During his first visit to the Pentagon as commander in chief, President Donald Trump announced he would be fulfilling another campaign promise: rebuilding the U.S. military.
He called it the “great rebuilding of the armed forces” that will ensure “news planes, new ships, new resources and new tools for our men and women in uniform.” He signed the order at the Hall of Heroes, which is dedicated to recipients of the Medal of Honor.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis is ordered to carry out a 30-day “readiness review” to examine the military’s needs to go to war with ISIS, which includes training, equipment maintenance, munitions, modernization and infrastructure. Within 60 days, the defense chief must submit a plan to improve overall readiness in the military by Oct. 1, 2018.
The overall readiness plan will focus on a wide range of matters, from maintenance backlogs to the availability of training ranges and manpower shortages. It will also address the time needed to coordinate and carry out military training.
The order states, in part:
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is not the only threat from radical Islamic terrorism that the United States faces, but it is among the most vicious and aggressive. It is also attempting to create its own state, which ISIS claims as a “caliphate.” But there can be no accommodation or negotiation with it. For those reasons I am directing my administration to develop a comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS.
ISIS is responsible for the violent murder of American citizens in the Middle East, including the beheadings of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Abdul-Rahman Kassig, as well as the death of Kayla Mueller. In addition, ISIS has inspired attacks in the United States, including the December 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California, and the June 2016 attack in Orlando, Florida. ISIS is complicit in a number of terrorist attacks on our allies in which Americans have been wounded or killed, such as the November 2015 attack in Paris, France, the March 2016 attack in Brussels, Belgium; the July 2016 attack in Nice, France; and the December 2016 attack in Berlin, Germany.
ISIS has engaged in a systematic campaign of persecution and extermination in those territories it enters or controls. If ISIS is left in power, the threat that it poses will only grow. We know it has attempted to develop chemical weapons capability. It continues to radicalize our own citizens, and its attacks against our allies and partners continue to mount. The United States must take decisive action to defeat ISIS.
Click here to read the entire order. {eoa}
