The Trump administration's Friday evening shakeup in the Pentagon saw six senior officers fired after Secretary Pete Hegses did something good about his commitment to promote the agency's leadership.
President Donald Trump and President Hegses fired General CQ Brown's co-headed chairman and replaced him with a relatively unknown figure in Lt. Gen. Dan Kane.
Kane's choice shows the president's preference for irregular wars and special operations. Caine was one of a group of military leaders who met with the president at Al Asad Airbase in Iraq in December 2018. Trump was there to deliver the Christmas message and hear from the commander on earth. So Kane told Trump that he could quickly defeat ISIS with a surge in resources and lifting engagement restrictions.
“'We're just going to hit them from a temporary base in Syria,” Trump told him. “But if you give us permission, we don't know that they've hit them now, from the base you were right now, they're not going to know that they've hit them. '”
Trump nominates Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Kane for the co-director's chairman
Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Kane was appointed by Trump on Friday to become chairman of the Co-State Chief of Staff. (US Air Force)
“That was a different message [Trump] I got from my leadership at the Pentagon, and I think it really made an impression.
When Trump chose Kane on Friday, he praised him as a “skilled pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and “fighter jets” with critical intergency and special operations experience.” did.
He picked out the retired general from relative ambiguity to serve as his senior military adviser after accusing his predecessor, CQ Brown of pushing the “awakening” agenda at the Pentagon. Brown was behind the 2022 memo laying out Air Force diversity goals.
Caine does not meet the prerequisites of its duties, such as being a combat commander or service chief, and requires exemptions to confirm with the position.
However, this choice makes the Pentagon Watcher curious about which direction Kane will take with his new, high-level post.
“Kane doesn't write much. We're trying to read tea leaves here,” said Mark Kansian, senior defense advisor at the Center for Strategy and International Studies.
The Greenway is called Kane.
Trump was undoubtedly drawn to his reputation as an offensive fighter pilot who won him the nickname “Razin” Kane. However, according to Greenway, Kane's non-traditional path and business world through the military rank and business world were certainly sales points.
$1,300 coffee cup, 8,000% overpayment of soap dispenser shows waste as doges are trapped in the Pentagon
“It is a president's priority to pass the audit and get people who know what the balance sheet looks like and who can help the department get to its right.”
The Pentagon has failed seven straight audits, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is aiming to cut DOD budgets.
Trump fired General CQ Brown on Friday as co-headed chairman. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
Caine, an F-16 pilot in the background, spent time as a top military liaison to the CIA, a Texas air force security guard and founder of a regional airline. He was a White House Fellow in the Agriculture sector and a counterterrorism specialist on the White House Homeland Security Council.
Since 2018-19, he has been the deputy commander of the Indigenous Resolution of the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Operation, which has been fighting the Islamic State since 2014, but little is known about his role in that operation. . However, the role of airstrikes grew during that time, including the secret secret role, with Trump designating airstrike approvals for commanders rather than the White House.
However, critics say Kane doesn't have command experience in the role of Trump's top military adviser, like Hegses.
“Trump is watching [the role] As someone who has the ability to move forces and directly fund them, it doesn't work that way. That's not a role. So now you have a president who has people around him, his main advisor, [Hegseth] And the new chair, who truly has limited qualifications at a more advanced level, said Gene Moran, former adviser to the co-chief's chairman and founder of lobbying company Capitol Integration.
The administration also released Vice-General Lisa Francetti, the chief of naval operations whom Hegses believed had been given a job because she was a woman. and the Air Force.
“If Navy operations suffer, at least we can hold our heads high, because at least we have one more first. Hooray, the first female member of the co-head.” Hegses wrote in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors. ”
“The Navy in particular has been unable to complete its procurement program within time and budget and has abolished more ships than the infamous vessels,” Greenway said. “So I think there's a message that requires accountability to be restored.”
The former co-director's chairman says goodbye in a Hartfelt social media post: “Clear Honor”
Hegseth was a critic of Brown and Franchetti. (Reuters/Yves Herman)
The switch-up of judge supporters could be the biggest signal of policy changes that Hexes aims to empower him to strengthen his power on earth without worrying about legal constraints.
The judges support the general, a top-class lawyer in the Army, Air Force and Navy, and oversees the legal counsel of each branch and court defense and prosecutors.
Hegses opposed what he considers as an “obsessive” prosecution of war crimes. “He wants to give the fighters the bounty of doubt if there's no absolute genocide,” said one source, familiar with the Defense Secretary's thinking.
“In the end, we want a lawyer who gives constitutional advice and doesn't try to be a barrier to what happened,” the Pentagon chief told Fox News on Sunday.
“Hegseth said the army should do what it takes to achieve victory and not feel constrained by lawyers,” Kangsian said. “But there are several actions that violate international laws and treaties.
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But Kane's progress and the removal of the best lawyers in the background of his secret operations show that he has a new focus on secret operations – alongside the designation of new terrorism in the Latin American cartels Push – and you can set up an army to hit the south of the border for secret counter drugs.
“We can definitely see the change in military attitudes in some of these regions that we have been doing for a long time, and Mexico's new mission is chasing the cartel,” another Hegus alliance said. .
