Defense Secretary to Order a Military-Wide Stand Down to Address ‘Extremism’
“The intent is to reinforce the [Pentagon’s] policies and values with respect to this sort of behavior and to have a dialogue with the men and women of the force and to get their views on what they are seeing at their level.”
A few short weeks ago, the media was abuzz that Lloyd Austin, a retired Army four-star general, had been appointed to run the Defense Department, a historic move giving the military its first black defense secretary.
Now, in perhaps the most chilling move yet from the new administration, the newly minted Defense Secretary plans to direct a military-wide stand down, reportedly to address “extremism” within the ranks.
Austin wants all military units to take an operational pause to discuss extremism as he works to grasp the full scope of the issue and better address the longstanding problem, John Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, told reporters Wednesday. The pauses are expected to occur within the next 60 days, but Austin has yet to determine how the stand downs are to be completed, Kirby said.
“The intent is to reinforce the [Pentagon’s] policies and values with respect to this sort of behavior and to have a dialogue with the men and women of the force and to get their views on what they are seeing at their level,” Kirby said. “He wants commands to take the necessary time to … speak with troops about the scope of this problem. It’s a two-way conversation.”
Austin spoke frankly with the acting service secretaries and uniformed service chiefs about his concerns about extremism in the military, including white supremacism, said Kirby, who attended the meeting. The new defense secretary, who is the first Black leader of the Defense Department, wants the service leaders to better grasp how pervasive the issue is within their formations and work with leaders to stamp it out, Kirby said.
We have gone in a few short months from President Donald Trump preventing “critical race theory” dogma from being imposed on federal employees to the possibility that the armed services will have to apologize for their privilege.
The stand-down will occur over the next 60 days.
This is so “each service, each command and each unit can take the time out to have these needed discussions with the men and women of the force,” he said.
There is much that needs to be hammered out including the details of the training that will go along with the stand down and what the secretary and all in the military want to accomplish. The stand down is similar to safety stand downs that units may have, Kirby said.
Perhaps they will try and figure out ways to identify Trump supporters, especially any of those who may have concerns about election fraud.
Meanwhile, other countries are not diverting military efforts by enforcing social justice policies. Last week, warplanes from the United States and China flew in proximity. A Chinese military drill was announced as an American aircraft carrier group entered the contested South China Sea.
A US Navy EP-3E and a Chinese Y-8G, both electronic intelligence aircraft, flew in direct parallel near southern Taiwan on Tuesday, according to aviation tracker Aircraft Spots.
Also on Tuesday, China’s maritime authority announced that a military exercise would take place in waters west of Leizhou Peninsula in the southern province of Guangdong from Wednesday until Saturday.
This is on top of the news that the US has sent a military convoy into Syria and Iran is holding its fifth military drill in 2 weeks.
I suspect these nations will benefit more from the stand down than our country and the men and women serving in our armed forces.
When the mission of the military becomes politicized it doesn’t end well. “Military-wide stand-down” announcement to the world. Just tell the Russians, Chinese & North Korea we surrender. https://t.co/Zr2rvgJSV9
— Michael S. Miller (@imichaelsmiller) February 4, 2021
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Wait until ever military unit has a political officer to
co-command, and over rule any order not passed through by the party.
Think NKVD,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD#World_War_II_operations
Have you heard of JAGs? Almost the same thing.
Defacto, they likely do. Someone to rat you out for saying chick, broad, Negro, Mexican (yes, that is in insult to the overly sensitive), calling a, say, Salvadoran a Mexican, ginger, etc.
For decades the left has injected a variety of “nonsense” into the service: women in combat roles, transgender “acceptance”, enforcement of PC censorship regarding Islam, etcetera. All of these efforts consistently produce two effects: erosion of morale amongst real war fighters and erosion of the military’s capability to fight a real war. I would argue that this “nonsense” is not nonsense. It is purposeful, and intended to drive out those who take military service seriously, or dissuade them from ever enlisting in the first place. This may the military undergo a fundamental transformation into yet another reliable Democrat political plantation. This plantation would furthermore be willing to accept and carry out orders the pre-transformation military would not.
The left has at best little concern for the military’s ability to deal with America’s foreign enemies; at worst they are outright hostile to it. But many of them would be delighted to have the military as a tool they could use against Americans the left has declared its own enemies.
