 Hey, we're back we're alive who's in charge the military the civilians let's go on here in this democracy. And for this discussion we have my brother Jean fight down knows a lot about the military. We have Brenner for sale who teaches at Hofstra New York we have called Baker, who has spent a lot of time on foreign policy at the, at the Pacific Forum and CSIS and we're going to talk about how the United States handles itself and should handle itself on the, when you call it the ranking can I use that term of the military and the civilian people who are running the government or running the military. And I will say that I told my brother about this I want to offer this as a thought that in Sudan they made an agreement because they couldn't agree on anything between military and civilian and they agreed that every 21 months it would rotate. And so the military crowd hunter I suppose would be in charge for 21 months, and then it would turn over to the civilian government and they will be in charge for the next 21 months. This has all the badges of failure, and it's already failing. But the example is good because it shows you there is an issue there. And in some places. You know the military somehow gets in charge. And maybe that's a possibility here in these United States. So Jean who's in charge, and what's the best way under our democratic Constitution. Exactly. Thank you. Well the answer of course is the Congress is in charge. Really, if you read the Constitution which everybody should do every once in a while. Congress. Appears an article one. That's not an accident that that came first that it's a, I suppose a, an inheritance from Britain where parliament is supreme. Congress is supreme subject of course to powers that have been given to the executive branch and article two and to the judicial branch and article three. And Congress under the Constitution has a variety of powers that do relate quite directly to national defense power to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces kept power to deal with captures of land and on land and a variety of power of the power to establish a navy, for example. So, you know there's a clear textual basis for Congress being in the driver's seat. On the other hand, you get to article two if you're still reading. And lo and behold, the president is the commander in chief. Well, what does it mean if you're the commander in chief if Congress has told you to do something. But don't you have to do it and the answer is yes basically that's right, either as a an enforceable matter or, you know, as a legal matter or through the power of the purse of kind, you know, no money can be withdrawn from the military without an appropriation of Congress decides through the power of the purse that it's going to zero out some military program, it is zeroed out, you know, subject to occasional spots such as can the president recycle money reprogram money from one program to another such as the wall. So, that's a beginning to an answer to your question, Jake. I know there's more to it. So, you know, Carl, we have had a number of what you call military engagements in our lifetimes and very few of them have actually had congressional imprimatur. Our commander in chief decides one day, you know, we're going to go in and I'm going to take my troops with me and we're going to have a military engagement someplace in the world. That's not constitutional but it's happening it's happened. Where do we stand on that who's in charge. Well, I mean clearly I mean the simple answer is is that yeah Congress is in charge, but we really need to figure out of what they're in charge of, which is the broad question, and how do we how do we make them accountable. You know, and I think the real problem for the military is how do you make the military accountable for all these actions that have been done with the military saying we got it we got it just give me a couple million dollars more money and a little a few few thousand troops and I'll take care of it. And I think that's where the problem lies is really about the accountability. The answers are fairly simple. It's a word democracy so we want to have some kind of democratic system for controlling defense and security policy. Beyond that it becomes very complicated because you're basically giving the military the authority to execute force, but you don't really give them more guide if you don't give them more guidelines of that, then they're going to take it and run as far as they can as fast as they can until somebody tells them to stop. And that would be. Well, I mean it could be policymakers in the executive or it should be the legislative branch as as Jean has said. You know, a better could it be that what it's what it's not going to be if I can offer a friendly amendment Carl. It's not going to be the federal courts. This, this is basically an area where the federal courts are very low to get involved. And maybe that's, you know, that's related to my next question to to Brenner because we live in times that move quickly. Now on December 7 FDR could go to Congress and get a declaration of war in a matter of hours. I'm not so sure that anybody could go to Congress now under really any circumstances and get any action within a matter of hours, you know, bipartisan, you know, almost I think it was almost unanimous. So, how does time enter into this. We have these actions. I don't want to call them police actions but call them military engagements hither and yarn with the president dispatches troops. Couldn't an argument be made and how good is the argument that that we have to move quickly sometimes as the world's arguably the world's placement. Nobody likes that term either. I mean, we we've sort of shifted the question that we're asking now because you you're saying the president is engaging in these, these ordering these troops to do this while the president is civilian, right. So we do have civilian control of the military, even if it is executive civilian control the military gene is saying we need executive legend or sorry civilian legislative control. I