “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest and the Unmaking of the American Military.” He appeared on a podcast, called Information Operation, to discuss the book on May 7. He was relieved of his duties as commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado on Friday, May 14, by order of Lt. Gen. Steven Whiting. Public affairs made it clear that his comments are the reason his job now hangs in the balance.
“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” a Space Force spokesperson said in an email. “Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”
Opposing Marxism is “prohibited partisan political activity.” Joe McCarthy should be alive to see this.
While on September 11, 2012 I was no longer writing for professional military journals as a sideline, I had a lot of people I knew who either were writing or were involved in the mass of people in the infrastructure of military and naval related ancillary institutions that surround the Pentagon.
Within a couple of days of the events, I heard of the details of the reliefs of Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette and General Carter Ham. What I heard matches what you wrote, with the addition that I was told the STENNIS Strike Group turned towards Benghazi at Flank Speed as soon as they got the first word. And that an air strike was being prepped for launch as they closed the range, then they were ordered to stand down.
I was told there were some severely unhappy people. I believe it. And I believe we are in for similar days again. Neither our own people in service or our civilians, nor our allies, can expect to have our National Command Authority honor our commitments or anything else.
Subotai Bahadur
re: Benghazi, is there a reason to doubt the crazy sounding conspiracy theory that the ambassador was supposed to be taken hostage, and then released presumably in exchange for the blind sheikh, but then Doherty, Woods, et al. botched the whole thing up by disregarding orders and joining the fight?
Never trust anyone who wears this many ribbons, they’re obviously trying to show off, like they’re in a Latin American junta or something:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Austin#/media/File:Austin_2013_2.jpg
For comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Dwight_D._Eisenhower#/media/File:General_of_the_Army_Dwight_D._Eisenhower_1947.jpg
Brian–or the theory that there was a project to try to suck up some of the newly loosed weapons and funnel them, via deniable Saudi intermediaries, to those “moderate” Syrian factions?
I tend to believe both theories, the blind sheik theory and the loose weapons, They are not, mutually exclusive.
I thought it’s been basically openly acknowledged that the CIA was running guns to Syria via Libya?
The optics of a swap would have been really bad. Even Romney might have mentioned it unfavorably.
As far as Austin’s medals, if you look at the list, a lot are for essentially being somewhere. The Silver Star was for action in Iraq in 2003 as a Brigadier General.
https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/88304#118128
According to the article, Eisenhower was entitled to 68, a great many were foreign honors. I don’t know what the regulations say about not wearing medals in a formal portrait.
In WWI the British had to make a rule, that staff could not receive combat decorations. I suspect that is where Austin’s medals came from, just like Kerry’s.
Even Romney might have mentioned it unfavorably.
No, to be serious he’d have attacked people who objected to the swap as traitors who hated the rule of law and the constitution.
But I presume mention of Romney as somehow relevant to real-world events at any time ever was meant as a joke.
“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” a Space Force spokesperson said in an email. “Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”
I’d just like to note that once again that the political party widely regarded as being opposed to the left is nowhere to be seen while the left disembowels the military and as far as I can discern has no objection to anything the left is doing.
I admit I don’t have have CNN running in the background all day like I live in an airport- or on ever for that matter- but if the gop had a problem with the purges and politicization of the military I think I’d have heard about it, simply because of the deranged shrieking from the left. Instead, I see the gee ohhh peeeee voting overwhelmingly to approve the nominations of leftist extremists to high offices of the regime.
Gee. Oh. Peeee. Worthless and irrelevant, always and forever.
I broke my rule about not using Amazon just to order Lohmeier’s book.
Unfortunately, it was already sold out in both paperback and hardback but I’m supposed to get one from the next printing.
I remember when Obama relieved McChrystel over Afghanistan. I said then it was a political move to suppress political dissent in the ranks and to neuter a possible electoral opponent.
It was just the start!
News flash, for y’all: Most of the military above the grade of Major is heavily politicized. And, not in terms of “bipartisan”, either. When the time comes, they’re going to side with the uniparty in DC.
Good news, though? They’re mostly incompetent, and live within a bubble circumscribed by their politics.
These are the same idiots that told me, back in the early 1990s, that they didn’t want to develop countermine/demining and route clearance capabilities because “If we have them, then someone will want us to do that sort of thing… And, we don’t want to spend our budget on those capabilities…”.
