Above photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.
Amid Fears Of New War.
Lawmakers are calling for new legislation giving President Trump broad authority to go to war.
US War Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered hundreds of the US military’s top leaders to meet on short notice for an unknown reason at a Marine Corps base in Virginia next week, the Washington Post reported on 25 September.
“The Secretary of War will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” said chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.
“The highly unusual directive was sent to virtually all of the military’s top commanders worldwide,” the newspaper wrote, citing more than a dozen people familiar with the matter.
The announcement comes months after Hegseth announced plans to carry out a major consolidation of top military commands.
Hegseth’s abrupt call for such an emergency meeting has led to concerns of a coming conflict.
A senior Pentagon official said, “In my 30 years in the US military, I have never seen anything like this. We might be on the brink of war.”
Hegseth’s order reportedly applies to all senior officers with the rank of brigadier general or above, some 800 commanders, including those stationed throughout Europe, West Asia, and the Pacific.
No such meeting to gather so many of the military’s generals and admirals has ever occurred, according to the recollection of the Washington Post’s sources.
“Several said it raised security concerns,” the daily added.
The planned emergency meeting comes after legislation was drafted earlier this week that would give US President Donald Trump unchecked power to wage war against drug cartels, as well as any nation he says has harbored or aided them.
If passed, the legislation would allow the US president to deem as “terrorists” any groups that have trafficked in drugs or financed drug-related enterprises. The president would then have the authorization to use military force against such groups and any governments allegedly harboring them.
The draft legislation appears to be modeled on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress granted former US president George W. Bush to launch the so-called “War on Terror” after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
According to political analyst Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, Israel is likely to launch another war with Iran before December, which may drag the US into war along with it.
Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran in June, resulting in a 12-day war.
The US military joined the assault, sending warplanes to bomb three of Iran’s nuclear sites.
It is unclear to what extent Iran’s nuclear program was damaged, nor how much Iran was able to damage Israel’s military capabilities after launching multiple waves of ballistic missiles and drones in response.
Parsi writes that “Iran is expecting and preparing for the [next] attack. It played the long game in the first war, pacing its missile attacks as it anticipated a protracted conflict. In the next round, however, Iran is likely to strike decisively from the outset, aiming to dispel any notion that it can be subdued under Israeli military dominance.”