That sounds a lot like what happens in Israel, where bureaucrats boss the miltary around.
I believe that is how Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was an active duty army officer fighting the Germans, ended up in the Gulag.
I had a friend at work.. a Vietnam combat Veteran…. He explained a term they used… ummmmm, I believe it was something like REMF.
He was a good guy… RIP.
Maybe it is code to the Chinese do what you need to do, we won’t stand in your way.
My view is China Joe is compromised anyway so do not expect him to do anything against them.
You ain’t black you ain’t coming back
People blacks are like 13% of the population
Let’s stop this incredible BS
I think they are trying to get whatever they can before the Hispanics realize in mass that they are a much larger group
America is 70% white
Enough of this abuse
Enough!!!
“”blacks are like 13% of the population””
That’s enough. As with any such group, it isn’t how many there are, it’s where they are. Go back and look at the videos from election night, and see who was running those shady vote counting operations. Look at the results of affirmative action in your schools and local government bureaucracies, especially in larger cities.
This starts with the GOP. These rats need to be primaried out of office – ALL of them. Start the purge!
Follow Majorie Greene and PDJT – and support them.
https://greene.house.gov/contact/offices/washington-dc-office
Umpteeth time: our only way out of this is secession, unless you’re anxious for the need for a shooting war.
Trump found a great club, threat of a Partoit Party, I bet all RINOS have a load in their drawers over that.
He also said he didn’t see any future outside of the GOP.
One Hispanics become a larger voting block, you can bet that they will not want to support black perks. My experience is that Hispanics generally have good work ethics, while at large percentage of blacks do not. Hispanics crime rate is much lower than blacks.
I have mentioned that I grew up in Flint, today Flint is a crime infected Ghetto, Granted some areas are much worse than others, but none of it is great today. Flint is a city of parasites, scheming every second to suck the life out of surrounding communities. The same is true of Detroit and other cities.
“We have gone in a few short months from President Donald Trump preventing “critical race theory” dogma from being imposed on federal employees to the possibility that the armed services will have to apologize for their privilege.”
I think it is much worse than that. This is an effort to weed out “extremists” (read: anyone who will honor the oath they took when they joined) and replace them with soldiers directly loyal to the Communist Party’s leadership.
We have already seen this with many senior officers who got all bent out of shape when Trump wanted to stop the rioting in DC but were strangely quiet when over 25,000 troops were used to militarize the Capitol based upon an imaginary threat.
The weeding out will probably require those who remain to take a loyalty oath to the person of President Biden. Not to his office as Commander in Chief enjoyed as U.S. President. No doubt the thinking will be that somebody who insists on swearing duty and loyalty to the office and to the Constitution no doubt fails to appreciate how dangerous Populism and Nationalism are in a world awakening to the evil of Sovereign nation-states.
So just how will this weeding take place? Lots and lots of psych evaluations. Lots and lots of anonymous complaints. Lots and lots of allegations based on behaviors going waaay back. Did you have a “Don’t Tread on Me” emblem on your knapsack in Middle School? Did you post a Hillary Clinton meme joke? Do you belong to a Church that does not have female pastors? All these are suspect.
What kind of rights will an accused have? Probably very few and far between if any. You can be sure the guilty person’s denouncement of wrong thinking will be very public as will be the healing process. Uncle Joe cares!!!!
“This is an effort to weed out “extremists” (read: anyone who will honor the oath they took when they joined) and replace them with soldiers directly loyal to the Communist Party’s leadership.”
Yup.
Hey, gun owners — remember those soldiers you are still mindlessly depending upon to “honor their oaths when the SHTF?”
They be gone soon.
Just because the uniform fits doesn’t mean you served. Those of us that did know this is bull.
TY… good to hear that.
Stolen elections have very grave consequences.
I vote that Lloyd Austin is an extremist and should be given the boot immediately.
He’s just a useful idiot. He should be held responsible for his actions, however.
Lloyd-Fauci just might be committing treason. But then, there’s an epidemic of treason, and a Junta runs our nation – right through the media.
Secession – or the viable threat of it – is our only way to freedom and safety. If we let this fester, the ‘vines’ will grow around our necks a lot sooner than anyone seem to be imagining.
