Soap Box

There is a disturbing trend happening in the highest levels concerning the United States military and the men who have helped to make it the greatest fighting force the world has ever known, and a president who seems determined to remand it into the hands of less experienced, more politically agreeable people.

I call this a trend for a reason and while it is not uncommon for commanders in chief to replace high ranking military officers for insubordination or some other real or imagined breach, it seems that the president has undertaken a fundamental restructuring of the upper echelons of the US high command and has purged 197 high ranking officers in his five years in office, which to my knowledge is unprecedented.

As I stated, firing high profile military officers is not a new thing and sometimes a very unpopular move for a president to make. Harry Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur comes to mind, a firing that was heavily covered by the American media and prompted the disdain of the American public, who considered the general a hero of the Second World War.

Unfortunately, the media has been conspicuously quiet on Obama's firings, keeping the general public in the dark about some of America's most brilliant and experienced military minds being relieved of their commands.

It seems that president Obama allows his petulance and his massive ego to interfere with his judgment and any officer with the guts to disagree with his assessment of a situation is very likely to face dismissal.

General Carter Ham was relieved as head of US Africa Command because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission to Benghazi during the September 11 terrorist attack, in which four Americans were killed.

Rear Admiral Chuck Gaoeutte, who commanded the John C. Stennis Carrier Battle Group, was relieved of his command in October 2012 was also fired concerning the same incident.

Major General Michael Carey, head of the 20th Air Force, responsible for three wings that maintain control of the 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles and Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, the number two officer at the US Strategic Command, were sacked within a week of each other.

Nine senior commanding generals have been fired by Obama this year.

In all, nearly 200 officers have been removed from command positions for some pretty flimsy reasons and in some cases, no reason at all.

The wholesale firing of battle-experienced, competent military leaders is in and of itself ominous to say the least, but if one should speculate on the real reasons, it becomes much more ominous.

As we all know the White House is certainly not so sanctimonious when it comes to weeding out the incompetence among their own ranks, covering Eric Holder with presidential protection from facing the deadly folly of his miserably failed fast and furious debacle, sticking up for Kathleen Sibelius when the Obamacare roll out resembled a Chinese fire drill, protecting Hillary Clinton and the State Department for the inadequate security forces in Benghazi even though Ambassador Stevens repeatedly informed them that the security situation was faulty and potentially disastrous.

But if you notice they had no trouble throwing General David Petraus to the dogs.

Two things come to mind as possibilities of why Obama is so bent on replacing the proven and experienced military commanders.

One, that he wants to remake the military in his personal perception of a politically correct, herd of sheep in uniform, toeing the line of diversity, seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil with commanding officers who will go along with Obama's military policies no matter how hare-brained or dangerous.

The other thing is almost unthinkable, but represents a school of thought that has considerable public opinion underpinning and deserves to at least be mentioned.

If and when a day comes when Obama's socialist agenda has finally reached critical mass, the country is broke, can neither beg borrow nor steal any more money, when the entitlement checks are not in the mail, when hyperinflation hits the country like a swarm of locusts, when streets all over America erupt in violence, if such a situation should arise, and I pray it won't.

Would Barack Hussein Obama - as he has so many times before - declared executive power, circumvent Posse Comitatus and suppress riots with American troops on American soil with military commanders who would order their troops to open fire on American citizens?

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​