When Feudal Fealty Meets Democracy

Quick question.  Who remembers who Eric Shinseki was?

(. . .pause. . .)

Anyone?

(. . .longer pause. . .)

Really? Nobody? *sigh*

Okay, quick recap. Shinseki was an Army general who served from the mid-1960s until 2003.  He had a fairly distinguished career - three Bronze Stars, a pair of Purple Hearts, a handful of combat tours, along with the prerequisites needed to attain the rank of four-star General - but I'm bringing him up because of something that happened at the tail end of his career.

See, Shinseki's final assignment before he retired was Chief of Staff of the Army. For those not familiar with the military's organizational structure, that made him the Army's representative on the Joint Chiefs - which means Shinseki had a fair amount of interaction with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, and the President.  And for the back half of Shinseki's term as Chief of Staff, those three individuals were Richard Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W Bush.

Shinseki and Rumsfeld had a disagreement over a little event known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Specifically, the number of troops that should have comprised the initial invasion force. Rumsfeld thought it should have been between 100K - 150K troops, while Shinseki believed the mission would require several hundred thousand troops.  History eventually vindicated Shinseki, but contradicting Rumsfeld (before Congress, no less) ended up putting him on Rumsfeld's bad side: from then onward, Shinseki was persona non grata with Rumsfeld and the cabal within the Bush Administration who were eager to invade Iraq. Besides making Shinseki a "lame duck," Rumsfeld's very public rebuke had the effect of cowing other senior officers who might have disagreed with one of Rumsfeld's policies, or have given him advice he didn't want to hear.

Okay, you all still with me? You in the back: wake up!

Questions? Oh, you want to know why I'm bringing all this up.  Right, I was just getting to that.

I brought that incident up for two reasons.  First, to illustrate the consequences of politicizing the military.  By undercutting Shinseki, Rumsfeld made it more likely that people would give him advice he wanted to hear, rather than what they believed would work. Look at what happened as a result: the U.S. invaded Iraq with far fewer troops than necessary.  Combined with a handful of other bad decisions, such as bypassing weapons caches and ignoring widespread looting, this meant that the United States lost control of the situation very early on.  Had Rumsfeld gone with Shinseki's recommended troop levels, the U.S. could have had enough personnel to prevent many foreign insurgents from sneaking across the border or maintain civil order.  Now, it's not certain that the additional troops Shinseki recommended would have been enough to contain Iraq, but those troops would have made success more likely. Yet Rumsfeld rejected Shinseki's advice, and that decision came back to haunt the military throughout OIF.  Thousands of people died as a result.

The second reason I brought this up was to tie it to a recent event that probably hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserved.  In the aftermath of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher's court martial for murdering a civilian (quick recap of those events here), President Trump announced on Twitter that he would be instructing the Secretary of the Navy to rescind Navy Achievement Medals for two Navy JAG officers who prosecuted Gallagher's case.

(Quick tangent: before I get to my main point, I want to detour briefly for reasons that will become obvious very quickly.  It looked pretty clear to me that Gallagher used excessive force against an unarmed noncombatant - if I were a juror, I would've voted to convict him - but here's the important part: I think the rumors of excessive force swirling around the case were what caught Trump's attention.  I'm speculating, but based on Trump's past behavior, I think he heard about the case and thought, "That's how we need to start treating enemy combatants. None of this PC, Geneva Conventions bullshit. Brutalize them, kill them, torture them - they're subhuman anyway!")

[Reminder: This is what I think Trump believes. Definitely NOT what I believe.  For an interesting piece on the thought process of people like Trump, click here.]

Okay, now to my main point.  I hope you're all still with me.

It is wildly inappropriate for the president to involve himself with this case, especially by directing the Secretary of the Navy to rescind the prosecutors' awards, which were likely earned for something unrelated to the Gallagher case.  Besides the very blatant micromanaging and flagrant pettiness, it sends a signal to the armed forces: "You get your awards thanks to my generosity.  Make me unhappy, and I'll take them away."

What's that? You think I'm reading too much into this?

I don't think so.  Consider the following:

• Trump's meeting just a few months after his term began, in which the members of his cabinet took turns praising him
• He has a habit of firing any appointee who disagrees with him (Dan Coats) or makes him look bad (Ryan Zinke)
• He's expressed the belief that the heads of government agencies - most notably the Attorney General - exist to serve him, not the country or the agency they oversee
• The USS John McCain incident 

So, if Trump can get away with revoking the awards of someone who displeases him, what's to stop him from doing the same with a promotion or a career-boosting assignment? What's to stop him from meddling with official doctrine or overruling a commander's battlefield decision? What about adding his name to the oath of enlistment, right after the "bear true faith and allegiance to" section?

Trump is under the impression that the armed forces belong to him, not the country or the office of the president.  He's thought so for a long time, and while there's nothing wrong with thinking that, his recent actions subtly bring that thought closer to reality.  It's another tiny crack he's made in the country's democratic foundation - namely, that the military belongs to the office, not to the person occupying it.

