What this means is that Trump failed to rid the top brass of those who were promoted based on political allegiance during the Obama years. With a Biden/Harris administration, those political lackeys will become even more entrenched. The real problem is that those guys love a fight (as long as their underlings are doing the fighting and dying) but don't have a clue how to win that fight.
If a republican truly interested in national security wins in 2024, one of his/her first moves needs to be an anti-leftist purge of the Pentagon. If not, those incompetents are going to be so well entrenched that we will not be able to win a war.
I am reading a book right now that asks two very striking questions:
1) When is the last time the USA won a war?
2) When is the last time a USA military officer distinguished himself with strong strategic or tactical decision-making?
My answers would be WWII and the Inchon landing in Korea. That is way, way too long ago. And I would add a third question:
3) When is the last time that the USA made a major procurement decision that made any sense?
I don't know the answer to that one.
We spend 16% of our military budget on combat, 7% on combat support, and 77% on administration/overhead, per a study by consulting firm McKinsey at
https://defense-aerospace.com/dae/articl...ce_VF.pdf. We could spend 25% more on combat (which we need) 25% more on combat support (which we really, really need) and 25% less on administration/overhead, and reduce the defense budget by $100B. We have more people in and around the Pentagon today than it took to win WWII, for no good reason.
Pulling out of the Mideast, and never fighting a war that we don't intend to win, would save another $65B. But those generals who love to play army while sending somebody else's sons and daughters out to be killed would be crushed. We used to get them in Vietnam. Major would come out from the Pentagon, he's up for LTCOL but has no combat experience because he missed Korea. So he comes out to get a box checked. He has a hissy fit because nobody is wearing rank insignia or saluting, and they all need haircuts. Sergeant takes him aside and tries to explain that we are kind of busy fighting a war and that we don't salute or wear rank insignia because Charlie is hiding in the trees and if he sees us all saluting somebody, then that's who he kills. Major is indignant, we are going to be a military organization. Two weeks later he fills in a box--the one they ship him home in.
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Pentagon denies Trump his military style goodbye
