With US forces under regular attack across the Mideast and the Navy actively engaged with Houthi forces in the Red Sea, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was out of commission in the hospital from Monday on.
Worse, no one told the White House; worse yet, neither President Biden nor National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan noticed.
Not until the Pentagon let Sullivan know on Thursday.
Anyone thinking that the nation is well-led despite Biden’s blatant feebleness better think again: Austin and his deputies ignored the law here, while Sullivan was plainly asleep at the switch.
Again, with American forces regularly under fire, and our friends in Ukraine and Israel fully at war with Russia and Hamas.
Oh, and the public was kept in the dark until Friday.
Meanwhile, Austin’s surprise hospitalization left Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks filling in for days — from her vacation in Puerto Rico.
Biden, 81, returned Tuesday from (another) vacation in the Caribbean, and presumably focused the rest of the week on preparing for his Friday campaign speech (again) declaring that our democracy is in danger because Trump.
All of which apparently left him no time for ringing up his defense secretary to check on any foreign threats to said democracy.
Sullivan, meanwhile, is a glorified intern who in the days before Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities was literally bragging in print about how Biden’s leadership had made the Middle East safer than ever.
He’s also part of the Biden “brain trust” that still thinks we can make Iran our friend if we just close our eyes tight enough and come up with sufficiently large bribes.
So it’s no real surprise that he was utterly clueless about the defense secretary going AWOL.
We’ve generally been relieved that Austin, an experienced but non-senile adult, is near the top of the national-security chain of command — even though he couldn’t talk Biden out of his disastrous plan for bugging out of Afghanistan.
But his failure (and his staff’s) to alert the guy with the football here is damning.
And that Biden and Sullivan — heck, the entire National Security Council — didn’t even notice is beyond damning: It’s proof positive that the safety of the country, and of US forces now drawing combat pay, is off their radar for days (at least) at a time.
How can Democrats dare to nominate Biden for a second term now?