mean, the primary guarantor of the civilian control is that the president is the commander chiefs article two is doing that work gene in a way of civilian control. And I and then if we segue this with Carl's point. The question then becomes is the military ever acting without any presidential authorization, then we would have a real true civilian control problem and maybe Jay. Imagine a situation where the military would need to act without consulting the Secretary of Defense, or the president and maybe there would need to be standing orders or maybe it would be an emergency I don't know but that would be certainly the most problematic case right. Imagine the situation, but she you had a point on this. Let's let's let's complicated a little bit more. I want to toss some more complications into this stew. I suppose the military, you know, part of the civilian control of the military is the, who's the Secretary of Defense. Well, now we have for the second time in a row, and the third time in history, a retired general as the Secretary of Defense Well, you know, I have nothing against General Austin he seems to have been an excellent officer. You know, he spent 30 plus years in uniform. Is he should Congress have given him a waiver that's what it took. There is actually a statute that provides a cooling off period of I think seven years before a retiree can become Secretary of Defense. Should they have done that should they have done it for his predecessor General Mattis another distinguished officer should they have done it for George Marshall. So that's, that's one thing and you know what what a civilian control mean if the, the ostensible civilian. If you take off the Brooks Brothers suit, no offense Brenner. You know, turns out to be turns out to be wearing a camouflage, you know, underwear, you know, and, and as far as the Hill is concerned and here's here I really want to complicate things. Does it mean that we have increasing numbers of either reservists, or former military people in the House and Senate, I mean, hardly a day goes by without my getting a call or fundraising email from somebody who's running for the House or Senate that's that's democracy I'm for that. But you know, right up in the first sentence or two of the pitch is, I served in the Navy, and therefore I'm qualified to be a member of the House of Representatives. I mean, is it, is there too much of a good thing is that a good thing. And is there such a thing as too much of a good as a good thing. Well that you know that goes to a question that has been a pet peeve of mine, since the 70s and that is. So we now have a volunteer military. Pretty much, and we've had it for a long time. And, you know that was one thing you know the greatest generation a lot of those guys were reservists, even in Vietnam. Carl, how does, how does that change things. If you have this kind of clubby thing where everybody is a volunteer. And everybody is in this special commitment club for for a career, not a two year stint or a four year stint, but a career. Does that change things about who's running what. Yes, it does. And, and, I mean, to expand on jeans point. It's not only in the in this Congress that we're seeing this but we're seeing it in the policy positions in the Pentagon, where it goes beyond just the secretary. It goes beyond his his role as as the interface with the executive branch because now you've got policy people in the Pentagon, who typically have military expertise, which gets translated into. The military. And so now you no longer really have this this artifact, Artifice of civilian control in defense policy, you really have a bunch of lower ranking people who are working in defense policy who used to be military and now put on the Brooks Brothers suit and call himself civilians. So yeah you have this, this clubby atmosphere, you don't you don't get people from Yale and Harvard joining the military anymore. You end up with with a different group of people, and they tend to be fairly conservative, and they tend to be from rural areas and smaller universities because those are the ones who are attracted to to the military because the, the wealthy East Coast folks aren't interested in being part of the military anymore. But note the slur. You covered, you covered a lot of faces their car you picked off the East Coast which is anything east of the Mississippi, I imagine, and the entire IDV. Yeah, I know. But let's keep talking. No, let's keep slurring. So we had, we had the most remarkable president the last time around, and he threw a lot of money at the military at the beginning there and he said I they owe me because I gave him a lot of money. And then he took the money back for the wall I mean the whole thing he's playing with the military budget, and trying to ingratiate himself somehow and being the personal leader of the military. How did Trump change things on this particular issue. Did he, did he change the way it worked, the relationship with the president between the president and, and the joint chiefs in the military in general, and not change but certainly rejected the, the norm of of against a Caesar like cult of equality, which we've, which is really historic in this country as we do we do like ex generals as presidents. Our first president was George Washington, but George Washington was also celebrated for not not could be not sort of continuing in power as a general, after the Revolutionary War ended. If there's a big building in DC you might have driven by a gene the society of the Cincinnati that he was equated with Cincinnati's the Roman general who laid down his, his arms after the war and did not become the king. So, Trump is basically the opposite of that is that the culture the personality and the closeness to the military is was part of his image and that's, I think we can all agree that that is not an ideal norm for a Democratic society. All right, I have a point of Trump. Chairman, you mean, your pot. This is a privileged motion. Student Senator Queens college this was a privileged motion a point. I recently read this anecdote about our