Military Veterans and Patriots

Tag: Commandant

  • FAFO Warning: Marine Corps Commandant Edition

    FAFO Warning: Marine Corps Commandant Edition

    Jason Hirschfeld

    BEEGE WELBORN HotAir

    This week is always difficult for Marines. The memory of the Beirut bombing is one of those sores that never heals. It’s a betrayal that you never fully learn to deal with if you were active duty when it happened. You keep the memory alive both to honor your fallen brothers and to keep fresh the manner of enemy they were dealing with. Still dealing with to this very day.

    Screencap @COJacksonville

    That’s why this year’s anniversary – the 40th since the bombing of the Marine barracks with its horrific losses – was especially poignant but particularly in focus.

    Marines are being sent back to those same shores at this very moment to deal with the exact same barbarians.

    Only instead of a patriot as president, we have a befuddled, malevolent vegetable whose own administration has financed and succored both the perpetrators of the October 7th massacre in Israel, and their ideological and material godfathers in Iran.

    An administration so morally twisted that they can claim they “stand with Israel” as it roots out those responsible for the horrors inflicted upon its innocent citizens in their very homes, even as they actively work against the Israeli plans.

    The Biden administration is actively holding the Israelis back from finishing the savages off. There are myriad reasons and didn’t David just post on the most recent. Possibly the scariest.

    Oh FFS.

    The story about why Israel has yet to make a ground invasion of Gaza is becoming clear, and it is yet another embarrassment for the United States under Joe Biden.

    Israel has been prepared to enter Gaza to eliminate Hamas, but the ground invasion keeps getting delayed. The reason why?

    The US is unprepared to defend US military installations in the area.

    These pathetic, waffling doofuses – perpetually running 6 steps behind even as they commit US troops to the theater.

    https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1717242923308237296?

    Hamas gets stronger and regroups with every break in the action. Iran has to be gloating at the complete lack of strength projection in the US posture. Instead of threatening the mullahs with death raining from the skies if their militias – who have already injured some 2 dozen US troops with their drone attacks – launch one more zoomzoom at our Syrian or Iraqi outposts, what does POTATUS do?

    Basically tell our kids to…DUCK!!

    …The White House on Monday said Iran was in some cases “actively facilitating” rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria, and President Biden has directed the Department of Defense to brace for more and respond appropriately.

    YGTBFKM

    One person who doesn’t seem to be a ducking type, nor is he ruffled by the constantly changing plans is the new commandant of the Marine Corps – Gen. Eric Smith.

    As I said at the top, he’s got Marines en route to the Eastern Med right now. His focus is on them, with the memories…

    https://twitter.com/CMC_MarineCorps/status/1716465718382739811?

    …and hard learned lessons in mind that run deep through the very sinews of the Corps.

    War in Middle East looms over Marines’ 40th memorial of Beirut attack

    …But with Israel at war with Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants, the dread of more violence on U.S. service members in the region was present in the ceremony’s speeches.

    The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a special operations capable unit of approximately 2,400 Marines and sailors, was sailing in the direction of the East Mediterranean, the Marine Corps confirmed, having left an exercise in Kuwait early because of the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

    The 26th MEU has not been tasked with a specific mission but is “on a high readiness status prepared to respond should the department have need,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement to Marine Corps Times on Monday.

    Similar to the battalion that suffered immense losses in Lebanon in 1983, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is part of II Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

    Leave the waffling and mealy-mouthed talk to the weakling, winking Bidens, Blinkens and nodding yes-men who enable this perfidious pack of political pimps to slip and slide through every slimy orifice of international double-dealing. In the face of the American military representation evinced by the likes of Milley, Austin, and their host of woke Army and Air Force generals, the Marine Corps commandant’s words during the Beirut memorial service, especially with Marines who could soon be in harm’s way, brooked no misunderstanding and implied no kumbayahs of respite, resupply, or reconciliation for any of the jihadis.

    ‘T’weren’t nuthin’ but a good, old-fashioned FAFO.

    …Gen. Eric Smith, the Marine commandant, had a blunt message for anyone who would target the Marine expeditionary unit now heading into the region near Israel.

    “The secretary of defense has been very clear that, whatever their mission may be, don’t target those Marines — he said it very carefully — because they come ready to respond,” Smith said during his keynote address at the ceremony in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

    “I’ll be less diplomatic and more Marine-like,” Smith said, to cheers from the audience, according to a live-streamed video of the event.

    “For those that are in the area, if that MEU has to go in, if you target them, someone else will raise your children.”

    That’s how it’s done.

