Historic First: Army, Marine Corps and Navy Have No Senate-Confirmed Leadership

On August 14, the United States Navy became the third branch of the U.S. military to have no Senate-confirmed leader. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking military nominations to protest a Department of Defense abortion policy that pays for service members to travel for abortions.

During a relinquishment ceremony at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said:

Because of this blanket hold, starting today, for the first time in the history of the Department of Defense, three of our military services are operating without Senate-confirmed leaders. … This is unprecedented. It is unnecessary. And it is unsafe. … This sweeping hold is undermining America’s military readiness.

The real danger: General Austin is blaming the lack of leadership in the military on a principled stand taken by a senator against an ideologically driven military policy. The reality is that the leadership crisis in America’s military runs far deeper than the lack of a few Senate-confirmed leaders.

America’s military has been pursuing an increasingly leftist-driven agenda for decades now. Its priorities have shifted from defending America’s global interests through military preparedness to promoting transgenderism and other forms of immorality. Conservatively minded leaders have been driven out and replaced by people who will toe the politically correct line.

Prophecy says: In our June-July 2006 article “The Vanishing Man of War,” Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker wrote about how this trend in America was prophesied:

The Prophet Isaiah foretold a massive leadership void that would plague the modern nations of Israel and Judah. Perhaps nowhere is this scenario more dramatically and distressingly fulfilled than in the United States military.

Read Isaiah 3:1-3. Among the male leaders prophesied to be absent in our day are the “mighty man,” the “man of war,” and “the captain of fifty”—strong men, valiant men, champions, warriors and generals. Isaiah’s pronouncement clearly includes a softening among military personnel.

General Austin is correct in saying that the military’s leadership void is unprecedented, unnecessary, unsafe and undermining the nation’s military readiness. But he has woefully misdiagnosed the cause. This is actually a curse America is suffering for turning its back on God and embracing immorality and sin.