“I cannot for the life of me understand some of the capabilities that they’re putting in the field, unless it is an aggressive posture.” That was Admiral Philip Davidson, head of Indo-Pacific command, in recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “They” was a reference to China, and as Fox News headlined the story, “US losing military edge in Asia as China looks like it is planning for war.”
If embattled Americans wonder how Joe Biden might respond, they might start with the man who orchestrated the move to put vice president Biden at the head of China policy. That would be Tom Donilon, a longtime Democrat activist and adviser to Biden’s first presidential campaign in 1988. In 2010, Donilon’s selection for National Security Advisor troubled Robert Scheer of The Nation.
“Why in the world would President Obama, whose legacy has been sabotaged by a housing crisis that Donilon helped create and conceal, have hired him to run the most sensitive position of public trust in his administration?” As the president so often demonstrated, Scheer wrote, “it’s the top hustlers of whom he seems enamored.”
Donilon never served in the military, but as Robert Gates noted in Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of State at War, Donilon blasted the United States military as “in revolt” and “insubordinate.” Donilon also “bridled” when Gen. McChrystal announced a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Gates found that stance rather troubling.
“Troops risking their lives need to be told that their goal is to ‘defeat’ those trying to kill them,” he explains in Duty. “But such terms were viewed in the White House as borderline insubordinate political statements by generals.” So for Biden’s China mentor, and his White House boss, American troops were not to defeat their enemies and win their conflicts.
Joe Biden never served in the military, and as Gates noted, Biden had been on the wrong side of nearly every foreign policy issue over the past 40 years. Biden opposed the raid on Osama bin Laden and with Iran the vice president’s first move was to wave the white flag.-- excerpt, rest at link above --
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
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Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:41 pm
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