THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE BOMBS
A hearing for the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff exposes a bipartisan consensus: culture war is a higher priority than debate about the war in Ukraine -
Every quote you read in this story can be found in the Senate Armed Services transcript of its hearing on July 11 to consider the nomination of Air Force General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., an esteemed fighter pilot, to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is the first African American to lead a branch of the US Armed Forces, and America has only previously had one black JCS chairman—Colin Powell, who served under President George H.W. Bush—although untold thousands of African Americans have been killed and wounded while fighting for the flag.
Brown’s appointment and the hearing are important because his two predecessors, both four-star generals, were, in their finest moments—I can’t recall more than a handful—little more than mediocre. Confidence in the US Armed Forces plummeted during their chairmanships, as seen in the now chronic inability of most of the services to meet recruiting needs.
There were moments when serious questions were raised and worthy responses made, but those came before the formal hearings, when the professional staff of the Senate committee threw more than 300 written questions to the incoming JCS chairman. Question 54 provides a good sense of the sophisticated tone of most of the queries: “In your view, does the 2022 NDS [National Defense Strategy] accurately assess the current strategic environment, including prioritization among the most critical and enduring threats to the national security of the United States and its allies? Please explain your answer.”
Obviously, General Brown had to depend on his staff and the staff of the JCS to draft his answers, but they were questions he had to assume might be asked during the Senate confirmation hearing. He also had to assume that any of the hundreds of questions might arise during his private meetings with every committee member—a political necessity—before the formal hearing.
The son of an Army colonel and veteran of the Vietnam War, Brown graduated from Texas Tech University and its ROTC program. He rocketed through a series of Air Force assignments as a jet fighter pilot who would fly 3,000 hours, 130 of them in combat. The Air Force recognized early on that he had the right stuff, as he rotated through schools and promotions that put him in leadership roles with the US Central Command, the Air Force headquarters in Europe and the Pacific. He was appointed Air Force chief of staff in 2020.
The committee chairman, Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a graduate of West Point with two graduate degrees from Harvard who is now in his fifth Senate term, laid out the committee’s bipartisan hard-line point of view—this was not a hearing of the Environment and Public Works committee—at the outset:
“China is our primary competitor. China is the only nation with both the intent and the capability to challenge the interests of the United States and our allies and partners. At the same time, Russia remains a violent, destabilizing force, and nations like Iran and North Korea continue to push the boundaries of military brinksmanship.”
The committee has 25 members, with the Democrats holding a one-seat majority, and the most informed and productive questioning at the hearing came from Reed and his fellow Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republicans Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. It was as if they had read some of the earlier questions and answers prepared by staff that were available to all.
But how to explain these two initial questions for General Brown from Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, a Democrat who has been in the Senate since 2013?
“One, since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?”
The general said: “I have not.”
“Two,” Hirono asked, “have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?”
The general said: “I have not.”
Next came Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota who has been in the Senate since 2015. “General, this is something I never thought I would be sitting here in the United States Senate asking questions about,” he said. “You will take the seat in the midst of the largest recruiting crisis of DoD’s fifty-year, all-volunteer force. While the services struggle . . . there has been an increased emphasis . . . on new policies and plans in areas like equity, extremism, gender ideology, abortion, and sex changes operations. . . . I am aware of a situation . . . where a young woman in the South Dakota National Guard experienced a situation . . . where she was sleeping in open bays and showering with biological males who had not had gender reassignment surgery but were documented as females because they had begun the drug therapy process. This 18-year-old girl was uncomfortable with her situation but had limited options on how to deal with it. . . . If confirmed as the chairman, how do you propose to handle situations like this which may be impacting recruitment and morale by placing a disproportionate emphasis on gender-related ideology?”
The general, who certainly knew about policies that make others “uncomfortable,” promised the senator he would take a look at how to improve what he called “situations like this.”
Race was brought up by Ted Budd, a newly elected Republican from North Carolina, who noted that Brown signed a directive ordering the Air Force Academy “to achieve diversity and inclusion goals broken down by percentage of both race and sex.” “What is the purpose of this memo,” Budd asked, “and how do such policies improve recruiting? Bottom line, I think that we should be suspect of any policies that give advantage to some groups at the expense of others.”
Brown’s answer was to the point: “Senator, the goal is to tap into all the talent across our nation, and the goal there was to actually outreach to broader aspects across the nation and show them the opportunities to join the force. . . . We have got to make sure we provide the opportunity. . . . Young people only aspire to be what they know about, and if they do not know anything about the military, and we do not outreach to them, we may miss some tremendous talent.”
I began to wish the guy was running for president, on either ticket.
It was left to Cotton to bring up the mess in Ukraine. The provocative senator from Arkansas asked Brown whether America’s enormous financial and weapons support for Ukraine’s war had “caused” or merely “exposed” “fragility and cracks” in the US defense industrial base. Brown opted for exposure. He said he believes that America needs to continue to invest in munitions, especially advanced munitions.
Cotton then moved the conversation to the right’s current obsession: a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan. He asked whether weaknesses in the US arsenal would impact “our ability to deter communist China from going for the jugular in Taiwan.” Brown wiggled away from that issue, with its hard-to-gauge implications for those on the right who are urging the US to consider a future confrontation—perhaps a war—with China over Taiwan.
It remained for none other than Senator Warren—what is she doing on the committee?—to bring a touch of reality to the proceedings by again raising, in her closing statement, the controversial actions of fellow committee member Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican of Alabama, whose main qualification for being elected to the Senate in 2020 was his job as a college football coach. Tuberville put a hold on senior military promotions—the power to do so has long been a senatorial perquisite—because of a Pentagon decision to continue offering leave and travel expenses to service members who want or need an abortion, but who live in a state where it is now illegal, in the wake of the controversial Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. At first, Tuberville claimed he wouldn’t budge until the Senate voted on the issue. After Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York offered a bill to the Senate floor, Tuberville vowed to continue his hold, which has led to growing disarray in the military, until the Pentagon changes its policy.
“You know,” the irrepressible Warren told General Brown, “if the senator from Alabama continues his reckless action he will soon be holding 650 leaders, who have served our country honorably, hostage, and as you rightly point out, that has effects on many more of the best and brightest who have volunteered to serve our nation.
“I heard the senator say, as he concluded his questions, that if there was anything he could do to help you in your actions and help the service that he would be glad to do it. What he could do to help is lift this stay before it does more damage to the country.”
There was more chatter about race and race quotas, and Chairman Reed closed the long day of testimony by returning to General Brown’s expressed interest in opening opportunities for more minorities to gain admission to the Air Force Academy. It was an obvious attempt to ensure a unanimous committee vote for the new chairman. Was the August 2022 memorandum that Brown, along with the rest of the Air Force leadership, endorsed, Reed asked, “designed to increase the pool of applicants, essentially to search for more talent. It was not designed to set the composition of the Air Force. Is that accurate?”
It was a sitter question, and the general knocked it out of the park. Guess what Brown said?
So here we have America’s most important committee on defense issues and defense spending—capable of turning thumbs up or down to those nominated by the president to run the country’s constantly expanding war machine—spending little time debating the war in Ukraine and its consequences, and instead repeatedly posing trivial questions to competent black general about steps he took to make sure that other African Americans get the same chances he did.
Meanwhile, how is the Ukraine army doing so far in its counter-offensive—much ballyhooed by the US press—against Putin’s army?