General education: What Austin can learn from Mattis’s rocky relationship with Congress Joe Gould keyboard_arrow_down 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.