Frankly he should have been fired after that pathetic display in early 2022 – but then they all thought like that.

He should also have been fired for the bullshit he pulled in March 2021 when he mandated that every military unit conduct a “stand-down” to confront “extremism in the ranks.” – but then they all thought like that.

Or how about when the report on that dropped just before Christmas 2023 to reveal that (as the WSJ said), “Good news: The U.S. military isn’t packed with violent extremists.”:

That’s the gist of a new report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2021 and released quietly with little notice in December. The result won’t surprise Americans who have spent time in uniform, but it should calm the media frenzy about right-wing radicals in the armed forces.

After reports that some service members participated in the Jan. 6 riot, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an independent study to get “greater fidelity” on extremism in the ranks. The think tank tasked with the report, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate” to U.S. society. A review of Pentagon data suggested “fewer than 100 substantiated cases per year of extremist activity by members of the military in recent years,” the report says.

What’s that you say? You never heard about that report? All that debunking didn’t cross the pages/screens/voices of the same MSM that screamed their guts out about MAGA Extremists In The US Military? But then they all thought like that.

Then there was the Afghanistan debacle in late 2021, although to be fair to Austin he was no more useless than the Joint Chiefs of Staff, starting with Milley:

When President Durwood told you to ditch Bagram Air Base, you joint chiefs should have got together, realized this was going to get a bunch of the guys that America entrusted to you killed, and decided to resign. You can’t disobey, but you can take a stand. Well, you did take a kind of stand. You just stood there.

Yeah, yeah…but then they all thought like that.

Or maybe he should have resigned when news came about the massive drop in military recruitment during 2022:

The most recent Army advertising campaign had zero ads aimed at working-class or middle-class white males (Two of the five profiles are immigrants. Three of the five profiles are women. Three of the five are officers. None of the examples are combat arms.

Which, along with other idiocies, thus explains the shortfall continuing into 2023: A 43% Drop in White Recruits Caused the Army’s ‘Recruitment Crisis’:

Pushing white men away with DEI struggle sessions, affirmative action quotas and mandatory pronoun training was supposed to open the door for minorities who were being ‘blocked’ by the ‘whiteness’ of the military from joining up and serving, but the minorities aren’t showing up… 40% of military recruits come out of the South, 44% come from rural areas and the Army instead began recruiting in “underrepresented cities” like Baltimore, Minneapolis, and New York City. Wormuth, who got her start as a Clinton intern, complained that, “today more than 80% of recruits come from military families. There is a risk of developing a warrior caste when only 1% of the population serves in the military.”
…
West Point was turning away even very well qualified white candidates while its Director of Admissions admitted that “every qualified African-American applicant were offered admission into West Point, yet the class composition goal was still lacking.” The goal was the United States Military Academy’s intensive quota system meant to cut 20% of white officers from the mix. The Academy has been sued by qualified white candidates…

Still not worth resigning over Secretary Austin? Oh right: but then they all thought like that. Even when it leads to articles like this by a former military veteran:

A Message to the Young Men on the Right. Choose a higher aim than service to a regime that hates you. Instead, seek to undermine that regime and replace it with one that is better and more noble.

Tell me again about an institution that suffers from “systemic racism” – or perhaps just insanity, as seen at the US Naval Academy:

The course description for HE 374, Topics In Gender & Sexuality in Literature, begins by tracing the history of gender and sexuality studies from its origin in the women’s studies discipline rooted in the Second Wave Feminism of the 1970’s and 1980’s…. However, the English major course broadens to include studies for future U.S. Navy officers on LGBTQ studies, race, class and concepts informed by Critical Race Theory, which defines people groups in terms of oppressor and oppressed, the syllabus shows.

How does that help fight a war at sea? All it does is produce images like this to America’s enemies:

One of the most high profile alliance units is Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2). Because of its high profile and extended operations with alliance nations, the ships we assign to SNMG2 don’t just represent the USA as any warship that “shows the flag” does, but it imprints on the mind of military and civilian leaders in Europe the quality of the US Navy and by extension, the nation it serves. Our opponents in the world will also see it as an indication of our general health, morale, and the respect we show our friends.

SNMG2 decided to honor the United States Navy by having one of its destroyers be its flagship. That’s right kiddies; that rusting eyesore is the flagship of SNMG2. That my friends is the Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyer USS James E. Williams (DDG 95) as it was leaving Toulon, France yesterday, May 22, 2023.

You can blame past administrations for underfunding the US Navy or past Naval staff for making poor choices in ships and weapon systems. But Austin had been in the saddle for two years at that point and clearly he was more keen on twisting the arms of the Naval staff about their DEI objectives than keeping ships maintained.

But if there’s one thing that should get you fired, assuming you haven’t already been so shamed that you resign, surely it would be breaking the chain of command?

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was missing in action – hospitalized in intensive care for four days – and hardly anyone knew… From the little the American people had been told – in dribs and drabs since the news broke on Friday [Jan 5] – 70-year-old Austin was admitted to Walter Reed military hospital for an unspecified ‘elective surgery’ on December 22. On Tuesday [Jan 9], it was revealed that Austin was diagnosed in early December with prostate cancer and he underwent a procedure to treat that condition….He remained hospitalized for four days, only leaving word with his subordinates that he was ‘working from home.’ Outside a small circle of close aides, no one was fully informed.

For once this is not on the Vegetable In Chief. This is all on Secretary Austin, and given his extensive military background – four-star US Army general retired 2016 – there is no excuse for this: he abandoned his post. His staff begged the ambulance to approach the house quietly. They spread the story he was working at home. They called his cancer surgery “elective”.

He neglected to transfer his authority to his deputy either during his December 22 “elective surgery” that was conducted under general anesthesia or when he was in the ICU. Deputy Defense Secretary Katherine Hicks was delegated a few responsibilities without explanation and was not officially informed he was in the hospital until Thursday, January 4. Other senior staff and the service chiefs weren’t told until two hours before the January 5 announcement. Congress was notified a mere 15 minutes before the rest of the world.

And it’s not as if there isn’t a hell of a lot of military activity going on in the world at the moment that either involves the USA or potentially will. Here’s a list just for the days he was out of comms:

  • January 2nd: A drone strike on an apartment in Beirut, Lebanon killed a Hamas deputy chairman threatening to intensify Mideast war and ignite a regional conflagration.
  • January 3rd: ISIS terrorists set off deadly bomb blasts in the Iranian city of Kerman, as crowds commemorated the death of a notorious and vile Iranian commander.
  • January 4th: American forces in Iraq killed the leader of a terrorist group while reportedly defending themselves.

But there has been no sign that Austin will either resign or be fired, and that’s the Biden Administration in a nutshell. (But then they all thought like that) Oh, they did update their protocols in the wake of this insanity:

White House orders cabinet secretaries to notify if unable to perform duties amid Lloyd Austin Scandal 

Oh come on. A “president” who even has to give such an “order” is obviously not really the president. And that thought must have occurred to White House Press Reporter, Peter Doocy (FoxNews) when he asked the big, obvious question:

“If the administration is gonna go to such great lengths to keep secrets about the Defense Secretary’s health, how can anybody be certain that the administration would not go to the same lengths to keep secret problems with President Biden’s health?”