It appears that the days of the US Civilian run military are over. Congress will yet again have to pass a new law just to let a president break this old norm:
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My favorite part of the Atlantic article by Joe Biden was this:
"The threats we face today are not the same as those we faced 10 or even five years ago. We must prepare to meet the challenges of the future, not keep fighting the wars of the past. We must build a foreign policy that leads with diplomacy and revitalizes our alliances, putting American leadership back at the table and rallying the world to meet global threats to our security—from pandemics to climate change, from nuclear proliferation to the refugee crisis."
Back when Trump first overturned this precedent we had allies, We had a pandemic task force, the “My Pillow” guy was not our chief of scientific research and development and a brain surgeon was not making housing and urban development decisions. In my opinion thanks to President Trump President-elect Biden had no choice in his decision. He might even have to appoint someone who has actual experience in Housing and Urban Development this time.
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The principle is still with us.
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Gee, it’s almost as if a war is coming…
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I agree with the principle of civilian control of the military, though I would note that this principle has hardly constrained the US from waging aggressive wars in the past.
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Nah. Russia was just testing its nuclear arsenal for warranty compliance. Worked great 
BTW.
Can the United States do that? Whose responsible for malfunctioning missles?
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Ha. In Russia the warranty is your compliance!
Dan Brouillette, a trump lackey and home schooled former Ford Motor Co. VP.
Trump wasn’t the first to “overturn” this. The first was under Truman, the law restricting the practice only dates to the 50’s. And the waiver process is built in, not a new law.
On top of that Mattis was largely given a waiver on the assumption he would insulate the military from Trump.
A member of the military after retirement is a civilian. But we bar them from taking this appointment until 7 years after retirement due to concerns that they’ll be overly deferential and overly familiar with military leadership. It’s like when a financial regulator goes to work for a bank or vice versa.
That said it seems unlikely Biden’s pick is getting a waver. And it seems unwise to me, though he seems to be an overall decent pick. It looks like Biden picked him purely on familiarity, and to avoid some controversy with the other top contender.
Maybe the idea is this guy won’t fly, and that’ll lead to easy approval for another option.
If the pitch was that we need a particular kind of experienced military officer to correct the specific sorts of damage Trump did, that would be a different story. And Austin does seem to be a reasonable pick for that sort of thing.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
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If it worked for the last President why wouldn’t it work for the next one?
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