We are currently wading through yet another slimy Trump episode, this time prompted by reporting in the Atlantic that Mr. Trump repeatedly disparaged veterans – including those killed in action – as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’
At this time the sources of the information remain unnamed, though several major outlets (including Fox News, the Associated Press, CNN, and the Washington Post) have reported that their sources have confirmed at least parts of the original story. Those sources, however, also remain unnamed.
So, naturally, supporters of the president have been quick to accuse the Atlantic of fabricating the entire story, even though Mr. Trump has in the past very publicly defamed prisoners of war, the parents of servicemembers killed in action, and the retired and active military personnel that served in his administration.
This type of knee-jerk support of a political figure is something we have come to expect, and no one should be surprised when partisans attack the reporter rather than address the substance of the report. But I do feel sad when I hear military officers rush to publicly defend Mr. Trump.
The US military places a very high value on effective leadership. The military services – all of them – teach leadership, train for leadership, mentor young leaders, and evaluate personnel based on their effectiveness as leaders. Service in the US military is perhaps the finest leadership training opportunity available on this planet.
So, it is disappointing that military leaders are so eager to praise and support Mr. Trump, who represents the complete antithesis of leadership as it is practiced in the American military.
The military values of courage, commitment, self-sacrifice, honor, truthfulness, comradeship, and placing the well-being of others before your own mean nothing to Mr. Trump. He demands fealty, yet offers nothing but contempt in return. He spurns advice, refuses to learn anything at all about his job, and refuses to take responsibility for his actions.
He boasts about his support for the military, yet when he lists his own accomplishments he mentions a Veteran’s Administration reform bill signed by his predecessor in 2014 (though Mr. Trump did sign an expansion of it), pay raises which he falsely claimed were the first in ten years but which, in fact, are set by Congress and which have been included in every federal budget for many decades; and an undefined improvement in the Veteran’s Administration which he neither documents nor explains. He did sign budgets that increased defense spending, continuing a trend that began under his predecessor, but it is hardly conceivable that any other Republican president wouldn’t have signed those same budgets and they were passed in Congress with bipartisan support.
Based on his disregard for the well-being of others, his untruthfulness, his refusal to learn the rudiments of his job, his disregard for professional ethics, his disdain for advice from experienced members of the military, his willingness to publicly excoriate anyone who disagrees with him, and his willingness to shift the blame for any misstep to his subordinates, Mr. Trump would almost certainly be removed from any position of leadership within the U.S. military.
If members of the military want to vote for Mr. Trump, that is certainly their right. But it is still jarring to see military leaders heap praise on someone who so completely rejects the values that are the bedrock of our military institutions.
September 7. 2020
“When you are commanding, leading [soldiers] under conditions where physical exhaustion and privations must be ignored, where the lives of [soldiers] may be sacrificed, then, the efficiency of your leadership will depend only to a minor degree on your tactical ability. It will primarily be determined by your character, your reputation, not much for courage—which will be accepted as a matter of course—but by the previous reputation you have established for fairness, for that high-minded patriotic purpose, that quality of unswerving determination to carry through any military task assigned to you.”
– General George C. Marshall