F. MICHAEL MALOOF
WASHINGTON – After multiple top generals described to WND what they regard as a full-scale “purge” of the U.S. military by the Obama administration, the commander of U.S. Army Garrison Japan was summarily relieved of duty and his civilian deputy reassigned, pending a “misconduct” investigation.
Nine generals and flag officers have been relieved of duty under Obama just this year – widely viewed as an extraordinary number – and several sources put the total number of senior officers purged during the five years of the Obama administration as close to 200.
In an email to WND, John outlined what he termed “a very few of the most egregious” aspects of Obama’s “attack” on the military over the past five years.
He referred specifically to the Rules of Engagement in combat that were put in place after Obama took office, asserting that the changes resulted in very high casualty rates in Afghanistan, including the loss of 17 members of SEAL Team 6 in one incident.
“The Rules of Engagement precluded the use of suppression fire at a landing zone,” John said.
Echoing what other high-ranking officers have told WND, he said the Pentagon policy of repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” resulted in the first openly “gay” “major military force in the world.” The development has brought about “massive” sexual assaults on “thousands of straight military male personnel that have been covered up,” he said.
He also cited military chaplains’ being prohibited from reading letters in the pulpit from their cardinals during Sunday services as a restriction of freedom of religion.
These and other “social experiments,” he said, have constituted “a massive assault to restructure the military mindset, destroyed unit cohesion, unit morale and is negatively affecting combat effectiveness.”
John also referred to major cuts in the military budget that resulted in, for one example, restricting as many as seven aircraft carriers to port, “leaving them open to another Pearl Harbor-type of attack.”
Physical fitness qualifications for “tip of the spear units” such as the Rangers, SEALs, Green Berets and combat infantry are being downgraded, he said, so “women can be placed into those units.” Likewise, he added, “women have been assigned to submarines and ships resulting in relationships at sea that have broken up military families.”
Some senior enlisted personnel and commanding officers in the midst of six-month deployments, he said, have been removed because they got involved with the opposite sex, which degrades the ships’ battle readiness.
John sums up this way: “The net result of the occupant of the Oval Office’s new policies set for the U.S. armed forces changed and enforced by his civilian appointees at DOD continues to degrade the most effective military organization ever created.”
If John’s comments about Obama sound dire, they are no more so than those expressed to WND in recent days by top generals.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, recipient of the U.S. military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, as well as other top retired officers, say President Obama’s agenda is decimating the morale of the U.S. ranks to the point members no longer feel prepared to fight or have the desire to win.
“There is no doubt he [Obama] is intent on emasculating the military and will fire anyone who disagrees with him” over such issues as “homosexuals, women in foxholes, the Obama sequester,” Brady told WND.
“They are purging everyone, and if you want to keep your job, just keep your mouth shut,” another military source told WND.
Not only are military service members being demoralized and the ranks’ overall readiness being reduced by the Obama administration’s purge of key leaders, colonels – those lined up in rank to replace outgoing generals – are quietly taking their careers in other directions.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, who was a founding member of Delta Force and later deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President George W. Bush, says it is worrying that four-star generals are being retired at the rate that has occurred under Obama.
“Over the past three years, it is unprecedented for the number of four-star generals to be relieved of duty, and not necessarily relieved for cause,” Boykin said.
“I believe there is a purging of the military,” he said. “The problem is worse than we have ever seen.”
The future of the military is becoming more and more of concern, added Boykin, since colonels who would become generals are also being relieved of duty if they show that they’re not going to support Obama’s agenda, which critics have described as socialist.
Brady made similar references in a recent article he wrote for WND in which he said “just when you thought the leadership of this government could not get any worse, it does. Never in history has an administration spawned another scandal to cover the current one.”
The reference was to the recent firing of a number of generals to mask “Obama’s serial scandals, all prefaced by lies – Fast and Furious, Benghazi, NSA, IRS” among others.
WND reported that three of the nine firings by Obama this year alone were linked to the controversy surrounding the Sep. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the CIA special mission in Benghazi, Libya.
In one case, U.S. Army Gen. Carter Ham, who commanded U.S. African Command when the consulate was attacked and four Americans were killed, was highly critical of the decision by the State Department not to send in reinforcements.