The first time I met Lloyd Austin was as a new cadet at West Point - he was my company comander during new cadet training (commonly referred to as "Beast Barracks") during the summer of '74. As an African American myself, he instilled a level of pride and dedication to duty that served me well throughout my West Point experience and beyond. It is no surprise to me that he continues to achieve extreme levels of success. Our troops are in good hands.
Curtis Harris
West Point '78
- 1
- 2
The Quiet Man
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
SPONSORED BY
Austin has spent 32 years rising through the system. He's a native of Thomasville, a city of about 20,000 in southern Georgia that's listed in the book "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" in the United States and Canada. He played football and basketball in high school and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1975. He is one of only eight African-Americans with the rank of lieutenant general or vice admiral in the U.S. military, where fewer than 6 percent of more than 900 general officers are African-American. "I certainly fully appreciate the fact that I am the first African-American to ever command a division in combat, the first African-American to ever command a corps in combat and there are a couple other firsts before that," he says. "Certainly when you have my job you consider yourself to be a role model for a number of elements in the community, not just African-Americans."
As Austin moves into the No. 2 spot, he insists that U.S. military objectives will be the same: to bring about what he calls sustainable security. He sees "little daylight" between Petraeus and Odierno in philosophy. And he sees little point in debating how long U.S. troops will be in Iraq or why they have been unable to disengage more quickly. "If anyone could envision that five years later we'd be doing what we're doing now, my hat's off to them, because I don't think there were very many people who had that kind of insight five years ago. Certainly no one, if anyone, really believed that we'd be engaged this long." he says. "But you've got to deal with the situation that's at hand. And I think recently we've made the right choices." The next months will show whether the Iraqi government also can make the right choices.
© 2008
- 1
- 2
Discuss