And can we get ONE thing straight, at least? – That the GOP is a great an enemy as the left?
Liz Cheney survives secret republican ballot:
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/breaking-liz-cheney-survives-republican-secret-ballot/
Is this an attempt to displace whites from the military? Is the supposed to open high level positions to Affirmative incompetents?
I have been pissed since the start of all the Thugvon BS. That should not have been allowed to transpire, neither should this.
I am beginning to think that Churchill’s oberrvations about Muslims may well apply equally to blacks. The essence of his comments were that some had admiral qualities, but that the group taken collectively, that was moot.
What percentage of a group has to be of good character to make putting up with those of bad character reasonable?
“Is this an attempt to displace whites from the military? Is the supposed to open high level positions” the Air Force already did this about 2 or 3 decades ago
So now we see who Biden et al believe are the real enemies. This 60-day stand down is the perfect time for the Commies and the Russians to make some trouble.
The enemies are the men and women of the U.S. military, not the Chinese, Norks, Russians, Iranians etc. Our very own military.
I expect once China realizes Biden won’t do anything if they attack Taiwan, they’ll give it a go.
What if this about transforming our military into their military?
As expected, they are only looking for one type of “extremism”, typical average americanism.
If it walks like a purge, it talks like a purge…it’s a purge.
It is – and it’s goal is to turn the military against us to enslave us.
Communist China calls the shots in our former America. Make no mistake about it. And one of their sock puppets is Liz Cheny. Apparently, MOST of the GOP are ChiComm sock puppets – and McConnell is the treason-king of them all.
Work to primary Liz Cheny like your life depended on it. Because it does:
Trump-Hater Liz Cheney Gloats after GOP Lawmakers Vote 145-61 to Keep Her in Leadership Role:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/really-terrific-vote-tonight-trump-hater-liz-cheney-gloats-gop-lawmakers-vote-145-61-keep-leadership-role-video/
How much input do you suppose the folks at Freedom From Religion Foundation will have in the criteria used to weed out extremists? I’m guessing they will not be in the caboose.
I’m guessing they will be way toward the back. The SPLC will be toward the front, and the NAACP will be in the lead car.
I call that ironic because in the days of stream engines, the very front car was the “Negro car”. It was the hottest and smokiest due to its proximity to the engine. Lots of cinders and ash coming in the windows as well.
Reminds me of the loyalty oaths that are required on the show The Man In The High Castle. All the German New Reich had to swear personal loyalty to der Fuhrer. Sick and Wrong.
Blutfahne time.
Just change the person whose blood is on the flag. Order would be in shorthand as below:
“Rutherford unperson. Substitute Ogilvy. Ogilvy biog details as follows: war hero, recently killed, Malabar front. Today awarded posthumous secondary order of conspicuous merit second class.”
Well actually, when Queen Elizabeth dies, the entire British officers Corps will have to swear allegiance to the new king. I do believe the same holds true in al other countries that still have an existing monarch.
Swearing allegiance to a written Constitution is pretty much just an American custom.
Not that we do that. Instead, we swear allegiance to a piece of cloth. If you stand back 20 yards and really consider this, it makes no sense at all. The constitution is relatively immutable. Flags get co-opted by whoever runs the country at the moment.
Facts are facts- and yet, there are some who downvote them.
This creep is nothing but a race hustler, and that is why he was appointed.
The new Zampolit Corp is being organized as we speak.
This is what somebody does that intends to make major changes. They’re already openly firing Trump supporters.
As opposed to assholes like Bitch McConnell who openly threatened Trump that if he fired any DoJ quislings that he wouldn’t confirm replacements.
That is why the Democrats win and the RINOs lose.
IMO, this is eye wash. The stand down isn’t for sixty days in duration. Units have a sixty day window to hold the stand down.
As everyone with half a brain knows, ‘extremism’ can be defined in multiple ways. Supposedly this event will be in the form of a give and take ‘town hall’ type v a simple presentation.
Take always:
1. Members should be cautious in their remarks
2. Member’s Spouses should STFU and stay home if they are unable to understand the harm their remarks will do to their military Spouse’s career
3. This is the ‘first step’. This gets the input from rank and file. The.question is will that input be used or is it simply cover for the adoption of criteria that have already been made?
