Trump’s New Defense Secretary Signals Troop Drawdown Ahead: ‘All Wars Must End’

National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller testifies before a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on ‘worldwide threats to the homeland’ on Sept. 17, 2020. President Trump named him acting secretary of defense on Nov. 9, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool via AP)

Special to McClatchy Washington Bureau | By Tara Copp and Michael Wilner

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s new defense secretary signaled to the military in a late Friday message that he may be there to carry out one of the president’s early campaign promises, an overseas drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This is the critical phase in which we transition our efforts from a leadership to supporting role,” acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller said in a memo obtained by McClatchy. “We are not a people of perpetual war — it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end.”

Trump in a tweet Monday had announced Miller as the replacement for fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

In the memo to the Defense Department workforce, Miller described at length the respect he has for the institution and the sacrifices made by thousands of men and women who have deployed to the Middle East since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He said,

“ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.”

It was the first indication of what direction the Pentagon may take in Trump’s final weeks in office, the uncertainty of which has raised concerns among career defense officials and the incoming Biden administration about what the changes mean — whether he is rewarding loyalists or trying to force through policies the department has resisted over the last four years.

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Via https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/trumps-new-sec-def-aims-to-end-perpetual-war-biden-sec-def-speaks-of-war-on-russia/