So Much Civ-Mil Crisis, So Little Time

Woot!  No parade.  Woot! McRaven blasts Trump.  Shouldn't we be thrilled?  Um, no.  Sure, the news of these things made me temporarily happy in this depressing Age of Trump, to see Trump get frustrated and stymied and criticized.  But responding to Trump's destruction of the norms of our political system can do damage to these norms.

To be clear, the parade was always a dumb idea, and it was always right idea to go to Paris for the commeroration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I since it was, as the song goes, Over There.  Likewise, Trump yanking Brennan's security clearance is awful and deserves condemnation. But how do folks respond?

My gut reaction for the parade is that the Pentagon may have inflated the price in order to get it killed.  I have no evidence--just a suspicion.  While this might be clever and cool, it is also either military or civilian side of the building potentially defying the President of the United States.  As much as it pains me to think of Trump as POTUS, he is.  While he makes a lot of stupid decisions, it is his right to be wrong.  To be wrong on "Space Farce Force" or to be wrong on Syria or to be wrong on a parade. It is the job of the SecDef to manage America's civil-military relations--to make sure that that the military provides its best advice and then obeys the decisions of the President.  Slow rolling decisions to hope that Trump's attention goes elsewhere is a clever bureaucratic tactic (and, yes, I have rooted for when it was about Iran war plans), but we would not be rooting for it if we wanted that policy, such as intervening in Bosnia or Rwanda or whatever.

Retired Admiral McRaven (thanks, Kori, for reminding folks that McRaven is retired just as I hate to hear Mattis and Kelly referred to as General--they are SecDef and Chief of Staff) blasted the administration for yanking Brennan's clearance.  As former head of all Special Operators and especially on the day that the Special Operators raided Pakistan in pursuit of Bin Laden, McRaven has a special role in American history and in the minds of currently serving troops and veterans.  So, his voice is loud. The challenge is that retired senior officers are always seen as speaking on behalf of active ones, so this is not the former Chancellor of University of Texas speaking, but a guy who might be speaking for the current set of officers.  Of course, all Americans not in uniform should be allowed to speak out against this or any government, and so McRaven has a right to do so.  But we should be at least a bit concerned that this is happening.  That it raises questions about how our military feels about our civilians, whether the military is becoming politicized.

Schake and others would point to the role of generals in Trump's administration and to the role of retired senior officers in the campaign and in previous campaigns.  The trends are not great.  But we need to also be cautious about our caution.  There is no coup coming along.  It is handy to have expertise deployed to clarify stuff, so I am a huge fan of former Chairman of the Joint Staff General (Retired) Martin Dempsey's tweets.  But we need to be aware that none of this is really good for the health of American civil-military relations.

What would be a healthier dynamic?  Those institutions that are charged with balancing and checking the President of the United States doing their job: the Congress mostly but also the courts.  So far, Congress has done poorly since the GOP cares more about party than country.  The courts?  Mixed and the trendline ain't great.  So, I get it, but still--better to have vigorous oversight exercised by Congress than a defiant military.  Which, of course, means that the midterms matter ever so much more every day this President and his team of arsonists burn down the government because fighting fire with fire (eroding more norms) is very destructive indeed.