Mark Esper was fired after 16 months on the job trying to keep his head down politically
Washington:
President Donald Trump tweeted Monday that he had sacked Defense Secretary Mark Esper, further destabilizing a government that was already navigating Trump’s refusal to concede electoral defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
“Mark Esper has been fired. I would like to thank him for his service,” Trump said on Twitter.
He announced that Christopher Miller, the current head of the National Counterterrorism Center and former Special Forces officer, will replace Esper as acting Defense Secretary.
Esper, Trump’s fourth Pentagon chief in four years, was fired after 16 months on the job trying to keep his head down politically as he pursued fundamental reforms of the huge Pentagon bureaucracy and sought to reshape the position defense forces around the world to focus on the China threat.
But Trump was angry when Esper resisted pressure to deploy federal troops to quell civil unrest, and also slowed Trump’s desire for a swift full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan as violence continues in the country.
Trump’s move, expected by many insiders, came as a shock nonetheless, coming just a week after losing his reelection bid to Democrat Joe Biden and barely 10 weeks before he left the White House.
It also adds to the sense of declining security in the country, as Trump refuses to accept the verdict of last Tuesday’s election and has pledged to overturn it in court.
Miller spent 31 years in the military, deploying to Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 with Special Forces.
After his retirement, he became a consultant for covert operations and government intelligence.
In 2018-2019, he served as White House adviser on counterterrorism and transnational threats, and from 2019 he was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Special Operations.
In August, he was appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