immediate past president. He attended a, a school, a military high school military prep school called the New York Military Academy. And there came a time when he had to have his photograph taken for I guess the yearbook or something when he was going to graduate. And the photograph, you know, exists that the yearbook exists and the photograph is there and it's a photograph of cadet or whatever they call them Trump. You know, in a uniform with a lot of decorations and the stripes the shepherds that you get if you're like a battalion officer or something. Come to find out and this is the point of Trump. It wasn't his uniform. It was his cadets uniform that he had borrowed for the purpose of having his photograph taken. And that's definitely a point of Trump. Okay, we return you now to your regular broadcast. But let's talk about. Let's talk about a current event and the uses and misuses of congressional authority. And let's talk about the case of Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller of the Marine Corps. Brenner is deeply involved in military justice. He clerked that the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and is the in charge of the country's leading military justice blog called calf log Brenner do you want to open that up. Well, I mean I will raise something that I don't think a lot of people outside of the military justice community know which is that at Scheller's sentencing a character witnesses were called. And one of them was Marjorie Taylor green and presumably we haven't been able to actually get the transcript of what happened but presumably Marjorie Taylor green was going to back up Scheller's criticism of the Afghan withdrawal. That would be kind of problematic. And she's a sitting member of Congress and now she's testifying a criminal trial, talking about political matters. So, I'll put this one under abuses, Jean. I have seen a news report that says that the military judge silenced her, you just cut off the microphone on her because she was just wandering into politics there was another witness from Congress, a gentleman named Louis Gohmert, Republican Texas, who oddly has a law degree. And has already made an indelible mark on American politics. So he was, he was another person that testified. In addition, when Colonel Scheller was in the brig at Camp Lejeune. The number of Republican members of Congress signed a letter to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy I believe demanding that Colonel Scheller be released from pre trial confinement. So there you have members of Congress dealing with retail administration of justice. Nothing correspondence like that would never happen to a person who'd been put in pre trial confinement by a federal district judge, for example in the article three courts. So, you know, there's a certain, there's a certain wackiness to Congress's vision, understanding of its own role with respect to military personnel matters they will, you know they treat this as sort of casework well it's a constituent or maybe it's not a constituent but it's, it's some individual GI I'll just write a letter to the Secretary the Navy. And this is crazy. It's very disturbing. And the whole Scheller case is very disturbing. You know, first of all, it emanated originally from Twitter, I think. So here's a Lieutenant Colonel, a Marine, no less it goes on Twitter criticizes the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense, and the President about a policy decision how dare he do that. The Marine Corps, they don't do that in the Marine Corps. And then you find that it's been politicized. It's been politicized by further social media by others who happen to agree with them who are in the service, all of whom may be in violation of the UNJ. And it's been politicized by members as you say, Jean, of being in Congress this is very disturbing, and it shows a lack of discipline a lack of good conduct in the service a deterioration if you will Carl do you agree. Now, where do you come out on that. Well, let's go back to where we started with you saying that you know things have changed time moves fast information isn't as isn't as as founded in fact as it was before. Go back to the late 1990s when there was a young major Marine named HR McMaster, who wrote a book about dereliction of duty. This was 20 years later, but it was about the dereliction of duty by the military of the Vietnam War, but he was he did is he did his fact checks he did was very thorough and wrote a scholarly book about dereliction of duty. We get to shader, and we get the same thing but we get it via Twitter and we get it via via snippets, and there's no coherence. And I think that that sort of summarizes what's happening with with the old ideas of civil military religions is it's just all scattershot. There's nobody that really thinks through what we're trying to do with this this triangle between the people. It's the government the Congress and the executive branch and the military. It's, it's, it's everybody out for themselves and everything gets politicized in the process, and it's all done, you know, via social media. Carl's absolutely right. I think, also, you can't talk about the pathology of the congressional military relationship right now, without talking about the internal pathology of the Congress of the United States. I mean, let me give you an example as a young man, graduate of a leading Easton law school, make a note of that Carl, named Josh Hawley, he's a member of the world's greatest deliberative body the United States. And, oddly, he has a law degree. As a law degree from a very fine law school. And Mr. Holly Senator Holly, reportedly, has put a stop on all nominations to positions in the Department of Defense. But he is to Defense Department nominations as Senator Ted Cruz another graduate of a leading Eastern law school different law school is to the Department of State he's put a hold on all ambassadorial nominations, I mean, so there is some real pathology, internal to the Congress that plays out in truly devastating and scary ways, when you're talking about national