20 thoughts on “Austin Must Go”

  1. C’mon, give the man a break.

    He has prostate cancer, for gosh sake, which could happen to any of us men around Rand’s fine Web site. He went in for a “routine” surgery for this condition and ended laid up with a serious post-surgical infection. How that happened is probably a discussion for another thread, but if there was any incompetence, he was on the receiving end.

    As to the talk about “going AWOL”, he is currently a civilian, the next-to-highest-ranking civilian in the military chain of command, but he is a civilian. As to his not “reporting to his supervision” that he was “out sick”, who is he supposed to report this to who is capable of remembering anything?

    Seriously, people, he must have been in contact with his staff. Or if his staff hadn’t heard from him in a day, they must have been emailing his emergency contacts. Let’s just say I know this, and it was in the middle of summer when I wasn’t teaching, but people will want to know if you will be reporting for your fall classes.

    If there is any incompetence, it is in the West Wing and their stoopid ideas of “managing the news.”

    2. World is on fire, brink of WWIII, US economy teetering, social unrest, Marxism ascending in the Democrat party, Americans held hostage, Americans murdered, Americans under attack every day, and the Secretary of Defense was not at his post.

      It might not matter that much in a practical sense because there is no chain of command, at least one that runs to Biden making decisions, but that shows how bad off we are.

      1. “He has prostate cancer, for gosh sake, which could happen to any of us men around Rand’s fine Web site. “

        1. Nobody is castigating Austin for being ill. We hope he recovers soon and completely.

          But SecDef is no flunky position. There’s war going on throughout the world. The handling of the fact that he went into the hospital and, as I understand it, had complications was faulty and isn’t trivial.

      2. Besides, if we’re going to make excuses for Austin, I wager he had zero trust in someone at the White House. This reminds me of the Hillary Clinton email server. It’s been speculated that one of the reasons she didn’t going with the normal email channels was because she didn’t trust the Obama administration to not use that information against her.

  2. The SECDEF is a named individual in the release procedures for nuclear weapons (the President and one other specified person have to release them)….not exactly a civilian and being out of touch, with his deputy and his deputy equally gone is simply unacceptable.

    I wish Austin a speedy and complete recovery from his surgery, but someone seriously screwed up here – and those people need to go.

    1. If Congress is serious about investigating then they will be auditing his communication node. Subpoena the logs. Every private, airman, and seaman learn week 1 in boot that every log is a legal record. If there was a break in continuity of comms that would have prevented or delayed the flow on information between the top of the military chain and the CinC, then SECDEF failed. I don’t care about his disease state and I am a male of similar age.

  3. He’s also in the line of Presidential succession. Right now, it’s Harris, Johnson, Patty Murray (!!!), Blinken (!), Yellin (!!), Austin (!), then Garland (ugh).

  4. No one asked why he was there because they didn’t want to ask who could be the first female Secretary of Defense why she wasn’t feeling well. Now that questions have been established as safe to ask, people will ask them as long as the answers wont hurt O’Biden

  5. With Milley retired, who took the onus to inform the Chinese Defense minister not to worry about the SECDEF being off line?

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