Top Democratic lawmakers are praising a controversial diplomat who served as a key Middle East figure in the Obama administration, after reports that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis asked her to fill a top policy slot at the Pentagon.

Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD commended Mattis’s reported decision to tap former ambassador Anne Patterson as his undersecretary of defense for policy. The position, which is subject to Senate approval, involves overseeing the Department of Defense’s vast bureaucracy and the development of national security policy.