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Ongoing controversies as Secretary of Defense Austin and DoD clique concealed the SecDef's cancer diagnosis from White House. Austin received treatment for cancer in late December just before Xmas, and then was hospitalized January 1st for complications from the treatment.
Further coverage here
Biden reportedly has no intention of firing Austin, with officials stating that they will "learn from the experience."
While I think the WWIII crowd in the peanut gallery are mostly exaggerating the state of the world today, I can't deny the existence of numerous crises in which the US military might need to act or react at a moment's notice. And while I have an incredible disdain for the efforts of the DoD over the past two decades, the SecDef's whole job is to be on hand for those situations, to coordinate responses to threats to the United States and its allies.
There is very little clarity on what the SecDef's capabilities were at any given time. He was under general anesthetic during his treatment in December for some period of time, and needed to be hospitalized on the 1st. DoD spokespeople claim that he has access to everything he needs to do his job, in the way of secure communications equipment. But there is no argument that 1) People going through cancer treatment are not at 100% ability, 2) 70 year old men who need to be hospitalized are not at 100% of their ability, 3) we presumably put all that money into building the Pentagon for the purpose of creating the ideal situation for him to respond to any crisis and to do his job, 4) a hospital bed will be less optimal. There is no argument that when Austin is undergoing cancer treatment in the hospital, he will be performing his duties as SecDef at a suboptimal level.
Given the possibility of a Russian push or a Ukrainian collapse, of an outbreak of Genocide in southern Israel, or of a Houthi strike on who-knows-what, to say nothing of a wild-card in Korea or Taiwan or Guyana...are we really ok with the SecDef operating at 50% and not telling the president? How clear were chains of command and authority in case of a crisis at time that Austin was incapacitated? Would Biden have been looking for Austin when he got the famous 2am phone call and been unable to find him? Who would have given orders in such a case?
This is terrible optics for the administration, and constitutes the strongest public evidence for the theory that "Joe Biden is President Grandpa, given a warm glass of milk and sent to bed before the real meetings between the bureaucrats happens." While other presidents have had conflicts with the DoD (Obama famously feuded with "The Generals" about pulling out of Afghanistan, while it appears that Trump was directly lied to about the presence of US troops in Syria to prevent them from being pulled out), this is a serious escalation. Civilian control of the military has been undermined by the appointment of former career generals to head the DoD, it is destroyed if the former generals don't even report to the president, if POTUS doesn't know who is actually giving the orders over there.
How involved can the President be in DoD decision making around NatSec if he didn't even know the SecDef was out of commission? How much interagency rivalry exists that DoD subordinates would agree to hide what was going on from the President? How low-trust is the relationship between SecDef and POTUS that he wouldn't simply disclose the diagnosis and appoint an acting interim chief, clearly Austin felt that if he stepped away for a second he would be ousted? How weak is this president if he is scared to punish Austin for his clear dereliction of duty and deceit? How much is the president kept out of things if no one else (say, the CIA or FBI?) informed him of what was going on for FOUR DAYS?
I'm left with more questions than answers.
I do not believe that the Biden white house has more than a ceremonial purpose. Its reality TV for political junkies.
The machinery of USGov will operate itself whether the big guys call in sick or not. It would be a horrible weakness for any of them to actually be important anyway.
Biden is not FDR and Austin is not Truman. Those sort of men are not living today.
Perhaps for the best, the dreams of those those men killed millions. But I do wonder how an autonomous bureaucracy will operate during world war 3. Probably it will execute a series of pointless and poorly planned small interventions in seemingly random theatres. Well, that's basically where we are now.
This assertion flies in the face of a great deal of reporting about White House deliberations and decisions. The President still has a very high degree of control over the military in terms of which operations are done. It's just that the military is very persuasive about arguing for the status quo. That's not "ceremonial purpose", it's a process that re-occurs with practically every president. A sufficiently determined president can and will make changes. Before you cry "oh but Trump was stymied by the deep state!" the much more likely conclusion is merely that he cared more about the appearance of being a loose cannon than actually doing so.
Also, another huge hold with this assertion: you forget that the president is literally the only one to nominate leaders in the Cabinet, and a whole host of others to boot. It's like claiming that a corporate board that is in charge of hiring the CEO has no control of the company... Like sure, there's a big degree of separation but they certainly DO have a lot of control in a broad sense!
We know for a fact that the Pentagon lied to him about the number of troops stationed in Syria (I think), which also colors your point about them being persuasive, somewhat.
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