Crisis Averted
The US Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown with the passage of a bipartisan funding bill, but the process laid bare the persistent challenges of governance in an era of heightened partisanship and external influences.
The US Senate voted to confirm Army Chief of Staff Mark Miley to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Thursday.
The deeply divided Senate approved his nomination with bipartisan support, 89-1 which President Donald Trump had announced in December 2018.
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Milley, 61 is to succeed Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford who will step down in September 2019 after finishing a four-year term as the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, and the principal military advisor to the President, Secretary of Defense and National Security Council.
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A four-star general Milley assumed duty as chief of staff of the U.S. Army in August 2015 after serving as commander of the Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He also served in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Milley told lawmakers that he would not be “intimidated into making stupid decisions” and would give his best advice to the White House.
Milley’s confirmation came two days after Mark Esper was confirmed and sworn in as secretary of defense which ended a nearly seven-month period that the Pentagon had been without a Senate-approved chief.
There’s no denying that Milley has the credentials for the job. He’s a graduate of both Princeton and Columbia and for two decades was involved in some of the most intense fighting against terrorists and insurgents around the world. He served as a Green Beret, one of the Army’s most elite teams deployed to Iraq and led US troops in Afghanistan.
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