As 2024 drew to a close, news outlets reported that a military appeals court has rejected the SECDEF’s request to throw out the plea deals granted to three of the masterminds of the 9/11 attack. After the plea deals were announced during the summer of 2024, SECDEF Lloyd Austin announced he was nullifying the order for the plea deal. A military judge agreed with the defense attorneys that SECDEF Austin lacked authority/standing to throw out the plea deals. This led to the defense department going to an appeals court to overturn the plea deals.¹

Austin’s actions are problematic on multiple levels.

First, with all of Austin’s ‘experience’ and ‘humility’ it would seem intuitive that he would have consulted with the legions of lawyers in the Department of Defense before he publicly stated he would do something he legally could not. At his December 2024 West Point speech, he preached about humility. Clearly, he did not believe his own advice. He has acted with arrogance in many other important areas – COVID vaccine mandate, DEI, etc.

Second, as both a general and SECDEF, Austin has been the opposite of helpful in the war on terror. As a brigadier general in 2003, he blamed the rising violence after Baghdad fell on ‘meatheads’ and criminals. It is quite amazing that a general had no understanding of the deep sectarian frictions that had just been unleashed by the US invasion of Iraq that led to the toppling of Sunni strongman Saddam Hussein. As a senior general in Iraq and later as CENTCOM commander he existed somewhere between utter mismanagement of the wars and outright lying about the status of the wars.

As Secretary of Defense, he led the way in the shocking collapse of Afghanistan and the embarrassing withdrawal that drew bipartisan condemnation. At that critical moment in 2021, like the cowardly generals in the US military, he had the pivotal moment in his life to finally do the right thing and resign in protest and once out of office publicly demand accountability from the administration and the US military for the abject failures of leadership by civilian and military senior officials. He chose to stay on as SECDEF, keeping quiet about the debacle, and helping to approve the Presidential Unit Citation for the units involved in Kabul 2021 for handing out MREs.

Surely, the magnitude of the crimes committed by the 3 masterminds at Guantanamo Bay evoke strong feelings amongst Americans. However, as a nation of laws, it is imperative for leaders to be both knowledgeable and respectful of the law. SECDEF Austin has shown he is as ignorant of US military law as he is of our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Worse, the same SECDEF trying to sway the courts ran roughshod over the rights of US military servicemembers with his COVID vaccine mandates. Later, the same SECDEF hid behind his legions of lawyers when he hid DEI policy and instruction from the public prompting lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. Finally, he hid behind the courts to destroy meritocracy in the admitting process of West Point.

It is unclear why SECDEF Austin did what he did regarding the 9/11 terrorists. Was he trying to salvage his reputation by doing a ‘good deed’ in his mind out the door? Was he trying to act tough on terror so veterans and the public would ‘forget’ his monumental failure and complicity in the fall of Afghanistan in 2021? Only Austin truly knows the why. What is clear is that it is a good thing his tenure as SECDEF is over. As arguably the worst SECDEF in American history, he can no longer harm the military and America. He leaves with another lost war and the world on fire.

The dawn of 2025 marks the twilight of his long career in the military that culminated in his serving as the Secretary of Defense. The next SECDEF will have an easy time outdoing his predecessor as the bar has fallen so far it is lying on the ground.

1. https://apnews.com/article/sept-11-plea-deals-guantanamo-austin-279abd0342a84dc2694941c07f51c6bb