4. This is being run from top down by DoD. Dealing with ‘big Army aka Dept Army decisions and ideas is bad enough. Neither DoD nor DA give a hoot about the individual service member. Your Battalion level leadership is the last line of protection from DoD or DA. If that BN CDR or BN CSM won’t act to help their Soldiers then they are screwed.
My prediction
The Services use isolated examples from across the Services generated by these events to justify wider action. How wide and how far? TBD.
Unfortunately during several previous administrations the Services have become more captured by corporate trends and buzzwords and civilian style HR mandates. This disillusioned many mid career Officers and NCOs who left the service. The strains of repetitive deployment caused others to depart. That left the second rate, bureaucratic minded, careerist in charge.
Most of these people don’t truly believe the bs that is about to be spewed forth any more than you or I do. They do believe that ‘what the boss wants the boss gets’; consequences be damned. Woe to those, like me, who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes.
As an aside Company level Commanders have been under an obligation to ‘review social media posts’ made by Soldiers under their Command for about ten years or so. Most Soldiers are aware of that fact and, having come of age in a social media environment, most realize the potential consequences for one misjudgment.
“The question is will that input be used or is it simply cover for the adoption of criteria that have already been made?”
Who is the CinC?
Now answer your own question.
henry,
Well that’s a good point. Is this Biden or Rice or someone else imposing an agenda? Could it be possible that the Sec DEF is ‘going through the motions’? Sure it could.
What is to stop the next administration from making a ‘reevaluation’ of this idea of ‘extremism’. What if a future administration uses abortion as the test; support for the killing babies seems pretty extreme to me.
Doing this in a town hall format is, IMO, too big a risk. Too many cell phones. Some spouse or some service member somewhere will say something beyond stupidly ist of one form or another. Will it be recorded? Maybe. Will those few instances be used as ‘proof’ of a larger problem? Maybe.
The thing is by inviting an ‘open discussion’ you can maybe get folks to open up about things they have experienced. If and only if those subordinates trust the leadership holding the session.
Soldiers usually young ones but some older ones, make mistakes and do some incredibly stupid things. However Soldiers are not stupid. If they don’t trust leaders they won’t speak and it is going to be a silent room. A variant of that could be one young Soldier or Spouse who won’t STFU and is making a mountain of a molehill.
Alternatively if the leadership is trusted the Soldiers may open up. However if the Soldiers and Spouses later feel betrayed that will have far reaching consequences.
The military is drawn from all walks of life. I have no doubt that left whacko and right whacko are both present in the military. They are not present in large numbers.
This will not end well.
The US military, at the rank and file levels, is essentially neutral, as far as extreme social and political views are concerned. They have to be. If racism exists within a unit, unit integrity is destroyed. The same is true of political views. Those who are extremists are usually quickly weeded out. The officer corps, especially general officers, are another matter.
The problem, with the military, as the progressives see it, is that it is not extreme enough, in the direction that they wish it to be. They do not want an armed military force, which is reflective of the attitudes of the bulk of the nation. Especially when they are about to embark upon a program to unconstitutionally change this nation.
If I were still in the Army I would only feel comfortable with officers that have experienced walking in high heels with a pregnancy belly pack so they can identify with the hardships American women face in their lives.
They should also be trained in “taking a knee” so they can surrender with some grace and class. The Chinese army will have no defense against a battalion of U.S. troops attacking while wearing pink pussy hats. They will simply collapse to the ground laughing and will be easy conquests. We only need to decide if the pink pussy hats should be worn side to side or front to back.
I wonder if are the generation that will see the end of America.
We started seeing and acceleration of the decline when LBJ was sworn in. Hart Cellar steepened the decline.
“I am, as you can see, a moron.”
He will have a rude awakening. One of my best friends is a Sgt Major. Its his opinion that greater than 65% of the general military and over half of the brass are Trump supporters.
Those half of the brass will be gone
Only 65% of the members, and only half the brass? That’s not nearly enough.
.