No thought was given to “Will we need to do this?”, “Will our civilian masters tell us to do it, anyway…”, or “Is this an actual threat?”. None.
Events in 2003 pretty much prove who had it right–The “powers that were”, or the small group of people like me who were agitating for either buying South African MRAP and armored route clearance gear or developing our own. Took until 2005-06 before we had significant capability in those areas, and it was a crime that we didn’t have it from day one. We told them that the new Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles shouldn’t be designed as cabovers, that the lessons of South Africa’s experiences in Angola and Namibia all pointed to the fact that the lead axle being directly under the crew compartment was a bad idea, but, noooooo… We had to have that cabover deal, ‘cos you could pack more trucks into less space on ships and aircraft. We also told them that they needed to design and procure armor packages for the trucks alongside the development process, but, again, we were told that was “unnecessary”.
Which was why we were clearing roads in Iraq with trucks that were “uparmored” by stacking sandbags in them, and bolting on scrounged armor cut out of burnt-out hulks of Iraqi armor…
I’m really not too worried about these assclowns as potential domestic tyrants. They’re simply not competent enough, nor do they have the intelligence or imagination to be truly effective at war. Good Christ, the majority of them are barely capable of outwitting Arabs…
Assuming that we actually manage to disengage from the distractions both Afghanistan and Iraq/Syria they will be able to get back to the important work of burning up expensive ammo and even more expensive equipment on training ranges. They will continue to plan and procure ever more expensive hardware in ever smaller amounts until the the defense industries reach the ultimate pinnacle of being permanently occupied by planning with out ever having to produce any actually working hardware, but what’s on the drawing board will be absalutly fantastic.
When the bullets start to fly in earnest again, we’ll see not just the quality of their leadership but the cumulative quality of those that have elected to remain. There’s no reason to believe that will go any better than it ever has. Let’s hope the B-52’s last so long.
I would be both slow to assign martyr status to any of the commanders of the Afghanistan debacle and slow to condemn. They had a lot of help.
“The optics of a swap would have been really bad. Even Romney might have mentioned it unfavorably.”
The American public loathes Iran, and yet both Obama and now Biden have some strange obsession with making a deal with them, no matter what. Morsi had just taken office when Benghazi happened, it seems entirely plausible that the idiots in the CIA and State Department would have thought that letting the blind sheikh out would bolster his government. The next GOP president needs to abolish the CIA the instant he’s in office and fire everyone at State by the end of the first day.
Anti-Marxism would only be partisan if there was a large Marxist party, or maybe a large Marxist faction within one of the parties. This is sort of an admission that Marxists are a significant force within the Democratic Party.
“I broke my rule about not using Amazon just to order Lohmeier’s book.”
I’ve ordered all my books this year from bookshop:
https://bookshop.org/books/irresistible-revolution-marxism-s-goal-of-conquest-the-unmaking-of-the-american-military-9781737067320/9781737067306
Price is sometimes (but not always) a bit higher, shipping is just a bit longer but not by much, but neither is too bad, and at least it’s not lining Bezos’ pockets and giving amazon more data on everything you buy.
I think the more likely scenario is stevens was a high value target, like al quedas no 3, who had been droned some days before, the interval involved was in the month of shawwal, (this month as it happens to be) 25th-27th, there were also attacks on American school in Tunis, (Where one of the antagonists in my novella went to school) and the british headquarter, the bastion, all as part of a unified offensive, the ringleader was Bin Qumu, a released detainee from Gitmo, who had fought with the Taliban) he was ‘presumed dead’ in 2013, then he appeared inconveniently in derna, caught by Haftar’s militia, no major us publication touched the subject,
I must have written a dozen link heavy pieces on my own blog, before blogspot, got rid of the anonymizing feature
“General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow.”
I grew up an army brat on several continents. Now this was the British Army, as my dad went into it in 1942, as most of the junior British officers were killed. We replaced many of them, from Canada’s military academy RMC. In any army, as I understood the term, it would be instant relief of duty and a court martial for directly disobeying, a direct order.
Its different in the US? I mean the rest of us are subject to the ICC so OMMV. ;)
IIRC, George C. Marshall never voted (or claimed not to). That was pretty common among his cohort. That was when our professional soldiers were better at their jobs than the amateur statesmen were, but those days may be gone forever.
