Time To Get Real

Authored by Citizen Soldier via RealClearDefense,

“Lives depend on it,” said incoming Senate Majority Whip John Barasso.

He’s urging confirmation of President Trump’s national security team of Kash Patel for FBI Director, Tulsi Gabbard for DNI, and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.

He wants Mike Waltz appointed as national security advisor.

Barasso wants serious people swiftly sworn into office on January 20—as we all should.

Because reality returned at 0315 on New Year’s Day.

Not fireworks and champagne, but a determined attack on American life by one man who plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street, then opened fire on cops and civilians. Pipe bombs were found a few blocks away, rigged for remote detonation.

The attack by Shamsud-Din Jabbar in New Orleans killed at least 14 people and injured dozens. Another image of death and terror seared into the Nation’s memory.

We may not have all the facts but we know this: Regular police officers took fire and killed the attacker.

Real people faced evil and stopped it, demonstrating courage under fire like countless local cops and agents in the field, like so many thousands of combat veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan. For people who wear the uniform, who train their mind and body to fight back when others flee, an entire life of preparation boils down to a few seconds.

Few of Biden’s senior-most national security officials could possibly understand. Consider their qualifications:

• Avril Haines, DNI, graduated Georgetown Law, rotated through various ministerial positions in the Obama Administration, managed a program at Columbia University, and advised private corporations.
• Jake Sullivan, NSA, graduated Yale Law, held various ministerial positions in the Obama Administration, taught at Yale Law School, advised Hillary Clinton during her run for the presidency, and advised private corporations.
• Christopher Wray, FBI Director, prosecuted cases early in his career, joined the Bush Administration, then left government to defend corporations at a prominent, white-shoe law firm.

These are Biden’s national security leaders. 

Lawyers and policy wonks, standing safely back from the action, sometimes attentive but many times distracted, reacting to atrocities the only way they know how — by creating more rules and processes, regardless whether they solve the problem.

Contrast them with former terrorism prosecutor Patel, and Gabbard, Hegseth, and Waltz, all former Army officers who have actively defended the United States.

National security leadership is as much a product of experience as education. Firsthand knowledge of violence and its consequences should be a prerequisite for the job. Haines, Sullivan, Wray, and many others boast blue-chip resumes and good social networks but have skipped their apprenticeships to violence, declining to put themselves in harm’s way as soldiers, intelligence officers, special agents, or cops.

Left-wing allies in the media condemn Trump’s national security picks as “lacking qualifications,” but fail to scrutinize the records of Biden’s people, who are well-qualified for the classroom or board room, not the arena.

Time to end the Obama-Biden practice of putting under-qualified people in charge of our national security. We need real leaders who are strong and decisive, just like the men and women who patrol our streets.   

Citizen Soldier believes in life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.