    #SemperFi

    Original Here

  • The US Marine Corps Doesn’t Have a Commandant Today Because ‘One Man With Courage Is a Majority’

    The US Marine Corps Doesn’t Have a Commandant Today Because ‘One Man With Courage Is a Majority’

    Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III speaks with Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama prior to appearing the Senate Armed Services Committee. (DoD Photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

     streiff | RedState

    Today is the last day on active duty for Commandant of the Marine Corps David Berger. There will be hosanas sung in a lot of quarters at the departure of the man who has gutted the ability of the US Marine Corps to perform as an expeditionary force through the ill-conceived Force Design 2030 reorganization and work will start to try to mitigate the damage. But that isn’t what is drawing attention, though it should.  When the helicopter lifts Berger off the roof of Henderson Hall this evening, the US Marine Corps will be without a confirmed commandant.

    (For more info about Force Design 2030 read THIS)

    Why doesn’t the Marine Corps have a Senate-confirmed commandant? The answer is two words and one US Senator: Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville. The issue is the Department of Defense subsidizing the expenses of military women to travel to a pro-Moloch state to get an abortion when they aren’t available at their station of duty.

    A lone Senate Republican’s bid to reverse a Pentagon policy ensuring abortion access for service members is delaying the smooth transfer of power at the highest echelons of the armed forces, including in the ranks of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a monthslong partisan dispute over social policy drags on.

    Senator Tommy Tuberville, a conservative from Alabama, has been single-handedly blocking hundreds of promotions for high-ranking generals and admirals since February, refusing to relent unless the Defense Department scraps a policy — instituted after the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion last year — offering time off and travel reimbursement to service members who need to go out of state for abortions.

    Now, Mr. Tuberville’s tactics are on the brink of disrupting the Pentagon’s ability to fill its top ranks. More than half of the current Joint Chiefs are expected to step down from their posts during the next few months without a Senate-approved successor in place, leaving the president’s chief military advisory body in an unprecedented state of flux at a time of escalating tensions with China and Russia.

    I wrote about this controversy weeks ago in Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville Reminds the Defense Department That One Determined Man Is a Majority.

    Untrammeled wokeness inevitably leads to hubris and open revolt. The Department of Defense is barred from allowing abortions in military medical facilities. Shortly after the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning the legal and moral travesty that was Roe vs. Wade was handed down in June 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that the military would pay for the travel of pregnant soldiers AND their family members to states that were abortion-friendly as well as providing three weeks of free time off. The policy became final in February.

    Austin was correct in guessing that a Democrat-led Senate would prevent any action from being taken. What he was wrong about was the ability of one determined senator to upend the abortion applecart. In December, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville told Austin that if he persisted in doing this end run around the law, he would prevent all promotions of general officers and their civilian equivalents.

    U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) today announced his intent to place a hold on all future U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) civilian and general flag officer nominees should the department choose to move forward with a planned policy change to fund travel and paid time off for service members and their dependents seeking an abortion. The announcement from Senator Tuberville comes in response to his office being briefed by Department of Defense officials on the policy change earlier in the week. By covering travel expenses and paid time off, Senator Tuberville believes the DoD is blatantly flouting the law.

    Tuberville’s “hold” on senior Defense appointments leaves limited options. The easiest one is for Austin to recognize that his action is illegal and rescind it. That doesn’t seem to be in the works. As all senior Defense nominees require the Senate to “advise and consent,” Tuberville’s lone objection can only be bypassed by Chuck Schumer, allowing debate and a vote on each nominee. This would require an investment of time that he just can’t afford.

    Instead of blaming Tuberville, anger should be directed against the pompous, self-important Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who is trying to score political points for the Democrats on the back of military readiness. When General Berger retires into well-earned obscurity this evening, you know what happens tomorrow? The sun will come up. Birds will sing. Children will play. The woke left will be outraged. In other words, life goes on. The Marine Corps will have an “acting commandant.”

    https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/1678354726692216833?

    [Note: I have no idea why Caplan says, “1st time USMC has no confirmed commandant since 1859.” The list of Marine Corps Commandants shows that the Marines have frequently had breaks of days or months without a commandant. The last time it happened was when Major General George Elliot retired in November 1910 and wasn’t replaced until February 1911.]

    An acquaintance made an impassioned appeal for Tuberville to back off.

    https://twitter.com/OnDemocracyPod/status/1678173102545465344?

    I think Tuberville has correct stance on this. The only people inconvenienced by Tuberville’s hold is a handful of senior officers whose assignments need senatorial approval. While this may upset some career apple carts, the idea that failing to confirm them affects readiness is dishonest. If the miliary has reached the point where there is a finite number of generals capable of commanding, we might as well just fold our tent and slink away.

    Letting Austin do what he wants is rewarding the Defense Department for behaving like the spoiled, bratty toddler it is. Austin needs to do what is right legally, which is to pull the plug on his end run of federal law, and morally, which is to get Defense out of the baby-killing business.

    Original Here