Trump’s bad marriage with the military has finally exploded

[Rogue Valley]

Trump’s bad marriage with the military has finally exploded

9/5/20
By David Ignatius

Reconciling Donald Trump’s self-promoting “Art of the Deal” with the military’s reserved code of loyalty and service was always a stretch. In Trump’s early months in the White House, though, the two cultures seemed to coexist without much damage. But the fabric began to fray by mid-2017. Trump increasingly treated the military as props in the reality-TV show of his presidency. He wanted them for parades and victory celebrations, not the anguish of combat. He seemed to take his strategic guidance from Fox News more than his commanders. The generals and admirals kept their mouths shut, but the resentment was building. The bad marriage exploded this week, when former senior staff members told Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic of their shock at Trump’s crude comments about combat and loss — and his reported characterization of fallen warriors as “suckers” and “losers.” The quotes were anonymous, but it has been an open secret in Washington that many prominent retired four-stars have regarded Trump with growing horror as he assaulted the traditions of discipline and professionalism that are bedrocks of military life. The first open break point came in June, after former military leaders watched Trump try to use the military to put down protests for racial justice.

Trump’s near-constant belittling of NATO hurt his standing with the Pentagon. So did his inexplicable affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. A heart-breaker for the military was Trump’s decision to abandon the Syrian Kurds who had fought so bravely against the Islamic State. I remember talking to the officer who had to break the news of Trump’s decision to quit Syria to Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces. His description of that betrayal was unprintable. Trump berated his generals at a Pentagon meeting — with language that’s eerily similar to what was reported in the Atlantic this week. According to Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig in their book, “A Very Stable Genius,” Trump said: “You’re all losers. You don’t know how to win anymore.” Trump really did seem to think he knew better than his generals. “I wouldn’t go to war with you people, you’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” What the military came to understand over the past four years is that, for all Trump’s talk of patriotism, he truly is transactional. Throughout his career, he has always believed that loyalty was for chumps. The military understand their role in a democracy. They have obeyed Trump as their commander in chief, even amid his tirades and insults. And they will continue to do so if he’s reelected. But many of them won’t like it: Trump just isn’t a guy with whom you’d want to share a foxhole.

What started out as a fairly good marriage has deteriorated into a festering open wound.

The turning points for me personally are legion ... inferring that he knew more than all his generals, disrespecting the Gold Star Khan parents/Gold Star Johnson widow, stealing Pentagon construction funds for his vanity wall project, stabbing our Syrian Kurd allies in the back to appease Turkish president Erdoğan, granting pardons to or commuting the prison sentences of US war criminals, never castigating Vladimir Putin for Russia paying bounties on dead US soldiers in Afghanistan, insisting that a handful of US soldiers injured in Iranian rocket attack on their base in Iraq only experienced minor headaches when it turned out that 109 soldiers had suffered traumatic brain injuries, the grievance list goes on and on.

 

[watsup]

Trump’s bad marriage with the military has finally exploded

What started out as a fairly good marriage has deteriorated into a festering open wound.

The turning points for me personally are legion ... inferring that he knew more than all his generals, disrespecting the Gold Star Khan parents/Gold Star Johnson widow, stealing Pentagon construction funds for his vanity wall project, stabbing our Syrian Kurd allies in the back to appease Turkish president Erdoğan, granting pardons to or commuting the prison sentences of US war criminals, never castigating Vladimir Putin for Russia paying bounties on dead US soldiers in Afghanistan, insisting that a handful of US soldiers injured in Iranian rocket attack on their base in Iraq only experienced minor headaches when it turned out that 109 soldiers had suffered traumatic brain injuries, the grievance list goes on and on.

The generals pretty much hate Trump. They are lifelong professionals of integrity who deal in a life and death occupation and they are being forced to stand up and salute a dilettante who claims to know way more than he actually does. If this was a Third World country, they would have deposed him long ago for e damage he is doing.