defense or the, you know, the Department of State that is the, you know, the peaceable, the peaceable partner of the Defense Department. So, you know, you can't, in other words you can't isolate out one particular kind of pathology from the rest of the, the, the organic whole of the federal government. And it hampers the government, you know, from doing anything, Department of Defense, Department of State they're hampered by not having their, you know, nominations can confirm. I'm going to ask you a sort of a military question. If you have people like Sheller and others who join him who, you know, who also write Twitter and Facebook messages agreeing with him and criticizing, you know, the government all the way up to the top, the military chain of command up to the top. Is that, is that something we can afford to have? It seems to me it's a violation of good order and discipline, but it's widespread in a way. And can we operate an effective military with this kind of free-for-all? It's a tough balancing act, I think, Jay, because you don't want to have automatons who turn their brains off and stop thinking about what they're doing. You don't want to have that. The most, all the atrocities in the world have been committed by people like that who haven't been thinking about what's right and wrong. So you don't want, you don't want them to turn off their brains. At the same time, it's not really the thinking that's the problem, is it, Jay? It's the communication and the publicization. And so I think Carl's right that we're in a new world with social media that had to deal with this 20 years ago. You wouldn't have like chain letters that would be as, there's just not the opportunity to publicize. So it's a, it's a new world that they have to confront. And I think you'd agree, Jean, they're still walking in the dark, feeling their way through at this point. Yeah, Jean, I want to go back to a comment you made earlier. And that is, so we have a relatively new president. And let's assume that Joe Biden doesn't know a whole lot about military affairs strategies, whatnot. You know, he's faced with a, with a bunch of guys including some generals who were appointed to high positions by Trump and stayed with it like milling. And then we get into, you know, his decisions, and there were a number of decisions about Afghanistan. And those decisions, some of them, you know, arguably were really, really wrong decisions about, you know, how to ramp up to the departure, the departure itself I suppose you could put that on the table. How to deal with, you know, some of the facts coming out. The, for example, the, the drone killing of the wrong person and all that. And so here's the president commander in chief he has control, but you know what, it's, it's just like the earlier thing we talked about. He's, he's got to deal with the club. And the club knows a lot more about this than he does. And he may be in a position where he can't really argue that much with them. If they tell him, you know, hey, no problem about getting out we can wait till the last minute before we arrange transportation for the Afghans that, you know, are in harm's way. And so I would see, I would see him as being subjected to expertise, perhaps that he couldn't argue with but he had to abide by, and he adopted that expertise as commander in chief and he made some mistakes. What, you know, looking at the crucible of those decisions and the way they emanated and were carried out. What do you think about that was a good process or not. Who is that addressed to you. Well, I'll coral with your premise Jay. I don't think there's ever been a president who has from the standpoint of, you know, military matters, had better preparation with the possible exception of President Eisenhower. And that because here you have a president who served eight years as vice president. And in that, and he was an active vice president he wasn't a figurehead he wasn't, you know, just another pretty face. So he and he had a good relationship I believe with President Obama. And before that he'd been a senator since he was like 30 years old or something so you know he he's been around power for very, very long time. Okay just remember he was hampered in the transition right intentionally. Yes, yes, and that's yeah that's a point of Trump fair that's a fair point. But you know that. For one thing the minute it became obvious that the outgoing administration, it did go out, by the way, in case anybody is listening to his former President Trump. You know, it became obvious pretty soon that the Trump administration was going to gum up the transition and basically dock the incoming administration a couple of months, which is what happened on the other hand, you know the, the Biden transition was a phenomenally powerful team I mean they were really the, the, as good as it gets in terms of skill sets the national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, you know widely admired the very long period of preparation, very shrewd and experienced. I, I, I'm just, I think there's a, there's a flawed premise or a questionable premise at least. Okay, well let's just then try to answer the bottom line question was a good process. No, I would say not. But but it was but the flaws in the process had been baked in for 20 years. I think the administrations, one after another were far too dependent on information flow from the Pentagon, and far too uncritical of it, and unwilling to make the kinds of political decisions that they could have been making, and display the skepticism, then they should have displayed now that's 2020 hindsight I get that. But that's, that's my hindsight that's what I, that's how I understand the, the sequence of events but I want to talk about one thing while we're talking about process, I think there's some real problems and getting back to your original framing for our conversation today, some real process problems, in terms of how Congress goes about its work now. Congress passes with respect to national defense Congress passes enormous pieces of legislation hundreds and hundreds of