So to sum up: yes, I think Trump is gradually trying to make the military loyal to him and him alone. No, I don't think that's a fringe idea anymore.

Class dismissed.

Torching the Rulebook

I'm starting to think Donald Trump really could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it entirely.  Not only would he not lose any voters, he'd escape any legal consequences as well.

Once I sat down and listed them all, the number of crimes and ethical transgressions he's survived unscathed is staggering.  Professionally, he screwed over American farmers with his trade war, disregarded co-equal branches of government and the concept of separation of powers, tapped his unqualified, un-appointed kids to perform government duties they have no business doing, shared highly-classified intelligence with Russian government officials (Note: as president, he has declassification authority and can legally share whatever he wants with whoever he wants; that doesn't make it a good idea, though), sparked a crisis with Iran, praised multiple dictators and authoritarian-leaning leaders, ignored the Saudi government's murder of an American journalist, obstructed justice by interfering with the Mueller probe, sanctioned the abuse & mistreatment of children, and attacked the free press. 

In his personal life - before and outside of the presidency - he's the subject of double-digit credible accusations of rape and sexual assault (including raping a teenager), accepted assistance from the Russian government during his campaign, raided the government coffers for his golf junkets, and has a track record of racism and sexism.

And those are just the scandals I could remember off the top of my head.  So where are the people and institutions that are supposed to hold him accountable? Well. . .

On one side of the aisle, the GOP is largely enabling him (and has been from the first day of his presidency). Republicans in Congress are reinforcing Trump's lies by repeating them in the media, creating lies of their own, undermining and attempting to derail legitimate investigations into Trump's crimes, shielding Trump and his appointees from oversight and repercussions, blocking attempts to exercise Congressional oversight.  And why? What does the GOP get out of this? The answer is conservative judges in lifetime appointments and continued support from its base.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are well-meaning but timid and ineffective. Based on my observation, they seem to be giving up too easy ("Oh shucks, the Trump administration ignored our subpoena.  Well, we tried.") or refuse to play hardball.  I get they impression they expect this whole mess to work itself out without their influence - that this will all blow over and things will return to normal.  And maybe it will.  I've never made a secret of how much I despise Trump, so maybe my resentment is clouding my judgment. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing about Trump refusing to leave the White House in 2021 or 2025. 

Then again, he's checking off a lot of boxes on the "making yourself a king" list: showing disdain for the separation of powers, grooming his kids as a potential successor, hinting at a possible 3rd term or rejecting an election's outcome if it's unfavorable. (Yes, he might have been joking, but it's telling that he keeps going back to that theme and a lot of humor is spoken in jest.) In just two and a half years, he's made Americans more accepting of undemocratic practices.  His base (somewhere around 35% of the country) supports whatever he does, and the rest are becoming numb to his antics. (Think I'm exaggerating? Less than two weeks ago, a woman came forward with a credible accusation that Trump raped her a few decades ago, and the story has already vanished from the headlines.  Think about that: someone accused the president of a violent crime, and it's already been forgotten.  I'm not the only one to notice this, by the way.) 

So if the public has become inured to that, what else is it downplaying? Unfounded allegations of voter fraud? Baseless criticism of law enforcement? Nepotism? Defying the Constitution and putting himself above the rule of law? Because Trump has done ALL of those things. Now, do I think we're going to wake up the day after the 2020 elections to find MRAPs and M4-toting police officers on every street corner? No. For his many faults, Trump seems adverse to bloodshed. That's what makes me believe he doesn't plan to declare martial law or anything radical like that.  But his conduct is paving the way for a more unscrupulous version of Trump down the road, someone politically savvier and less reserved about using force.  Maybe that's when we DO see the MRAPs and the rifle-carrying cops show up.

What people tolerate, they get more of, and Trump has shown that Americans will tolerate quite a lot. 

And here's another thing: whether you think Trump is an empty gasbag or an American Mussolini, his influence on government will take a long time to go away.  He's reshaped the country's political norms, and not in a good way.  He's made lying more acceptable, he's made bipartisan compromise less likely, and he's shattered future expectations of civility.

We've already seen what that looks like over the past two years - do we really want to see the "on steroids" version of that? I don't think any of us could call that a good thing. So if we want to avoid that fate, we need to fight back.  Hard. 

Even if that means breaking a few rules ourselves.  Because the Democrats need to stop "playing nice." They need to stop believing (or pretending) the GOP is acting in good faith. They need to get a bit more ruthless themselves, inflicting a few metaphorical broken bones and shattered reputations if necessary.  Steamroll over the GOP. If you wonder why I'm focusing on the Democrats instead of the Republicans, it's because the GOP's enabling of Trump has shown it's unfit to govern many times over. (Quick aside: I would not be bothered if the next Democratic president drew inspiration from Reconstruction, and instituted harsh measures like stripping GOP Senators of voting privileges, until such time that it becomes fit to govern again. Because, yes, the modern GOP is that bad.)

Because what we do now will affect what type of government we have over the next 20-30 years.