General education: What Austin can learn from Mattis’s rocky relationship with Congress Joe Gould
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FILE - In this Sept. 16, 2015 file photo, retired Gen. Lloyd Austin III, then the commander of U.S. Central Command, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON ― The Warrior Monk was having a bad meeting. At the Capitol in the fall of 2017, Sen. John McCain was fuming to then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Unless Mattis turned over the Trump administration’s tardy Afghanistan strategy and testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain felt he couldn’t do his job.
Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin is still unlikely to be confirmed as defense secretary before the end of next week, making Biden the first president in decades not to have his Pentagon pick in place on Day One.
More Democrats Say They ll Vote No on Waiver for Biden s SecDef Pick Lloyd Austin
Retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the Biden administration’s choice to be secretary of defense, listens during an event at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
12 Jan 2021
Lawmakers heard from two experts Tuesday who warned that granting another waiver to a recently retired general to serve as defense secretary weakens American norms.
Several Democratic
senators say they will vote against granting a waiver for Lloyd Austin. President-elect Joe Biden has said he ll nominate the retired Army general officer, who fought in Iraq and oversaw all military missions in the Middle East, to lead the Pentagon.
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