Absolutely! This is a purge of Trump supporters because, as we’ve been told by the Propaganda Wing of the Democratic Party (corporate media), all Trump supporters are “white supremacists.”
with trump sitting in the oval, they were supporters. are they still, or will their support switch to the current occupant?
why they were in office, many military personnel supported both daddy bush I and bush II. many now believe both were nothing more than globalist stooges.
loyalty changes like the wind, but stays with whoever signs the checks!
Unlike CommoChief I was never inclined to give this Austin guy any sort of benefit of the doubt. Mostly because I never had any doubt about what kind of inside-the-beltway dancing bear he had to have been.
The guy may be surprised by the “dialogue with the men and women of the force and to get their views on what they are seeing at their level.” Because typically what the pols want isn’t a dialogue but a one-way lecture. But then, they get a dialogue!
I think I get my trouble-making ways from my dad. He retired as a USCG Senior Chief with 21 years in. Who retires at 21 years? I retired as an O-4. I was told that wasn’t even possible; you had to make it to O-5 to be eligible to retire. Apparently I had some boosters who while they couldn’t fix it so I could get passed a promotion board, they could fix it so I could stick around for 20 years.
Our problem was we couldn’t shut up. I can shut up about the things I need to. I was an intel officer; secrets I will take to the grave. But after Tailhook ’91 I got disgusted by all the wet-fingers-in-the-wind crowd clucking about how horrible the culture of naval aviation was. I told everyone within earshot that the naval aviators I served with weren’t a bunch of rapists and I wasn’t going to say they were.
This made me unpopular with everyone except the Sailors.
Shocka! Women have a sense of justice. One of the times I just couldn’t keep a cork in it was during a GMT session r.e. sexual harassment. A female civilian and a female JAG from NAVSUP (Fleet Logistics Center) San Diego were tag-teaming the training. It was all about some poor civilian who had ultimately been fired despite having done nothing identifiably wrong. The details don’t matter. He was a supervisor over a woman who, according to the trainers, was clearly a trouble maker. He tried to deal with it and was shut down, demoted, and eventually counselled in writing that he was never to be alone with that woman.
One day he spells a Sailor at the customer service counter during lunch. A duty driver from one of the ships at 32nd Street comes in with an order that this guy doesn’t know how to fill, so he tells the duty driver to stand by and goes to find some help. Long story short, he walks into the wrong office. He rounds a partition and there she is. He had no idea she would be there. She doesn’t see him as she’s at the opposite end of the room facing away, he doesn’t say anything, he just leaves and finds someone else to help fill the order.
But she finds out later he had walked into the room and raises a stink about it, getting him fired.
The civilian supervisor/JAG are laying out the case which was no case against this clearly innocent man and audible gasps are exploding from the crowd around me. I just have to say something, so I ask some probing questions about the Navy’s double standards encouraging false accusations of sexual harassment on one hand while shielding obviously vindictive accusers from any kind of justice on the other.
This dumbfounds the JAG, who asks me in response, “LT, isn’t sexual harassment a danger you want to protect your Sailors from?”
I say to the JAG, “LT, you’re a danger I want to protect my Sailors from.”
I got a standing ovation from the entire command. The CO was none too happy but he had to call a halt to GMT that day. We were supposedly being “trained” in just how seriously the Navy took sexual harassment. Instead we were being exposed to a raw abuse of power and no one liked it. Men, women, officers, enlisted. All were disgusted. I just happened to say what everyone was thinking.
Don’t get me wrong. I tried to shut up and nod my head in agreement. I tried to compromise. I tried to be a good boy. I wanted to make O-5. Go along to get along? I was onboard with that. Until I wasn’t. Sometimes the Navy came at me in such a way that I was like, “I didn’t sign up for this sh*t” and I just blurted out what I really thought.
It turned out I wasn’t the only guy in the Nav who couldn’t resist that career-ending urge. Hopefully Austin will find out there are lots more.
Ahhhhh….remember back in the old days when the role of the infantry was to seek out, close with and destroy the enemy.
Yup, good times my friends…good times indeed.
Meanwhile, the enemies of the west continue to practice the fine art of killing their enemies. Sadly a skill that is slowly being eroded by the left.
The first step in creating a compliant army to control the proles is to weed out the resisters. Then the next step is to instill unquestioning obedience in the remaining force. Senior officers will be little problem because they are amoral and totally focused on their own advancement. Its the enlisted and the junior officers who need to be culled and indoctrinated.