pages of legislation. And that is arrived at behind closed doors in the military justice area, for example, meaningful hearings are as rare as hands teeth. And that I think is quite unfortunate a lot of the hardest decisions are made in conference committees or they're made in markups that the public is not around for it. Now, here, here's, here's some realities, and I speak as a person who wasn't a political science major in college but you know you pick things up over the years. Look what you have in the sort of pantheon or constellation of forces dealing with military legislation you have contractors government contractors. You have billions at stake in, you know, that are the stakes of defense legislation contractors have checkbooks contractors give to campaigns contractors will buy a table at the banquet, and so on and so forth. Veterans organizations have real power they may not have the big bucks but they have real power because they have voters. One group that is not in the mix is G eyes. Why is that because Congress and its infinite wisdom has outlawed the creation of unions. So the, the, the workforce is tongue tied on this in this in this part of the legislative forest. Carl you know we've, we've been playing with a few notions here. And, you know, one is that Congress has really not done a good job. The second is that, and I'll throw this in if everyone to disagree with me say so. There's a huge number of people in the, in our first forces that are resistant to the vaccine order, which, which I find it quite extraordinary and political. I think we've established that the military has been has gone conservative and some cases they've gone political and people in Congress have, you know, enhanced that. And so you have where a situation a few years ago you would never think that the military was political really I mean we have one of our hosts who is a three star retired Air Force, who always says I'm not political I was never political it's not in my nature to be political I'm not going to be political, but I think the military is getting political. And my question to you is, should we be concerned that the military is no longer, you know, an instrument of the commander in chief, no longer an instrument of Congress as we have seen Congress doing the leadership the national leadership on this should be concerned that the military is like becoming a wild card in terms of the relationship on ruling on governing the country. Sure. I mean just just as we should be concerned about what's happening with the presidency with the Congress, certainly with the military as well. I mean I think you know there, it's, it's, it's a reflection of society military reflects society and and clearly, despite my, my unintended slur about the East Coast. You know the fact is is that the military does recruit from from rural areas, which are largely Republican these days and, and they carry a lot of those ideas on when they join the military. So, yeah, we should be concerned about it, but it's a it's a broader, it's broader than just the military the military, as I say reflects society, and it reflects what's happening with the other branches, or the other elements of this of this triangle that we were dealing with it with civil military relations. And so, yeah, we should be concerned to be concerned that if the military takes greater power, so to speak. And now it you know we're all evolves into greater power vis-à-vis the way they call it a civilian establishment, namely the commander in chief. That would be a concern for the country. Jay it won't be taking power that's not in the military DNA. It will accept it. If it's yielded by other branches of the government. Fair enough. Yeah, nature involves a vacuum. Yes, fair enough. So Carl, you know, the balance could change here. We could find the military taking more and more, I'm going to say leadership in military matters vis-à-vis the civilian part of the government. Would you be concerned about that. Clearly, in the transition from from the previous administration to the Biden administration. There was a lot of concern about that or how, how one side or the other is going to use the military to ensure the transition. And I think, you know, with what I see happening between now and 2024, it's going to become even a bigger concern because I think I think the 2024 election is is setting up to be a very, very problematic event. And the military, as it becomes politicized, is going to have that problem. I mean, I don't recall ever seeing a chairman of the joint chiefs as political as Millie has become whether and it's not really his, his doing as much as it is him being put in a circumstance where he's forced to be political. And in some respects, he was duped into some of that. But the fact is, is that, yes, the military is as Jean points out, can get thrust into that position. And I don't think the military is very well prepared for that because as you say, you're your three star general who says he's not political and has no tendencies to that's been that's been beaten into every military officer. But the fact is, is that the retired military officer community is becoming much more active. And it's going to force the military into positions where they're going to be put in a very uncomfortable position. Yeah, and so many, so many senior officers retired are coming on the media welcomed on the media for their opinion where they opine on what the government is doing with the military that's troubling to me. So better, I saved the most difficult question for you, I'm sorry. You've heard all the concerns expressed. And it does seem that there's an issue here. And the issue has all the possibility, whether, you know, Biden states an office Trump comes back whatever it is and in the, in the dynamic of the country that this issue is going to remain and probably exacerbate. And so my question is to you, what do we do about it. What does Congress do about it. Could the courts get involved, although they're not involved in, you know, as Jean said right now. And what does the president do in order to