The discussion so far reminds me of Bacevich (or Ullman’s?) observation that our armed services sometimes feature four four-stars wrestling over what to do with a company-sized unit.
Not a recipe for success in a serious war, but indicative of what passes for professionalism in a highly-politicized imperial constabulary.
OTOH, RD Kaplan writes about “strategic sergeants”– NCOs out in the bush in dozens of countries (and probably unknown to 99.9% of us) making decisions that could affect millions.
Everyone feel super safe now?
https://www.army.mil/standto/archive/2021/05/14/
“…In line with the President and the Secretary of Defense’s direction, the Army is prioritizing climate change considerations in its threat picture, strategic plans, operations and installations…”
(Insert gifs of Xi and Putin laughing hysterically here.)
As Sophocles is reputed to have said (in Ancient Greek, of course): “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
Or Schiller, “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.”
I retired at 20 as a Major. Didn’t have Lt. Col. on my mind. Some friends of mine did.
A friend of mine retired as a full colonel after he was passed over for BG. He was the most famous Marine fighter pilot since Korea. His wing commander, who damned him with faint praise, later retired as a result of being caught flying his girlfriend around in a Marine Corps plane. My friend had commanded the Marine air group in Gulf War I. His offense was to be given a gold medal by Bahrain for saving them from Saddam. The wing commander got no medal. After my friend’s retirement, he started a company that he later sold to 3M for $23 million. He would happily have contributed that business skill to the Marine Corps.
The retirement of USAF Lt General Susan Helms was driven by the political interference by Clair McCaskill.
Helms was a crew member on five Space Shuttle missions and was a resident of the International Space Station (ISS) for over five months in 2001. While participating in ISS Expedition 2, she and Jim Voss conducted an 8-hour and 56 minute spacewalk, the world record for the longest spacewalk (and the longest spacewalk for a woman).[2] Helms officially retired from the United States Air Force in 2014.
Why did she retire ?
In 2013, Helms was nominated by President Barack Obama to become vice commander of the Air Force Space Command. Senator Claire McCaskill placed a permanent hold on the nomination because Helms had dismissed a charge of a sexual assault and punished the accused on a lesser charge leading to his dismissal from the USAF, in her role as the General Court-Martial Convening Authority, who is required to review all findings.[7][8] As Helms’s lawyer explained, Helms felt the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.[9][10] Obama eventually withdrew Helms’s nomination and she retired from the Air Force in 2014.
Helms reviewed a case as CG at Vandenberg AFB. Two couples, all officers, were out on a date. The female member of the couple on the back seat accused the male of sexual assault. The couple in the front seat had not noticed anything. Eventually, an overzealous AG recommended dishonorable discharge for the male officer accused. General Helms did not believe the charges warranted such a severe penalty and allowed him to resign his commission.
For that, her assignment as CG of the Space Command was revoked by Obama. Her record of professional achievement was ignored.
we’re in the best of hands
https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/18/u-s-navy-announces-it-will-implement-racist-critical-race-theory-throughout-fleet/
Trust no one over o-6.Quite right.
Also never fly with anyone under O-4. (Navy rule of thumb)
Of O-6 and higher, I’ve long believed the folk etymology of “Old Fogie” as a
military acronym: “F.O.G.I. ” — Flag Officer’s (with a ) ‘Good Idea’. All theory, no consideration of how the order/procedure/plan/or idea in general will work out in practice, in the field, in the dark and rain and fog and under fire.
Lot of Fogies out there
More evidence of corruption at the General Officer level.
When I first was commissioned in the Army over 20 years ago, AR 15-6 investigations were used nearly exclusively for property loss: If a soldier lost something while in the field, you would appoint an IO to investigate if the soldier should be held financially responsible for the loss. Now, we investigate everything and have weaponized the process to take punitive actions under the guise of an administrative investigation.
AR 15-6 specifically waives any requirement for due-process rights of the accused. It explicitly states that there is no requirement for rights of a respondent, notification of proceeding, representation of counsel, or right to call witnesses/cross-examine witnesses. Ironically, AR 15-6 requires the IO who launched the investigation to have an appointed legal adviser, while specifically excluding that right to the subject of the investigation.
Article 15 was purely administrative. Not now, apparently.