The pundits tell us that nothing will change hearts and minds among 2016 Trump voters. I wonder whether revelations of his disrespect for our armed forces and estrangement from “his” initial team of generals might finally cause some eyes to be opened.
Until I read the insider accounts provided to The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig and reported in their book, A Very Stable Genius, I wasn’t able to connect the dots that paint a picture of a deteriorating relationship with the military, one of the key conservative/GOP constituencies.
You may have heard previously about what happened on July 20, 2017, but the Rucker/Leonnig book contains a more detailed, and deeply sourced, account. In an attempt to educate the President about the basics of U.S. military history (more on that later) and the current foundations of our national security, the Joint Chiefs, flag officers and others assembled in “The Tank,” one of the most historic rooms at the Pentagon, almost sacred to those in service. Hating any implication that he didn’t know more than everyone else in the room, impatient and bored, Trump exploded in a red-face rant: “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” “You’re all losers,” he said, “You don’t know how to win anymore.” Beneath portraits of American heroes, he railed against the forces under his command. His complaint: our military should charge for what they do and make money from the people we help, regardless of the fact that it’s in the U.S. national security interest: “We spend $7 trillion . . Where is the fucking oil? . . . We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.” So there you have it. Bunker Hill, Yorktown, Gettysburg, Midway, Marne, Normandy: all about money.
The flag officers, seething, stared at their shoes, unable to confront their commander in chief. Pence, as usual, was frozen. Only Rex Tillerson spoke up: “No, that’s just wrong. Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true. The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune. That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom.” It was immediately after that meeting, standing in the hall outside, that Tillerson called Trump “a fucking moron.”
When Trump (“without a plan or any apparent thought,” per his own special envoy), subsequently tweeted our withdrawal from Syria based on a single phone call with Turkish President Erdogan, he humiliated General Mattis, who had just assured our partners we were in it for the long haul, abandoned our Kurdish allies without warning, and put US troop in grave danger. Mattis finally had enough. The Pentagon leadership considered this an assault on the soldiers’ code: never abandon a fellow warrior on the battlefield. Mattis’s letter of resignation was devastating, asserting in the strongest possible terms the dependence of U.S. national security on our system of alliances and the need to be “resolute and unambiguous” in our dealings with countries, like Russia and China, whose strategic interests are opposed to our own. A young marine guarding the Pentagon entrance often used by Mattis reacted to the news: “Marines don’t forget.”
Trump’s problems with the military are woven from a fabric with many strands:
· The military does not like being used as a political prop. The generals were appalled when, as part of his campaign for the midterm election, he illegally ordered the military to the southern border to combat the “invasion.” Pentagon officials privately derided the deployment as a morale killer, a degradation of the professional ethos of the officer corps (which understands that it must stay out of politics), and an expensive waste of time and resources. The real purpose of the whole thing became clear when the White House insisted that the military produce images or videos of troops confronting the “invasion” immediately, even before the troops had been deployed. “I can’t give people pictures of something that’s not happening,” the Pentagon responded. The Defense Department source explained, “The urgency wasn’t on the mission. It was on getting the pictures.”
· Trump often refers to “my generals” and “my military.” Business Insider and other sources report that many inside the armed forces find this offensive. "The US military belongs to the nation, not the president. We're not his," a former Army officer complained.
· The military jealously defends the prerogatives of its own system of military justice. Trump, prompted by Fox, intervened in the case of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL, and, among other interventions, reversed a Navy decision to oust Gallagher. This led eventually to the resignation of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who said in his resignation letter: “I no longer share the same understanding with the Commander in Chief who appointed me in regards to the key principle of good order and discipline. I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took . . .” General Kelly weighed in last week, saying “The idea that the commander in chief intervened there, in my opinion, was exactly the wrong thing to do,”
· When Trump retaliated against Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman (together with his brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman) for testifying truthfully in response to a mandatory Congressional subpoena (and had him escorted from the White House), I suspected the Army would not be pleased. Given the constraints on active duty officers, it was retired John Kelley who had to defend his fellow officer: “He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave.”
· It’s one thing to fib in the course of politics. It’s another to stand in front of the men and women under your command and lie to them. During a speech to the troops during his visit to Iraq, Trump said that they had not received a raise in more than ten years, until “he” recently gave them a 10% raise. In fact, they had received raises every year for decades, and the one Trump authorized was 2.6%, not 10%. Did he think the soldiers didn’t know their own salaries? You think this is fake news? It was the Military Times (not the New York Times) that ran an article detailing each of the lies and misleading statements in Trump’s speech.
· Article 133 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice hold officers to a high standard, and prohibits “conduct unbecoming,” which includes “acts of dishonesty, unfair dealing, indecency, indecorum, lawlessness, injustice, or cruelty.” Examples of violations under this statute include cheating, knowingly making a false official statement, and using insulting or defamatory language to an officer. From day one of the Trump presidency, it was a galling hypocrisy that our men and women in uniform had to answer to a man who almost daily indulged in conduct that would have gotten any of them discharged.
· When Trump, without reason other than to penalize him for criticism, revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, former Navy admiral William “Bull Frog” McRaven, a commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, couldn’t take it anymore. He wrote a public letter to Trump, noting that few Americans had done more to protect America than John Brennan: “Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs . . . A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself . . . Through your actions you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worse of all, divided us as a nation. If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken.” Up and down our military and intelligence ranks, the reaction to Trump’s attack on Brennan were similar to this one from a career officer: “The disdain he shows for our country’s foundation and its principles. The disregard he has for right and wrong. Your fist clenches. Your teeth grate. The hair goes up on the back of your neck. I have to remind myself I said an oath to a document in the National Archives. I swore to the Constitution. I didn’t swear an oath to this jackass.”
Could the generals finally convince some Trump loyalists to rethink their support? Gen. Stanley McChrystal said that he found Trump to be both immoral and dishonest. Mattis is sticking to his belief that retired generals should not speak out against a sitting President, but he’s dropping hints right and left about what he really thinks (and his resignation letter itself was searing in its appraisal of Trump’s policy). And now Kelley – not just a retired Marine four-star general, but someone who, as Chief of Staff, worked with Trump more closely than anyone else – has decided to speak up.
Trump’s view of the U.S. military as nothing more than mercenaries deployed to advance U.S. commercial interests is perhaps inevitable when you consider his complete ignorance of our military’s proud history. On a boat en route to visit the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Trump pulled his chief of staff aside: “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor,” but didn’t know what it was about or why it was important. Kelly was stunned. After plowing through 400 pages of insider accounts of the man, somehow the reader finds it hard to be surprised, even by this.
Let’s hope that in November the Marines, and other men and women in uniform, don’t forget.