There is a great disturbance in the Force. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan's relationship with Congress is going through a rough patch and your humble correspondent has neither the wisdom nor the clairvoyance to see how all of this gets resolved.
Being in the Pentagon now feels a lot like the unsettling aftermath of listening to your parents fight as a kid. After the yelling comes that awful silence, broken only by the BOOM! of slammed doors.
A top Senate Republican and fierce ally of President Donald Trump reportedly exploded at Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan recently about the U.S. military's plans to withdraw all troops from Syria by the end of April.
"That's the dumbest f******g idea I've ever heard," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reportedly replied when Shanahan confirmed the Trump administration still plans to complete the Syria withdrawal by April 30.
Later, Graham told Shanahan, "I am now your adversary, not your friend."
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., left, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., center, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, are disagreeing with President Donald Trump's sudden decision to pull all 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018. (Associated Press/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Lindsey Graham essentially laid the deaths of the unknown number of U.S. soldiers killed in a suicide bombing in Manbij, Syria, on Wednesday at the feet of President Donald Trump during a hearing on Capitol Hill, Bloomberg News reports.
With the recent death of legendary Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, many of his colleagues are wondering how they can best honor his legacy. Some think it could be to rename a building in his honor. Others have stood and given passionate speeches in praise of the Republican "Maverick" and Vietnam War hero.
In a recent Washington Posteditorial, senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham reprised their timeworn roles in an almost-comedic ritual: clean-shaven graybeards, citing “conversations with key commanders on the ground,” urging more funding for more troops with fewer restrictions to prevent Afghanistan from “sliding into strategic failure.” They write:
When World War II came to a close, the United States put up roughly $120 billion in today’s dollars to rebuild Europe under the vaunted Marshall Plan. That still-celebrated project not only restored much of the continent physically after the war’s ravages, it also launched an era of economic prosperity that modernized much of the developed West.
