In a piece about President Joe Biden’s decision to bomb two targets in Syria that was reduced in real-time to one because imagery had identified two civilians in a courtyard of the other, there’s this eye-opener:

Throughout the deliberations, officials said, they sought to strike a bureaucratic balance. The goal was to ensure that all of the interagency machinery was fully engaged while avoiding both the drawn-out deliberations that sometimes occurred during the Obama administration and the quick decisions by the president and smaller groups of aides that often took place during the Trump administration.

Because interagency machinery is more important than decisive—and prompt—action based on predetermined recognition keys and preplanned criteria which make responses specific to a realized situation able to be quickly laid out and executed.

And this second eye-opener, which explains in some degree the above:

…Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin…is the only senior member of Mr Biden’s cabinet with military experience….

Planning ahead, developing contingency plans, takes a military mindset, apparently, and Biden has only the one military mindset, by his choice. And there’s that bureaucratic imperative, again.

It boggles my peabrain that this administration has no framework outlining responses to terrorism and terrorists or to states that harbor or support terrorist entities. Instead, each case seems to be individually analyzed de nihilo and a response individually developed, also de nihilo, and done so in reaction rather than in anticipation. And apparently completely without regard for any other situation, regardless of how similar it might be.

Wow.