What Is Lloyd Austin Thinking?

Most of the headlines that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has generated over the last several weeks have had more to do with his abdication of his responsibilities than his handling of them. Austin has been made to repeatedly explain his abrupt disappearance as a result of a surgical procedure and its subsequent complications, which wouldn’t have been exceptional had he bothered to inform his subordinates and superiors (including the president) where he’d gone. But as disturbing as Austin’s vanishing act was, his conduct upon his return to duty has been even more unsettling.

During testimony before a congressional committee on Thursday — which, again, seemed of keen interest to the political press only when Austin apologized yet again for his sudden and unannounced departure from view — the secretary was asked by progressive California representative Ro Khanna how many Palestinian women and children had been killed since October 7 as a direct result of Israeli action. “It’s over 25,000,” Austin curtly replied.

The authoritative tone Austin deployed was taken by members of the media to be determinative. “This is a staggering number,” Reuters national-security reporter Idrees Ali marveled. Moreover, it is a staggering number backed by the credibility of the U.S. Defense Department. “Not from Gaza’s health ministry,” Ali observed, “but the Secretary of Defense of the United States.”

But those who retain the capacity for critical thought wondered where in the world that number came from. It couldn’t have come from the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF is engaged in ongoing combat operations, not making accurate assessments of the unfortunate collateral damage Hamas actively encourages. And it was unlikely to have come from Western intelligence agencies. Gaza is a black hole right now, from which little accurate information achieves escape velocity. The only outfit compiling and promulgating statistics like these is the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry,” which has a well-established track record of being an unreliable narrator. But the secretary of defense wouldn’t lend his credibility to such a dishonest institution that exists to advance the narratives preferred by a genocidal terrorist organization . . . right? Lo, that’s exactly what Austin had done.

“We need to clarify,” said Air Force Major General Pat Ryder later that day. “His answer was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled health ministry that more than 25,000 total Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and — and as — as you know and as you’ve heard us say, we can’t independently verify that these numbers are accurate.”

What a profound embarrassment the secretary’s own subordinates have meted out to their boss. Not only have Defense Department officials been compelled to mop up after Austin misled members of Congress; that imperative forced them to admit that the head of the Pentagon had been getting his information from Hamas.

This is not Austin’s first offense. In early February, the secretary submitted himself to a grilling from the Pentagon press corps upon his return to the office. In that session, the secretary was peppered with loaded queries from a representative of the Qatar-funded outlet Al Jazeera, each of which was based on flawed or conjectural premises that the secretary should have rejected outright. But he didn’t.

Instead, Austin appeared to accept assumptions like the notion that the IDF has summarily killed “27,000 Palestinians” (at some point, the civilian death toll in Austin’s head had been revised downward). He exhibited no discomfort with the presumption that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is “the most extreme in the history of Israel,” which “refuses to recognize any political rights for the Palestinians,” and that his own commitment to protecting human “dignity” had been undermined by America’s support for Israel’s war. To this attack on a U.S. ally, the judgment of the president he served, and, indeed, his own integrity, Austin groveled. “You know, we’re doing more,” Austin said of America’s support for and encouragement of Israel’s verifiable efforts to protect civilian life in Gaza, “but we’re not doing enough.”

At the time, I chalked these comments up to cowardice. But the eagerness with which Austin has since legitimized entirely unverifiable information gleaned directly from Hamas has made me rethink my assumptions. Perhaps I was being too charitable. Maybe Austin isn’t rejecting the flimsy premises on offer from Israel’s most caustic critics not because he’s afraid to cause offense. Perhaps he shares the unfounded and hostile biases Israel’s critics smuggle into the discourse. But Austin cannot serve two masters. If the secretary is uncomfortable with America’s mission in support of its ally, as he seems to be, he should reconsider his value to the president.