WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has launched a sweeping shakeup of the Pentagon, firing top officers and moving to lay off thousands of civilian workers as he seeks to align the US military with his priorities.
\nThe removal of the officers has pushed the Pentagon into the political spotlight, with Democrats accusing Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of seeking to politicize the military and ensure it is led by people personally loyal to the president.
\nRemaining above the political fray is a core principle for the US armed forces, with troops even barred from engaging in some types of political activity in order to maintain the military\u2019s neutrality.
\nHegseth has insisted the president is simply choosing the leaders he wants, saying \u201cthere is civilian control of the military. Nothing about this is unprecedented.\u201d
\nTrump \u201cdeserves to pick his key national security and military advisory team,\u201d Hegseth told \u201cFox News Sunday.\u201d
\nBut Senator Jack Reed \u2014 the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee \u2014 argued that \u201cwhat Trump and Hegseth are trying to do is to politicize the Department of Defense.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the beginning of a very, very serious degradation of the military,\u201d Reed said on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d
\nTrump announced late Friday that he was firing top US military officer General Charles \u201cCQ\u201d Brown less than two years into his four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
\nHegseth then said he was also seeking a replacement for top US Navy officer Admiral Lisa Franchetti, as well as the Air Force vice chief of staff and three top military lawyers.
\nThe shakeup of senior personnel came after the Pentagon announced it aims to cut at least five percent of its more than 900,000-person civilian workforce, saying the decision was taken \u201cto produce efficiencies and refocus the department on the president\u2019s priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representative Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump fired Brown as well as thousands of federal employees \u201cnot because they weren\u2019t competent or good at their jobs, but because Trump wants sycophants.\u201d
\n\u201cAnyone who doesn\u2019t pledge loyalty has to go,\u201d Smith said in a video posted on X, adding: \u201cThat really undermines the competence and capability of the people serving our country.\u201d
\nTrump administration officials have defended the firings, with Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson arguing that the removal of the senior officers is in keeping with past presidential actions.
\n\u201cTruman fired General MacArthur. Lincoln fired General McClellan. Obama fired General McChrystal. Yet the Fake News still claims we\u2019re in \u2018uncharted territory,\u2019\u201d Wilson wrote on X.
\nBut those generals were fired due to specific problems \u2014 Douglas MacArthur for overstepping his authority and defying orders, George McClellan for insufficient aggression on the battlefield and Stanley McChrystal because he and his aides reportedly criticized US officials.
\nNo accusations of misconduct have been made against the recently removed officers, with Hegseth saying Brown is \u201can honorable man\u201d but \u201cnot the right man for the moment.\u201d
\nSeth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that while there are various examples of senior officers being relieved, \u201cit has generally been for competence issues.\u201d
\n\u201cThis does not appear to have been, at least to a significant degree, about the competence of General Brown, for example,\u201d and if the removals were not based on performance, \u201cthen this is uncommon.\u201d
\nJones said he does not however think that \u201cat this point… the vast majority of the uniformed military has been politicized.\u201d
\nIt is when civilian and uniformed leaders disagree that \u201cyou judge whether the military has been politicized. Are they giving their best military judgment on an issue, which is what they\u2019re sworn to do? So we\u2019ll have to see,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has launched a sweeping shakeup of the Pentagon, firing top officers and moving to lay off thousands of civilian workers as he seeks to align the US military with his priorities. The removal of the officers has pushed the Pentagon into the political spotlight, with Democrats accusing Trump and Defense Secretary …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77539,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77524\/revisions\/77539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}