Secretary of Defense nominee — General (retired) Lloyd Austin — is being attacked for "limited experience"

17 December 2020

It never changes does it?

From Politico — my additions in brackets:

“This [Secretary of Defense nomination] suggests quite loudly to me that Biden doesn’t take hard power, and the China military threat as seriously and urgently as we need to,” said Elbridge Colby, a former defense official and a lead author the 2018 National Defense Strategy that laid out the Pentagon’s pivot from counterterrorism to great power competition.

“Lloyd Austin [see here] has an extremely distinguished military career — but to me that’s not really the issue. What we need is someone who already is at the forefront of thinking and leadership on Asia and China, on aerospace and maritime power, and on technology," Colby said.

"That's what not Austin's background brings to the table, and we’re way beyond the point where we can have someone who doesn't have that.”

"Black man" Austin does not have the smarts to be DoD quarterback?

Haven't we been through this kind of idiotic reasoning before?

One could point to two actually fair-minded objections to Lloyd Austin's nomination

First of those is his current seat on weapons-maker Raytheon's board.

Combining money-grubbing death-manufacturing with a warmongering American Government would seem to be a bad idea.

A second, equally reasonable, caveat might be the following one regarding the US military's mandated ass-licking — and that Peculiar Penchant's unlikeliness to produce competent leadership:

[T]o be a top general in the U.S. military, you must win the 30-year, marathon, single-elimination, suck-up tournament.

[Y]ou must read about 60 immediate superiors, figure out what they want you to say, do, and convey by body language, dress, and lifestyle, and feed back to each of them what they want so well that they each love you and rate you accordingly.

If you make less than a super impression on even a single superior, your “competitiveness” for generalships is over.

Our military should not be led by the best sycophants. It should be led by the best military leaders in terms of their ability to recruit, train, and retain the best personnel and eliminate the unacceptable personnel.

They should also be the smartest at figuring out what tactics, training, strategies, and equipment the military needs for its current and future missions and at making those things happen. That is not who is currently leading the military.

None of what Reed says (in the above excerpt) is controversial among genuinely capable military officers. But as usual, American culture hides what is true, so as to benefit the perpetual "no wins" War Machine.

On the other hand

Who better to lead the United States' "war and destruction forever" program, than four-star ass-lickers — who are selected from the same behind-scrubbing crew that started and continued "destruction for profit" American imperialism?

To be sure of his qualifications, we could give General Austin a quantified sycophancy test, so that "we" can assure ourselves of his quarterbacking merit.

But I suppose, then, we would be opening ourselves up to the — "You're only doing this 'cause I'm black" — accusation.

This Bigot Stuff sure gets complicated, doesn't it?

The moral? — General Austin's alleged refusal to drink the anti-China Kool-Aid is a major plus

See, for instance, Mark Perry's short Foreign Policy overview of Austin's career.

Fancy that, a four-star who dragged his feet against doing some of the strategically stupid things that our War Machine has done.

I may have to flip-flop myself to favor the Austin nomination.

In the United States' self-destructive race to Morality's Bottom, a quasi-reluctant warmonger should beat a rabid warmonger every time.

PeteFree.com

Secretary of Defense nominee — General (retired) Lloyd Austin — is being attacked for "limited experience"