When Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, there was a good reason to believe that he would be popular with the armed forces; As he was the beginning of a republican president, the army strongly inclined to the conservative movement, and was launching an election campaign bragging for its support for the army, and promising to "rebuild the military establishment, care for veterans, and push the world to respect the United States again!" But there were certainly some warning signs of a problem looming, as happened when the President attacked war hero John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, saying: “I prefer those who were not captured in wars”, and when he attacked the family of a soldier who died in a fight Because she dared criticize him.
But in principle, and from at least a military perspective, the positives of the matter seemed to outweigh its negatives Trump has pushed up defense defense spending, sent more troops and military equipment to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and freed up rules of military engagement, giving commanders and generals in the battlefield more freedom to maneuver. Perhaps most importantly, he appointed military figures to senior civilian positions, such as the appointment of retired Marine Corps Commander James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, retired Marine Corps chief John Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Security and then chief of White House staff, and retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn who became a national security adviser In the Trump administration, after his failure after 24 days in service, he was replaced by Lieutenant General, who was in service at the time H. R. McMaster. Trump, in turn, found great pleasure in surrounding himself with an aura of the manhood of the generals, as he praised Matisse describing him as a "mad dog", a nickname that Matisse abhorred as abhorrent, and as "a general of all generals."
Some critics feared that the increase in the representation of generals in the administration would negatively affect the civil authority over the army, but many others viewed with satisfaction these appointments, hoping that their presence in the American administration would provide a kind of "adult" supervision required for the reality TV star that presides over the country.
And things got worse almost immediately; And how this happened - how the promise of smooth civil-military relations turned into anger, treachery and shock - documented by four new books, two of which are newspaper novels: "Trump and his generals", a comprehensive honest review of Trump's foreign policy by the journalist and member of a think tank Peter Bergen, and a book "A Genius with Full Mental Strength", a high-profile press coverage and discreet clairvoyance of Philip Rucker and Carol Leonning, reporters in The Washington Post where I work as a writer in her column.
The other two books are memoirs: “Not Aging,” by Guy Snowgrass, a retired US Navy officer who has served as a Pentagon writer under Mattes’s command, and the book leaves the impression that it has been written in haste and provides more behind the scenes of domestic politics than people would like to know much, But it includes a number of stories that were not disclosed of any other work, including the claim that Trump asked Matisse to "deceive Amazon" with a huge contract because he was not happy with the Washington Post newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and the other memoirs "Call Code: Chaos" For his authors James Mattis and Ping West, he does not touch on the differences that accompanied his time in the Trump administration at all, and Mattis says: “I am an old-fashioned man, and I do not like writing about presidents who are still in service.” But the book provides its readers with an interesting account of Mattis’s career that can help us In explaining why the marriage between Trump and his generals was governed by divorce.
Another person pays for the confrontation
The major turning point in the relationship occurred in a July 2017 meeting inside what is known as the Tank, a secret conference room for the Pentagon used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Details of the meeting were included in Bergen’s books as his book begins, The Snowgrass who organized the meeting was present, as well as Racker and Lunning, who offer the most important details. Mattis had requested a meeting with the president and his senior advisers to explain to them why the systems of US-led security alliances and trade relations remain important today. But things did not go as expected. All accounts agree that Trump, who is known for his short-circuited eyes and a fast-wearing temperament, has explicitly expressed his anger during Mattis' bid. Saying: "But that is what preserves our security." But that explanation was not enough for Trump as expected, then he said: "All of you have failed," looking brutally: "You no longer know the way to win." A few minutes later, the President - who invoked the bones to avoid military service in the Vietnam War - went to a group of generals who were decorated with war decorations saying: "I cannot enter a war while you are with me; you are a bunch of foolish children."
As for the generals, and they grew up not to question the authority of the Commander in Chief, they sat in astonished silence, and then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took it upon himself to answer. He replied to the President saying: “No, this is just wrong .. Sir, you are totally wrong; Any of this is true. " But in the aftermath of the meeting, while standing with a number of trusted people, Tillerson said of the president that he was “a clumsy vile”, and when NBC News published this comment several months later, newspapers had dried out and Tillerson was removed from his post.
Tillerson's removal from office in mid-March 2018 came with unforeseen consequences. The Ministry of Defense was left without allies, and until that time, Tillerson and Matisse formed a united front to stop Trump's more reckless eruptions, and together they managed to prevent the president from withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and abandoning common defense understandings with NATO. Mattis worked with Kelly to delay the implementation of Trump's more provocative demands, Bergen wrote, including his orders in early 2018 to evacuate US citizens from South Korea in order to prepare for a possible military strike for North Korea.
With Tillerson gone, the issue of Matisse leaving the back door was also a matter of time, and Snowgrass wrote that he discovered early in the summer of 2018 that Matisse was planning to remain in service until the end of that year, and the last confrontation came in December, when Mattis protested Trump's initial decision to withdraw US forces from northern Syria, then Kelly, who is close to Matisse, left his post, after years of service he spent at his side in the Marines service, shortly after Mattis left, and McMaster, the National Security Adviser, was removed from his position in March From that year after a clash with Trump and Matisse. Bergen wrote that Mattis had "intentionally referred" to the National Security Adviser as "Lieutenant General McMaster" to explain to him that he was inferior to him in the military arrangement.
