The Medical Emergencies of Our Military Leaders
Not a show of strength.
By Daniel Greenfield
Secretary of Defense Austin spent four days in the ICU without notifying his number two leading to a situation in which she was performing her duties over Zoom from her vacation in Puerto Rico.
The Marine Corps seemed to have it somewhat more together, but the timing is still strange.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith on Monday underwent open heart surgery to repair a defect valve that caused his heart attack in late October, the Marine Corps announced.
Smith had successful surgery at an unnamed hospital “to repair a bicuspid aortic valve in his heart, which was the cause of his cardiac arrest on Oct. 29,” according to a Marine Corps statement.
The Marine Corps Commandant has a cardiac arrest on Oct 29 and goes in for surgery now. The Secretary of Defense went in for a procedure on Dec 28th and then ended up in the ICU on Jan 1st.
Medical emergencies do happen, but it’s starting to feel like the brass is not there. I noted that secretaries of defense used to be in their forties, Austin is seventy. Smith is only pushing 60. But it still feels like we have a leadership that is out of it in more ways than one. Our enemies and our allies are looking at this display and they’re not impressed.
We’re facing military conflicts and our Secretary of Defense is in the ICU while the Marine Corps Commandant is in rehab.
Those are far from our biggest problems with the military, but they’re also far from a show of strength.