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Posted on 11/16/2021 8:27:06 AM PST by Kaslin
The Biden administration’s refusal to distinguish between our principal military adversary and climate change is yet more evidence that the military is following ideology instead of winning our wars.
In a press briefing on November 10, Pentagon spokesman retired Adm. John Kirby gave further evidence of the Biden administration’s incoherent national strategy. He refused to distinguish between China and “climate change” as threats to U.S. national security.
In response to a question of “which is a bigger threat, the climate or China?” Kirby said, “You’ve heard the secretary talk about the climate as a — a real and existential national security threat . . . And we considered China as the number one pacing challenge for the department. Both are equally important. Both are — are challenges that the secretary wants the senior leadership at the Pentagon to be focused on, as well as many others, too.”
Kirby’s answer was a bit of a muddle. He first described China as “the number one pacing threat.” But he then immediately added, “Both are equally important.”
The questioning reporter then sought clarification: “So if you were to rank the two, climate or China, which would be first?”
Kirby could only say, “I think I answered your question.”
Others are more clear-headed. Despite Kirby’s refusal to clarify his comments, President Biden’s director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, has not hesitated in naming China as our “most significant threat [and] challenge” throughout the foreseeable future and said that “[o]ut-competing China will be key to our national security.”
The outgoing vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten was brutally direct in recent comments reported by CNN. “Calling China a pacing threat is a useful term because the pace at which China is moving is stunning,” Hyten told reporters at a Defense Writers Group roundtable last month. “The pace they’re moving and the trajectory they’re on will surpass Russia and the United States if we don’t do something to change it. It will happen. So I think we have to do something.”
Burns’s and Hyten’s warnings are backed up by China’s aggressive military build-up, which leaves no room for doubt that its strategy is one of expansion and aggression. In 2020 the Department of Defense reported to Congress that what “is certain is that the CCP has a strategic end state that it is working towards, which if achieved and its accompanying military modernization left unaddressed, will have serious implications for U.S. national interests and the security of the international rules-based order.”
As part of that modernization, China’s navy has surpassed the U.S. Navy as the world’s largest. Its recent leap ahead of us in the development of a hypersonic nuclear-capable missile sent shockwaves through the military and intelligence communities.
Given the strategic threat posed by China, Kirby’s refusal to distinguish between the threats posed by it and “climate change” raises the question, “Why does Admiral Kirby still have a job?” The answer is because Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden approve of what he said.
The American public needs to be aware that the Biden administration’s position, as reflected in Kirby’s refusal to distinguish between our principal military adversary and “climate change,” represents a monumental change in U.S. military strategy. It is yet more evidence that the military is faithfully following the so-called “progressive” agenda instead of sharpening its focus on winning our wars. It is of a piece with Gen. Mark Milley’s focus on “white rage” and his classification of “thousands” of demonstrators at the Capitol on January 6 as domestic enemies who were trying to “overturn the Constitution of the United States of America.”
Under Austin, the Department of Defense has embraced the climate change religion. In October, DOD proclaimed the crisis and stated it would take immediate action to elevate the climate as a national security priority and, among other things, reduce our carbon footprint.
In DOD’s “Climate Adaptation Plan,” Austin attempts to justify the change by claiming that events such as hurricanes and flooding are part of “climate-related extreme weather [that] affects military readiness and drains our resources.” He bows to a Biden executive order that requires the DOD “to prioritize climate change in all our activities and incorporate its security implications into analysis as well as key strategy, planning, and programming documents.”
Now, it is important to note here that assessing the enemy, terrain, and weather has been part of military commanders’ battle planning for centuries. War planning for Norway differs from that for Iraq.
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s access to superior weather forecasts was a major part of his ability to achieve tactical battlefield surprise on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Before that, the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo by taking advantage of heavy rains that hampered transportation, limited the use of artillery, and forced Napoleon’s Imperial Guard to attack uphill through the mud.
The radical difference in the Biden administration’s approach is its refusal to distinguish between extrinsic factors that should be considered in operational planning, such as terrain, weather, and climate, and rational, strategic actors, such as China, who challenge our national security.
The cause, extent, and effects of “climate change” are the subject of considerable scientific debate. Some believe that man-made “climate change” threatens the very survival of civilization, while others disagree, relying, among other things, on the history of unfulfilled doomsday predictions of a new ice age by 2000, the disappearance of polar ice caps, and cities inundated by rising seas.
On the proper role of the military, Biden and Austin would do well to heed the eloquent charge given to the West Point cadets by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1962:
We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. . . We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us . . . of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine . . .
And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment; but you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.
To the military: Listen to MacArthur. Your mission is to win our wars. All else is a corollary. The survival of the nation depends upon it.
The Pentagon is as big a national security threat as China.
Ping.
In a fair and reasonable world, someone saying this would get a serious beating.
The Chinese response...”Yuk, yuk, yuk.”
Well, bomb it then.
the climate bugaboo boogaloo
The biggest national security threat is Democrats and the radical far left.
Two words to that excerpt from the Pentagon. You’re fired!
How about the millions of illegals invading the country?
That’s happening TODAY - not in a few hundred yeras... Maybe Pentagon fairies should get off their duffs and protect OUR country. They can even leave a few billion dollars worth of weapons if that would make them feel better...
Yes. Fed.gov, its massive debt, its printed money, all supporting bloated, woke central-planning ideologues will destroy America.
Today’s military “leaders”? 🐂💩 Proud of my service but I would urge today’s youngsters to NOT enlist.
Like any other whorehouse, $$$ or another star...They’ll turn any trick if paid enough...
“He first described China as “the number one pacing threat.” But he then immediately added, “Both are equally important.”
Bull shit Kirby you sycophantic boot licking brown nosing disgrace-to-the-uniform cowardly toady!
I really fear for our country, in so many ways. All of you who eagerly voted for Odungo, to get on board for being "so equality minded" that you never looked under his skirts for the rot beneath, may you be cursed. You started this massive attack on our country and may you be the first to suffer for it.
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This is pandering by the top brass to protect their careers. When I was a cop, I this joke about cops: want to really terrify a policeman? Threaten his pension.
There is no “climate change”. It doesn’t exist.
There is an adversary called China that does exist.
That may well be true. Although I seriously doubt it. The difference between the two is that he can do something about the threat caused by Red China. And there id not a damn thing he can do about climate change. Otherwise known as weather change. If he has a problem with climate change, let him take it up with God. It is God who controls the weather. Not some snotty nose punk like him who has to walk with his legs spread so far apart that he can straddle two 16 hand horses at the same time.
The Pentagon needs to permanently shut off all electricity in the building.
Start fighting the war on climate change on the home front!
(Don’t forget to wear rainbow sweaters this winter...that will help make the planet safe for perverts.)
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