Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s failure to inform the Office of the Presidency of his emergency hospitalization is a big deal — a very big deal.
It’s a big deal because there are only two people with the National Command Authority, the president and the secretary of defense. But on Jan. 1, the President was on vacation and the secretary of defense was absent and incommunicado without leave.
While it is understandable that Austin did not want to publicize his battle with prostate cancer, not informing the office of the president was just the latest example of the same kind of poor judgment that Austin has shown throughout his tenure. That he was out of commission without letting the office of the president know was a severe breach of trust that some are calling dereliction of duty.
And to make it even worse, the next person in Austin’s line of succession, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, was also on vacation and was not informed of Austin’s hospitalization until Thursday. Hicks finally assumed some of Austin’s duties on Jan. 2, but the duties she assumed did not appear to include National Command Authority.
On Dec. 22, Austin underwent surgery to deal with his prostate cancer. This led to a severe infection and excruciating pain that landed Austin in intensive care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Jan. 1. Austin did not notify the president or Hicks.
Failing to notify the president’s office and his immediate successor would be a blatant breach of protocol for any cabinet official. But Austin is not just any old policy-oriented secretary, Austin is second in command of the U.S. Armed Forces, and his duties, which include responding to a nuclear attack, require that he be available at a moment’s notice. His failure to follow these protocols was a major error in judgment.
Such errors have been commonplace throughout Austin’s tenure. Other examples include damaging military readiness and effectiveness by actively promoting the woke DEI agenda, his oversight of the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine, his role in the extremist Biden administration’s purge of conservatives from the U.S. military, and his responsibility for the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal.
First up is Austin’s lead role in forcing a racist and sexist agenda, the DEI agenda, on the military. This policy has involved promoting people based on their gender, sexual orientation and race rather than their competence and merit. Under Austin, the Department of Defense is using taxpayer dollars to promote and support transgenderism by paying for sex-change operations and hormone therapies. Austin has overseen the implementation of training seminars built around critical race theory, which demonizes white people and denigrates the values and principles that made the U.S. military the most powerful in the world. The abandonment of those values is already degrading U.S. military readiness and effectiveness.
The Russia-Ukraine War has depleted U.S. military resources, added over $100 billion to the national debt, strengthened Russia, destroyed Ukraine, weakened Europe, emboldened China, and accelerated the move away from the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency. From the outset, Austin has been a key agent in advancing a ridiculous narrative which ignored the fact that Russia’s size, military power, and nuclear weapons make any talk of Ukrainian victory a fantasy.
In a moment of honesty, however, Austin did reveal his true reason for prolonging the war. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” he said.
Suffice it to say that Ukraine will not win and that Russia is now more powerful than it was in Feb.2022, much more closely allied with China and Iran, and much more hostile to U.S. interests.
Finally, we have Austin expressing “no regrets” after presiding over the utterly disastrous, incompetently executed Afghanistan withdrawal that left billions of dollars of modern military gear behind for the Taliban, provided a kill list to the Taliban that identified the tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with and cooperated with occupying forces, evacuated droves of unvetted Afghanis to the U.S., left hundreds of Americans behind, threw away the lives of 13 U.S. servicemen and handed over Bagram Air Force Base to the Taliban and China.
But as disastrous as his tenure as secretary of defense has been to date, Austin’s decision to violate critical national security protocols set a new low by creating a dangerous break in the chain of command. This takes his tenure from merely disastrous to dangerously incompetent.
Austin’s lack of disclosure would have been irresponsible under any circumstance, but when the person occupying the Oval Office is 81 years old and of questionable mental soundness, it’s unforgivable.
The secretary’s actions jeopardized the country by leaving the U.S. incapable of responding to attacks. That nothing critical happened during this fully avoidable breakdown in the chain of command is irrelevant. Our national security demands an effective, healthy secretary of state. Since Lloyd Austin is neither, he should resign or be fired.
Mike Fredenburg writes about politics and defense matters, with an emphasis on defense reform. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Production Operations Management and has written for the Epoch Times, National Review, the San Diego Daily Transcript, the San Diego Union-Tribute and other outlets.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct an error regarding the U.S. protocol for launching nuclear weapons.