The only elite official who has maintained a lasting influence on Trump since the beginning of his administration was retired general Jack Keane, a former deputy chief of staff in the military who played a pivotal role in championing what he calls the 2006 "2007" uprising in Iraq. Kane never accepted a formal appointment, as he would have preferred to offer advice informally. Bergen wrote that Kean had helped many times to discourage Trump from withdrawing soldiers from northern Syria and Afghanistan, but even Kane was unable to completely stop Trump. Trump has since abandoned the Syrian Kurds by redeploying American soldiers in narrow Syrian oil fields, and has agreed to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by May 2020 as part of the deal with the Taliban.
They are read
Although the book, "Code of Appeal: Chaos," is not much detailed during the Matisse administration at the Ministry of Defense, but it reveals the reason why he, that is Matisse, and other generals clash with Trump on many occasions. Mattis wrote that the Marines have long instilled in him the basics of leadership that he summarizes as “Three Qualities”: “Efficiency: Don't behave like an amateur in your job. Men of this kind never abandon you, and the obligation: state your basic rules and then abide by them ... provided you refine your passion and your professional commitment to personal humility and sympathy for your soldiers. It is difficult to imagine other ethics that are in this dimension of Trump's traits, including the credentials he repeatedly credits to himself, the contempt for those below him, and the contempt of those with experience and competence. The term "self-sacrifice" is not found in Trump's dictionary, just as it views loyalty as a one-way street: He wants all those under his command to be saved to him, even if it costs them to break the law, but he will be unfulfilled if his interest requires it, and often Allegedly not knowing when they are having trouble.
The only thing more surprising about Trump's ethics than Trump is the former defense secretary's love of reading; Matisse finished authoring his book before joining the administration, but it can be read as if the former defense minister addresses the president with palms, saying: “Unless you have read hundreds of books, you are literally illiterate, and you will lack competence, because your experiences The character alone is not big enough to keep you and protect you. Any leader who claims to be too busy to read will fill bags of corpses with his soldiers while he is learning the hard way. " It is well known that Trump of course does not read abstract papers, let him read one of the books.
On the contrary, all the generals who worked in the top positions within the Trump administration were binge-reading, and it was shocking to them to deal with an intellectually ignorant president who was confident, however, that he already knew everything, even though Racker and Lunning wrote that Trump did not even know India shares 3,218 kilometers of borders with China. Trump was disappointed with McMaster because the National Security Adviser was very professional, and he was trying to keep the president with a lot of information. "Trump was mocking McMaster by talking about 'today's topic' and employing a series of long, complex sentences in reference to the degree of boredom raised by the McMaster summary," Leoning and Rucker wrote, adding that "the National Security Council staff felt very annoyed about Trump's treatment of their president." And they had every right to do so, because many of those employees were officers in the army, and conversations circulated throughout the narrow military community about the mistreatment received by the imitated veteran of medals on the Gulf War and [the invasion of] Iraq and Afghanistan.
People have mouths and tongues
Aggression between Trump and his generals quickly seeped into the public landscape; After Mattis wrote a bitter resignation letter, Trump said of him as the most "overrated" general. As for Kelly, he waited more than a year after his departure to criticize Trump for the testimony, and when he did this in February of this year, Trump attacked him on Twitter saying: "When I finished John Kelly's command, something I couldn't do quickly enough, He knew full well that, in a larger place, the position of chief of staff in the White House was not only for him. This criticism, of course, raises legitimate questions about why Trump appointed Kelly - and many other officials he despises today - from the start.
In addition to his very public clash with his generals, Trump's relationship with the military has deteriorated due to a series of decisions that the armed forces have not been well-liked. My conversations with current and former officials indicate that the armed forces have agreed with Trump to kill Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State “ISIS”. But many of the people I spoke to were unhappy with Trump's decision last October to abandon the Syrian Kurdish forces and relocate the long-serving US military as a separation wall between the Kurds and Turkish forces hostile to them, despite the fact that the Kurds fought alongside the United States in defeating the organization The state lost more than 11,000 soldiers in the process.
This decision, as many felt, was the opposite of what is required by the army's commitment to allies on the battlefield. Many in the US military were upset that Trump had regained the rank of Edward Gallagher, a member of the US Navy's Special Operations Squad "Navi Siles" - who was accused of war crimes in Iraq - and expelled Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Widman, a veteran of Iraq who testified about Trump's attempts to put pressure on Ukraine to help his re-election campaign. Trump escorted Vendemann and his twin brother along with a lieutenant colonel working on the National Security Council crew outside the White House, then advised the military to start disciplinary measures against Vendemann, which the military refused to do. Kelly praised Fendemann after his dismissal because he "did exactly what we are teaching them to do" by refusing to submit to "an illegal order," and criticized Trump for supporting Gallagher as "totally wrong." Officials like Kelly know how hard it is to be disciplined and follow good governance when you have a commander-in-chief who implicitly says war crimes are acceptable, but telling the truth is not.
