Putting America Last, Actually
By: Terry Schwadron
Tags: Donald Trump, ISIS, Miliktary, Terrorism

Terry H. Schwadron

Dec. 4, 2020

It’s a focused, if gawdawful example of how Team Trump is putting America at risk in this weird interpretation of transition.

The newly installed political appointee at the Pentagon for the last two months of the Trump era fired the guy overseeing the military’s efforts to combat the remains of the Islamic State.

Christopher P. Maier.

Until this week, Maier, was head of the Pentagon’s Defeat ISIS Task Force since March, 2017. He had been answering questions from his counterparts in the incoming Joe Biden team when he learned that he had been fired by Christopher C. Miller — the guy who became defense secretary three weeks ago following the firing-by-tweet of Mark T. Esper — but only until Jan. 20, 2021.

The offered reason was a doozy: Maier was told he and his office was no longer needed because Team Trump had won the war against the Islamic State.

Apparently there is no more terrorism in the world, or at least not from any of the different groups that found reason to work together to form an Islamic caliphate.

I guess Team Trump doesn’t think we can remember that while the physical caliphate may have disappeared, its militant Islamists mostly dispersed as the fighting got too concentrated and floated off to form other cells elsewhere.

Politics, not Safety

Actually, the same now can be said for Trump’s Pentagon, which not only collapsed the office, but dispersed its members elsewhere to many branches of the military, according to the people who told The New York Times about it.

Maier was told that the duties performed by his office would be split and “folded into two other offices that deal with special operations and regional policies.” As The Times said, those team members will be scattered across the vast Pentagon bureaucracy or returned to their home agencies.

Those offices are run by Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Anthony J. Tata, two Trump appointees who have been promoted in the recent purge as political loyalists, if lacking in military experience.

So, freely translating, what Trump will have accomplished at the Pentagon is to remove the people briefing the incoming Biden regiment with the details of their anti-terrorism work.

Perhaps someone smarter than me can explain how this helps our country be safer from terrorist threat that has moved from caliphate to dispersed cells.

Some estimates are that there are upwards of 10,000 ISIS fighters spread between the Middle East, across East and West Africa and in Afghanistan.

Bad timing or Sabotage?

As has often proved the case over the last four years of Trump, no one quite knows whether this genius move was intentionally dangerous to the interests of the United States or just happenstance that it occurred as the incoming team was trying to assess terrorism dangers.

Either way, the practical effects will be the same for American safety.

Maier’s efforts for both Republican and Democratic presidents had included coordination among counterterrorism agencies and troops still on the group in combat zones in Syria and Iraq, where remaining troops still need to coordinate with both other coalition troops and sometimes Russians in the area.

Pentagon officials insist they are not ignoring the threat from ISIS, but argued that the time was right to reorganize the department’s counterterrorism efforts. After all, the State Department also were transferred away from a special counterterrorism unit,

Trump, of course, has promised to pull these troops out just before Jan. 20.

Hey, Make Americans Safe Again.

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www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com