[D66] Trump packs Pentagon with right-wing loyalists

[R.O.]

pentagon putsch

wsws.org:

Trump packs Pentagon with right-wing loyalists
Bill Van Auken
a day ago

Among the most ominous actions taken by the Trump White House as it 
seeks to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election is a 
wholesale shakeup of the top civilian leadership of the Pentagon.

President Donald Trump is keenly aware that his attempt to pull off an 
extra-constitutional coup and remain in the White House cannot be 
accomplished without resort to extreme repression against an inevitable 
popular eruption against such a coup. To this end, he is placing a gang 
of extreme right-wing ideologues and loyalists in key positions.

The purge began on Monday with the summary sacking—by tweet—of Defense 
Secretary Mark Esper, which reportedly took the entire uniformed command 
of the US military by surprise. Even more shocking to the military brass 
was Esper’s replacement.

The new “acting” Pentagon chief will be Christopher Miller, a 30-year 
Special Forces operative and retired colonel with no experience in the 
upper echelons of the military command. Trump has deliberately 
cultivated support within the 70,000-strong Special Forces, including 
through war crimes pardons, with the aim of transforming this 
quasi-independent force into his praetorian guard.

Miller is viewed within the military brass as wholly unprepared to 
assume the post of defense secretary. His main qualification is his 
unreserved support for Trump, demonstrated while serving on the National 
Security Council at the White House, and his willingness to use military 
repression against domestic protesters.

Before assuming his previous position as director of the National 
Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), he testified at his Senate confirmation 
hearing that he would not oppose the NCTC sharing intelligence on US 
citizens with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security for the 
purpose of suppressing protests.


Esper’s ouster was followed on Tuesday by the resignation of the 
third-ranking official at the Pentagon, James Anderson, the 
undersecretary of defense for policy, and his replacement by retired 
general and Fox News commentator Anthony Tata. Trump nominated Tata for 
the post last August, but was forced to rescind the appointment after 
the Senate canceled confirmation hearings in the face of Tata’s record 
of referring to former president Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader,” a 
“Manchurian candidate” and a Muslim. Tata was then installed at the 
Pentagon in a made-up position as an assistant to Anderson. Now, an 
Islamophobic fascist occupies the No. 3 post in the US war machine.

In his resignation letter, Anderson wrote, “Now, as ever, our long-term 
success depends on adhering to the US Constitution all public servants 
swear to support and defend.” In reporting on the resignation, Breaking 
Defense noted, “Such sentences are not boilerplate in a senior 
official’s resignation letter and this was clearly designed to send a 
message.” Indeed, Esper included almost identical language in his last 
message to the military, praising it for “remaining apolitical, and for 
honoring your oath to the Constitution.”

Trump’s determination to rid himself of Esper stems from the events of 
early June, in which the White House deployed federal security forces 
and sought to put US troops on the streets to suppress the mass protests 
triggered by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Esper publicly opposed Trump’s threats to invoke the Insurrection Act in 
order to deploy US troops throughout the country to put down the 
protests. He declared that such action could be only a “last resort and 
only in the most urgent and dire situations.” He added, “We are not in 
one of those situations now.”

This opposition from an official whose subservience to the White House 
had earned him the nickname “Yesper” reflected grave concerns that such 
a domestic deployment was not necessary and could tear the military 
apart. Trump was reportedly infuriated by Esper’s statement and was 
determined from then on to replace him with someone who would not oppose 
his attempts to use the military in pursuit of a presidential dictatorship.

An indication of the vindictive purge atmosphere at the Pentagon was 
provided by the Republican columnist Bill Kristol. Citing conversations 
with senior military officials, Kristol reported: “When Jim Anderson was 
fired yesterday as Acting Undersecretary for Policy, he was given a 
‘clap-out’ as he left the building. The WH called to request the names 
of any political appointees who joined in so they could be fired.”

Two other appointments of Trump loyalists to top positions indicate the 
scope of the extreme right-wing political takeover of the Pentagon. 
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Joseph Kernan, a retired 
three-star Navy admiral, was replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a 
34-year-old right-wing operative who gained positions in the military 
and intelligence apparatus based on his political connections with 
Trump’s former adviser Stephen Bannon and ex-National Security Adviser 
Gen. Michael Flynn, as well as with Jared Kushner. He proved himself to 
Trump by leaking secret CIA documents that were supposed to prove 
government spying on the Trump campaign to California Republican 
Representative Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence 
Committee and member of Trump’s transition team.

The fourth appointment was that of Kash Patel, who is replacing Jen 
Stewart as chief of staff of the defense secretary. Patel, a former 
staff member of Nunes, had previously been named to a position created 
especially for him on the National Security Council. Trump referred to 
him as a “Ukraine policy specialist,” and he was widely suspected of 
being part of the effort to pressure the Ukrainian government for 
damaging information about Joe Biden.

On Wednesday, the new acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, 
announced his first major appointment, naming retired Army Col. Douglas 
Macgregor as his senior adviser. A frequent Fox News commentator, 
Macgregor has denounced the European Union and Germany for welcoming 
“unwanted Muslim invaders,” who, he claimed, had the “the goal of 
eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state.” He has also derided 
attempts in Germany to deal with the crimes of the Nazis as part of a 
“sick mentality” and called for the imposition of martial law on the 
US-Mexico border. As a deliberate provocation, Trump tried to nominate 
the colonel as ambassador to Berlin.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who has very close relations 
with the national security apparatus, cited speculation in the Pentagon 
command that Trump might be installing his handpicked loyalists to carry 
out accelerated troop withdrawals during his last days in office. He 
added, however, “A darker possibility is that Trump wants a Pentagon 
chief who can order the military to take steps that might help keep him 
in power because of an election result that he claims is fraudulent.”

William Cohen, former secretary of defense and Republican senator, told 
CNN that the administration’s shakeup at the Pentagon was “more akin to 
a dictatorship than a democracy.” Similarly, CNN cited an unnamed senior 
defense official as saying: “This is scary, it’s very unsettling. These 
are dictator moves.”

The placing of key levers of power within the massive US military 
apparatus in the hands of a cabal of fascistic Trump loyalists poses 
immense dangers to the working class in the United States and all over 
the world. With 68 days left until Inauguration Day, Trump’s tightened 
political grip over the Pentagon can be used to launch acts of military 
aggression and manufacture the pretext for a declaration of martial law 
and the suspension of constitutional and democratic rights.

Biden and the Democratic Party have treated the wholesale purge at the 
Pentagon as a “national security” problem, suggesting that the greatest 
worry is that Trump’s reshuffling of senior officials will weaken US 
imperialism vis-à-vis Russia and China. Above all, they are determined 
to conceal that Trump’s actions pose a serious threat to what remains of 
democratic rights and forms of rule in the United States.

Far more than the threat of a coup and dictatorship, the Democratic 
Party, representing the interests of Wall Street and the 
military-intelligence apparatus, fears an eruption of popular protest 
and mass resistance from below against Trump and his co-conspirators.