establish or reestablish the notion that he is the commander in chief. He will make the decisions and they will not. And he will speak to the country and they will not. Okay, unfortunately, I think we'll have to hit rock bottom, and there will have to be a social movement. So this, this is what happened with police. A year ago, a year and a half ago, many of the criticisms of the military that are my two colleagues here are noting, have also been leveled against the police, and that they're skewing partisan they're resisting civilian control, etc. The police have been able, and also, they've, Jean, they've been able to unionize and use unions, correct. But it for decades they were politically active. Basically, you could not speak against the police and win and many local elections, you would seek out their endorsement, and they operated with impunity for decades and that has certainly changed some things, technical right as well as with the advent of cell phones but also a social movement. What you might think of rock bottom when we've had a number of killings that were recorded that were unjustified so maybe we need to have that rock bottom moment. In order for us to people to wake up and reassert their rightful place which is not as differential as they currently are to this institution. Maybe we've had that rock bottom moment. Maybe we've had it, which is, which is what though, the insurrection. No, I would say it's the the withdrawal from. I think that the more, you know, for purposes of this conversation. It's the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the deaths at Kabul, particularly the drone strike. I think that may be the sort of galvanizing the iconic event. If it's recognized as such and the fact is we have so many other things on our plate right now as a country and as a political system that that could get pushed out of the limelight that it deserves to be in the limelight and that's why the Scheller case is so fascinating and I don't think we've heard the last, we certainly haven't heard the last from Colonel Scheller. There'll be others to know. Interesting brand that you say that I think that's a very thoughtful notion and in fact there are some people who feel that the problem in Congress the problem in our democracy and our government is not going to get resolved until we hit rock bottom and rock bottom may be a war rock bottom maybe climate change extreme storms and calamities and casualties and you know that make people turn around and say whoa we better get back to basics. Jean says no rock bottom has to do with the filibuster and whether we can pass a voting rights act in the in the 21st century. If we can't. I mean, good grief. That's that's about that's about rock bottom I think. And we may be. Okay Carl, we're almost out of time I want to offer you the opportunity of trying to come up with sort of a summarization and profundity here. I think we need to remember that the civil military relationship in the United States has to involve all three elements. The government, the military and the public. And we have to figure out how to hold each one accountable for what it's responsible for. And I think that that is is a fundamental task that is going to have to be done. And collaboratively, and I think there in is is my conundrum is how do you actually do that with the dysfunctional legislative branch that we have. And so, I think that it has to be a social movement of some kind that there has to be a recognition that the legislative branch is a problem for the American people. And I think that's the one takeaway that I would like to get from this year here. Thank you. Carl Baker has been with, you know, the issues of foreign policy, foreign, you know, foreign relations for a career with CSIS and Pacific Forum here in Honolulu. Let me ask you for a closing remark. Brenna, something profound, if you don't mind to leave people with I think, I think, basically, I agree with Jean now that I've thought about it. I think there was an op ed in the times, a few weeks ago, reflecting on the failures that Jean noted, and where the op ed basically said the downs, think about the downsides of trusting in the military. We've trusted in the military for so long. And I think that was really a courageous op ed, but also it was indicative of a change. And maybe we are in a new era now after after this last this fall. And we'll have to see. We'll have to see, we'll have to get together again. Brenna who is teaching at Hofstra in the subject, collaborating with Jean, I think, and also spend some time with the Court of Appeals for Armed Forces. And Jean, you know, teaching at NYU and military justice, teaching military justice for since 1922. It's really remarkable. How well preserved I am. Yes, it's amazing the way that works. Maybe it helps. And, you know, and being in the practice of military justice for a long, long time. I want to ask you to summarize and give your profound, you know, message to our viewers. It's on President Biden. I think he is the central character in the drama that's unfolding. It's not, it's not Mitch McConnell. It's not, you know, Josh Hawley. It's not Colonel Scheller is President Biden. And I, I, I believe he can do it, but he's going to have to be more, not forthright, but more full throated and impress upon the people. The gravity of the challenges that we're facing. He's, he's done an okay job in terms of the pandemic he didn't invent the pandemic. We've rocked along it's been an uncertain path. But I think that the political and structural issues that the country is currently facing that our federal government, our federal system is currently facing are so profound. And Congress which he knows very, very well is so broken that actually there's only one person in the United States that can begin the task of fixing it. And that's the president of the United States he's got a bully pulpit. God bless him I hope he uses it. Yeah, and what I take from all of this is God bless us and save us all. Jean Fidel, Brenner Fistel, and Carl Baker. Thank you so much gentlemen. Mahalo. Thanks to you.