Justice for Ashli Babbitt!
I wonder if they’re going to bring along Dunce Caps for the slow learners to wear like China’s Red Guard did? China steals ou intellectual property and we steal their totalitarian indoctrination tactics. This isn’t apt to end well.
Oh, goody! More social experiments in the military… How did a black man retire as a 4-Star in such a “rayciss” environment? Let’s no longer worry about readiness but instead, concern ourselves with people’s feewings.
Leftist political appointees of both parties have purged the senior levels of the Pentagon bureaucracy and the officer corps of the competent and patriotic for the last thirty years (and replaced them with lefties). The curricula at the service academies, staff colleges, etc. (and most enlisted training) have all been infused with leftist political dogma. Now, they’re going for the junior officers and enlisted to purge them. Like every other tyrannical regime, they want armed forces loyal to them, not the Constitution, or the country. When they take away enough of the people’s rights to provoke rebellion, they want a force to back them.
So true at the US Military Academy at West Point! It isn’t training young men and women to lead the military; it is training them to change the military into what the worse-than-left want it to be. Look at the courses now offered there! Look at how the recent cheating scandal was tolerated! Look at the whining because the way in which the military needs to function is opposed by students! My husband is USMA ’55 and is terribly saddened by the Academy’s changed-for-the-worst leadership, operations, functioning, etc.
Let the witch hunts begin.
“New Defense chief orders stand-down to rid ranks of ‘racists and extremists'”
If these people weren’t frighteningly serious about this, this statement would be hysterical. Every day, thousands of Antifa and BLM members and supporters, all of whom are racists, Marxists, anarchists, and America haters working very hard to destroy this country, are out on our streets but are ignored and given a free pass by the Left. Yet our so-called “leaders” worry about “White Nationalists” and call them the greatest that we have today. If every FBI office in the country spent a month hunting down every “White Nationalist” they could find, they would be hard pressed to find enough of them to fill the average home’s living room, but untold thousands of Black Nationalists and America haters trying to destroy this country, out on the streets every day, are ignored. So what is wrong with this picture?
These Marxists are promoting and fostering an insurrection, so they can justify their claims of them being everywherr. Lighting fires here and there, so one will eventually catch and burn out of control, justifying their plan for a police state.
That is a very good observation.
The pace of d/progressive so far is impressive. Use their propaganda allies in the MSM to further the created narrative of ‘right-wing extremists’. Take the hideously vile SPLC ‘list of hate groups’ as gospel and implement policies to root out those on the list.
Then vastly over reach in governing. First be EO, then a sham impeachment/trial. Once that farce concludes use reconciliation if possible to jam as much of the socialist/progressive agenda though as possible.
If reconciliation doesn’t get it done then blame lack of action on McConnell and ‘mean, racist r in the Senate. Which of course results in nuking the filibuster rule because Rona.
IMO, the rapid pace and clear lurch to the left, with no effort to hide it, is a result of pressure from the d/progressive base and donors who remember that the first two years of the Obama administration were wasted in their view.
The over reach today is a sign of weaknesses and desperation. The d/progressive know they will lose the HoR in 2022 and are likely to lose the WH in 2024. They won’t have anywhere near the same perfect storm of events that helped win in 2020.
Yes, please address Extreme Incompetence inherent in the Bureaucracy of the US Army and everything it touches.
Call it “critical race” theory/training or brainwashing or whatever, it is RACISM being imposed from Austin at the Pentagon on down through all the sycophants who buy into these worse-than-left attempts to ruin the USA. Don’t tolerate the pandering to some in the minority in the USA’s military – whether by sex, sexual preference/orientation, color, ancestry, it’s all about the African Diaspora.
When Obama repealed DADT – male/male sexual assaults increased and surpassed male/female assaults.
The leftist/Democrat socialists even made bestiality aok in the military.
Communists want to create moral, societal chaos and erase all stability and cohesiveness among the opposition to their totalitarian control.
Soon look for mandatory abortions, forcing people to house homeless, giving state control over children and their educations, and forced euthanasia, eugenics, etc.
Theirs is a cold inhumane ideology and lifestyle.
Forced housing of immigrants too.
They forced hotels to house immigrants in Europe and California.