Trump’s war on the values of warriors

Our military leaders will be carrying an incredible weight on their shoulders for the next three years.

In his first week in office in 2017, Donald Trump announced that while he personally supported torturing terrorist suspects, he would defer to the advice of his Secretary of Defense General James Mattis to not let the U.S. military engage in such cruel practices. For the next four years, a succession of defense and military officials mostly succeeded in checking Trump’s instinct for lawlessness, and kept our troops focused on their national security missions, rather than on his personal obsessions.

To say that Pete Hegseth is no Jim Mattis would be an understatement. In addition to opposing torture, Mattis wrote in a message to the armed forces that “enhanced lethality demands more than increasing the size of our formations and obtaining newer, more advanced equipment—it also requires having a more disciplined force,” including by “eradicating malignant behavior from our ranks” and choosing “the harder right over the easier wrong.” Hegseth, on the other hand, was a vocal supporter of waterboarding prisoners after Congress banned it and defended American soldiers who had been convicted of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his Senate confirmation hearing, Hegseth had little compelling to say about U.S. military strategy or how to meet threats from China and Russia. But he did stand by his past crude disparagement of military lawyers. Asked about torture, he acknowledged that Americans respect the law, then added with greater passion that “we have too many people here in air-conditioned offices that like to point fingers at the guys in dark and dangerous places, the gals in helicopters [in] enemy territory, who are doing things that people in Washington, D.C., would never dare to do.”

On confirmation, Hegseth fired the top JAG officers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. He closed the Pentagon office focused on reducing civilian casualties in war. He boasted about having “smoked” motor boats in the Caribbean, based on a declaration by Trump of an “armed conflict” with drug cartels that would allow the U.S. military to kill anyone suspected of drug dealing (including an American citizen) anywhere in the world, even if the suspect could be arrested and poses no immediate threat to American lives.

Hegseth’s new watchword for the Defense Department—“maximum lethality, not tepid legality”—is an open invitation to young soldiers to break the rules. And now, his fetish for warfighters unbound by law, combined with Trump’s desire to use warfighters against Americans, has brought us to an unprecedented moment of crisis.

Fortunately, most of America’s uniformed military leaders—the men and women whose approval Hegseth pathetically craves even as he insults them for being too soft or “woke”—do not view legality or morality as unwanted constraints.

It’s not just that they are honorable people (though most are); they have also learned lessons from years of real war that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

They know, for example, that if our military mistreats prisoners, its enemies become less likely to surrender and more likely to fight our troops to the death. They know that when we kill civilians, our foes recruit more fighters to kill Americans.

They know as well that when the U.S. military claims the right to do something to our enemies, that means our enemies have the right to do the same to us. If we waterboard captives, American prisoners of war can also be waterboarded. If our president can designate anyone a “terrorist” or drug dealer and “smoke” them on the high seas (or anywhere else), then the leaders of Venezuela, or North Korea, or China can do the same to anyone—including Americans—they don’t like. Our allies would not fight alongside that kind of America. Our adversaries would rejoice that we surrendered the comparative moral advantage we once enjoyed.

Our military leaders also understand, as Mattis did, that being better than our enemies by upholding the highest legal and moral standards is something Americans in uniform are proud of; it’s part of what motivates them to fight for their country. When they are asked to violate those principles, even in combat against the most hated foreign foes, their morale and effectiveness diminishes. If, God forbid, they are asked to violate them in missions against their fellow Americans, against a made up “enemy within” that none of them signed up to fight, that would destroy the United States military as we know it.

The generals and admirals who sat silently when Hegseth and Trump lectured them at Quantico last week will follow their president’s stupid orders, so long as they are lawful. Some might welcome Hegseth’s focus on physical fitness or his shift away from diversity standards. But they also cherish the principle inscribed on a plaque in West Point’s Constitution Corner (which Hegseth has not yet gotten around to removing): “Our American Code of Military Obedience requires that, should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers must obey the law.”

What Trump and Hegseth will do if that conflict comes—for example, if officers refuse an order to use lethal force against protestors, or insist on obeying court orders to stand down—is anyone’s guess. They might lose their nerve, fearing that Americans will side with the actual heroes of our military over their draft-dodging commander in chief and his secretary of wardrobe. Or they might press on, firing generals who disagree with them, promising to pardon the craven few who comply, while trying to politicize the rank and file (imagine MAGA commissars in every unit, reporting on their officers). I think the former is still more likely, but the possibility of the latter should give us chills.

Our military leaders will be carrying an incredible weight on their shoulders for the next three years. Congressional oversight will be essential in supporting them, which is another reason why Democrats must win at least the House next year.

Meanwhile, we can all help. If you know someone serving in the military (and especially if you are a veteran), speak to them about these issues. If you see active duty or National Guard troops deployed in your community, remember they are not responsible for this situation; engage them respectfully about how they intend to live up to their code.

And of course, whenever you can, speak up. Affirm again and again that the purpose of our military is to fight America’s enemies abroad, not Trump’s perceived enemies at home. And that its strength depends on upholding the principles of the country it defends.

Tom Malinowski is a former member of Congress from New Jersey who was an assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration.

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