Abusing Our Generals and Top NCOs, Not Our Privates

Hegseth/Trump addressing  Military Leadership in Quantico, Virginia, September 30th       

One of many Chinese military parades

Abusing Our Generals and Top NCOs, Not Our Privates

“It’s better just to keep your head down.” 

Anonymous senior defense official.

"I'm going to be meeting with generals and admirals and with leaders, and if I don't like somebody, I'm going to fire them, right on the spot." 

Trump remarked immediately before his Quantico, post-Hegseth speech.

If you were a superpower facing the US, would you fear a military led by an alcoholic, megalomaniacal, Army reservist major, an avowed white Christian nationalist? Would you think more or less of him as a Fox “News” host who has fired some of this nation’s most experienced and successful admirals and generals, placing physical appearance and unquestioning loyalty to the President above all other criteria? A man who sees the Constitution and enabling statutes as “woke” barriers to military discipline as defined by him and the all-powerful President, who believes that his military is fully justified in occupying cities that vote mostly Democratic… taking down those who oppose the President’s policies, ignoring the elected governors and mayors of those jurisdictions? Think our troops enjoy marching in conquest into US cities?

The unambiguous take in China, Russia and North Korea – each a nuclear power with substantial delivery capacity – is that without firing a shot, the United States will continue to self-destruct, and the alliance among these and other declared enemies of the United States will continue to rise, ultimately displacing us at the sole military and economic superpower on Earth. As a passionate American, with deep respect for our military and the men and women who have worked decades to achieve flag or top NCO rank, I think the current Trump and little man Hegseth’s track has profoundly weakened our military, sapping the morale of that leadership and given deep comfort to that anti-American alliance, particularly the nation that leads this cabal, the Peoples’ Republic of China.

Post-Quantico, Hegseth continues to cull experience and competence from the ranks of our military leaders in search of his ideological purity. As Paul McLeary and Daniel Lippman, writing for the October 9th Politico observe, Hegseth is mounting another purge of our military excellence, replacing confidence with fear: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest firing of a top Navy official injected a fresh wave of fear into the Pentagon over the cost of speaking up and who might be next.

“The Pentagon chief, in less than a year, has purged a handful of the military’s most senior officials, terminated some of his closest advisers and last week warned a gathering of generals and admirals that many of them could face a similar fate.

“The sudden dismissal last week of Jon Harrison, the Navy chief of staff, has only added to concerns about Hegseth’s objectives, according to five current and former defense officials. Most of his moves have come without public explanation, and led to a deepening sense of uncertainty throughout the department — one that risks silencing pushback on critical decisions that affect how the U.S. military interacts with the world.

“There is an emerging ‘culture of fear; there’s a culture of intimidation and retaliation,’ said a senior defense official. ‘It’s better just to keep your head down and not necessarily try to do anything to the advantage of the organization, because it’s very much run from the top down.’…

“‘President Trump has full confidence in Secretary Hegseth and his ability to ensure individuals across the Department of War are aligned with the president’s mission to Make America Strong Again,’ said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, referring to the administration’s rebranded term for the Defense Department… The rapid fire turnover is a classic Hegseth move, starting with the surprise Friday night announcement in February that ousted Joint Chiefs Chair C.Q. Brown and other senior leaders.”

That the United States sees the “enemy within” as the greatest threat to our national security is a massive perversion of the clearest values of our founding fathers. The mere vision of US troops being deployed against the wishes of the relevant state and city leaders to take control of otherwise peaceful urban areas, provoking the very antagonistic resistance they were purported sent to reverse, is horribly disturbing. Indeed, as Jackie Calmes writing for the October 9th Los Angeles Times posits: “Washington must be spinning in his grave… George Washington, who set long-followed precedents by voluntarily giving up first military and then civilian power, and who built the foundation of the nation’s wall between its military and partisan politics, would by all historical evidence be appalled by successor Donald Trump’s escalating efforts to tear down that wall in his drive for unprecedented dominion. But Washington likely wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, he warned America about the likes of Trump.

”In his farewell address, Washington cautioned against political parties lest ‘cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men’ subvert them to their individual ends. ‘Sooner or later,’ he predicted, ‘the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.’… Later is now.

“More than two centuries on, the checks and balances that Washington’s fellow founders wrote into the Constitution to guard against a monarchical president with a standing army at his command — they’d just thrown off a king, after all — are proving inadequate to the charge. But like Washington, those founders probably wouldn’t be shocked by Trump and his power grabs… Tom Nichols, a former Republican who taught for 25 years at the Naval War College, presciently wrote in the Atlantic in late 2023 that among the ‘highest priorities’ for a reelected Trump would be an ‘attempt to turn the men and women of the United States armed forces into praetorians loyal not to the Constitution, but only to him.’” As too many Americans worry more about the rising inflation rate than the loss of democracy, they are about to discover that even if the cost of living is their only concern, they ain’t seen nuffin’ yet. Autocracy is seldom good for any economy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it seems that since Americans have not experienced autocracy in a quarter of a millennium, they have no understanding of its dangers, most of which will not be reversible, if at all, in their lifetimes if not checked and reversed immediately.