Posted on Thursday, October 24, 2024
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by Andrew Shirley
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85 Comments
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A series of shocking reports and revelations in recent days has shed more light on the gross incompetence and mismanagement that has defined the Biden-Harris administration. From the Secret Service to the military, the last four years have left the government agencies Americans rely on hopelessly inept.
Perhaps no agency has been under fire as much as the Secret Service, which nearly allowed an assassin to take the life of former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally earlier this summer.
Following that incident, the Biden White House convened an independent panel which last week released a scathing report detailing “deep flaws in the Secret Service, including some that appear to be systemic or cultural.” Without major reforms, the report warned, incidents like the attempt on Trump’s life “can and will happen again.”
As multiple news outlets reported after the Trump shooting, the Secret Service under Biden has taken a new “woke” direction, including recruiting agents at “pride” events and hosting seminars on correct pronoun usage. Kimberly Cheatle, a longtime friend of First Lady Jill Biden who was selected to lead the agency in 2022, wrote in the Secret Service’s 2023-2027 strategic plan that the agency “must embrace diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA).” Cheatle resigned shortly after the Trump assassination attempt.
“The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission,” the panel wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas presenting its findings. “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”
Not to be outdone, the Biden FBI has also found itself awash in its own scandal. Last September, the FBI released data for 2022 that showed an overall drop in violent crime of about 2.1 percent for the year. Democrats have relentlessly pointed to the stat as evidence that left-wing soft-on-crime policies are working, and Republican claims about violent crime increasing are bogus. The 2023 numbers, released this fall, showed another 3.5 percent drop in violent crime nationally.
But then news broke last week that the FBI had quietly revised its 2022 numbers. Far from a decrease, violent crime had actually increased by 4.9 percent – a dramatic seven-point swing from the original highly-touted inaccurate data. As The New York Post Editorial Board put it, “The 2022 numbers were 100 percent fake, which means we have no reason to believe the 2023 numbersthe bureau’s put out.”
The two possible explanations for such a discrepancy are that the FBI is either hopelessly incompetent or terrifyingly corrupt – neither of which should sit well with the American people, and both of which reflect poorly on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has also come under fire for its mismanagement of the response following Hurricane Helene which devastated large parts of the Southeast. As Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance wrote for The Wall Street Journal, while individual FEMA staff have been working hard on the ground, FEMA “has been the victim of misplaced Biden-Harris political priorities” as Biden-Harris FEMA leadership has “funneled millions of dollars to nongovernmental organizations whose stated goal is facilitating mass migration into the U.S.” The agency also still lists its “number one duty” as instilling “Equity as a Foundation of Emergency Management.”
But while issues with the Secret Service, FEMA, and the FBI are indeed worrisome, the decline in the effectiveness and competency of United States military leadership over the past four years is even more alarming.
Biden started his presidency off with the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 American servicemembers dead. His military leaders have relentlessly pushed woke ideology among the ranks, exacerbating drastic recruiting shortfalls in every branch. Last year, a Chinese spy balloon lumbered over sensitive military installations for nearly a week before Biden did anything about it.
Then came the news last week that, in December 2023, a swarm of “mystery drones” were permitted to fly over restricted military sites for weeks. Most shocking, Langley Air Force Base, the site of many top-secret military programs, had a fleet of drones flying overhead for over 17 days.
The Pentagon has no idea what type of drones they are, who is controlling them, or how they were able to fly with impunity for so long. According to Air Force General Mark Kelly, “the unidentified craft appeared to be 20 feet long and were capable of flying over 100 miles per hour at an altitude between 3,000 and 4,000 feet.”
In October of last year, according to The Wall Street Journal, “5 drones flew over a government site used for nuclear weapons experiments.” Regardless of who tasked these drones to recon these locations, this unsettling violation of sovereign U.S. air space will likely continue as the perpetrators have yet to be identified, much less held accountable.
Flights over military airspace are illegal and a clear violation of United States sovereignty and national security. The fact that the operators of these craft were able to act so brazenly and that the military base had no countermeasures to deter or eliminate them is deeply concerning.
Government agencies already suffer from a certain level of clumsiness and ineptitude inherent in any bureaucracy. Under Joe Biden, DEI mandates and endless distractions from the core mission of those agencies have made these problems exponentially worse. By every indication, a Harris presidency would be more of the same.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
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