It is clear that there are still many military men who support and agree with Trump in his outlooks, but the president's attacks on the army's sacred traditions as "duty, honor, homeland" have offended many others. Surveys conducted by The Military Times reflect the disappointment of the military establishment. When Trump was first elected president, in November 2016, 46% of respondents had a positive view of Trump, 37% of them had a negative view, and then occurred A clear change of 42% of positive reviews and 50% of negative opinions. Specifically that month, there were a number of generals who criticized Trump, albeit under the cover of anonymity, in a trans-Atlantic article by Mark Bowden. Some have criticized the recently deported generals for not speaking more publicly, but discreetness is understandable given that they were taught from the start of their careers to stay away from political battles, and that Trump's opposition could lead to a clash between the president and their colleagues still in service. Meanwhile, not defending Trump, the retired generals have made clear that there are no supporters of the president.
Let us bow venerable
Trump's presidency has been a lesson for him and the soldiers he leads simultaneously. Trump, who knew the simple thing about the ruling at first, knew how much influence he could have, and he does not seem to know why the former presidents have set limits for themselves by, for example, not telling the Justice Department who to prosecute and which prison terms should be To be enacted and to whom. Trump has dared to feel that his controversial decisions - such as moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and the assassination of Soleimani - have produced better results than opponents and opponents in Congress expected. He became more intransigent and less determined to listen to advice the longer he stayed in office.
As for the generals, they knew, in turn, that they could not simply continue working as usual. Trump squandered that hope when he surprised the Pentagon leadership with sudden decisions to halt joint military exercises with South Korea and expel transgender soldiers from military service. The latest decision, as Snowgrass wrote, "has caused chaos within the Pentagon." Mattis tried to keep up with Trump as much as possible, but also deterred him as much as possible. Snowgrass remembers Mattis saying he "prefers to swallow the acid" over the contract parade that Trump had requested in Washington. But even Matisse had to make compromises, including sending the National Guard in futile military deployments only to earn political points for Trump. Although Mattis’s decision to avoid criticizing the current president seems logical from his perspective as a retired general, he must realize that he was serving in a civilian position and that he owes the American people a clarification ahead of the 2020 elections on whether Trump is appropriate for the presidency from his personal perspective. Precisely because Matisse is a respected and respected figure, his rule will carry great weight, especially among Republican voters. His successor, Mark Esper, lacked the reputation and reputation of Matisse among the public and allies who had their say at the top of the pyramid of government, and thus Matisse was the most capable of political influence.
Trump has surrounded himself with partisans, such as Mike Pompeo, his secretary of state, and Robert O'Brien, his national security adviser, who see themselves as supportive of the president, rather than drawing boundaries for him. It is rumored that O'Brien distributes publications from Trump's tweets to his crew in order to direct their decisions and priorities. But the agencies they oversee have incurred long-term losses; At the National Security Council, O'Brien eliminated a third of the staff, and at the State Department staff morale collapsed after Mike Pompeo refused to defend diplomats like William Taylor and Mary Jovanovich against criticism of the president and his allies in the political spectrum. As for the Ministry of Defense, and because it is much larger than any other government agency and with an ethic of the army, it is more able to resist external influence, but it is not immune to this extent. One evidence, for example, is Trump's decision in February to expel John Rudd, the Under Secretary of Defense who clashed with the president by pushing for the release of Ukraine's aid and by opposing the declaration of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.
But Trump's attempts to subdue the Defense Department to his will and employ it for political purposes and to purge it of all dissenting opinions will only accelerate if he is granted a second term. The generals who are said to be the “axis of adults” have left their seats in power, and their successors, in both the military and civil authority, have become a lesson for any official who is asked to stand up to a bitter, colorful chief executive. The longer Trump remains in office, the harder it will be to protect non-political traditions including serving the nation, dedication to the rule of law, and fulfillment of the constitution, which are registered marks of the US armed forces.
If Trump loses in the November elections, it will be possible to start the process of repairing the damage, but the past three years have shown how easy it is for a power-hungry president to underestimate norms in ways that could harm state institutions. In the future, Congress must impose greater limits on the president’s authority and prevent him from abuses such as political interference with the Justice Department and the deployment of forces for political purposes. And Congress is currently taking these measures - for example, by revoking declarations of military force - although legislation of this kind cannot be enacted as long as Trump is in the White House, and as long as Mitch McConnell is a Republican in Kentucky who controls the Senate. But the limits of the president’s authority will always be difficult to support within the realm of national security, as there is a good reason to largely preserve the decisions of the Commander in Chief to protect the country. Ultimately, the strongest shield against misuse of the military lies in instilling the greatest devotion possible in the hearts of army officers so that future military commanders can confront illegal or moral orders, as Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster have done recently in many cases.
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This report is translated from Foreign Affairs and does not necessarily reflect the Meydan site.