Jim Wright
19 hrs ·
I took the last couple of days off. I'm not going to apologize for it, I needed the break.
Naturally, this morning my inbox is overloaded with demands and expectations that I say something pithy about Trump's visit to US troops in Iraq yesterday.
I do have a few things to say, but I doubt you'll like them.
First:
Give credit where credit is due.
Liberals, progressives, the media, never-Trumpers on the right, and even some hardcore Trump supporters have been complaining that Trump hasn't visited deployed American Troops.
Now he has.
Was it a political stunt? Of course it was.
Was it for his own self-aggrandizement? Surely you'd expect no less NOW?
Was because he was shamed into going? No doubt.
Was it the only way he could get a plane ride to Mar-a-Lago? I dunno. But you demanded he visit the troops. Now he has. If you're going to criticize Trump -- and you know *I* damned well will -- there are plenty of legitimate subjects to complain about. Attacking him for doing what you demanded he do is the kind of hypocrisy conservatives did to Obama and it's just as petty and small-minded coming from the left as it was from the right.
Second:
Operational Security. Trump's visit outed a covert special operations team. SEALs. Compromising their ability to carry out the mission and perhaps even putting their lives at even greater risk than they normally are.
That's not Trump's fault.
It's not.
Not exactly. Not directly. I'll come back to this in the third point.
I'd love to blame Trump, or his staff, or the photographers, or the press. But it's not their fault. They don't know any better. They should, but they don't.
It's the US Military's fault, specifically the commanders on the ground. The Theater Commander. The base commander. The Special Operations Commander. The SEAL team leaders. THEY are the ones responsible for Operational Security. They're the experts. The press is in and out of US bases in theater on a daily basis, the enemy is watching all of the time, not just when the President happens to show up. There are procedures which these officers are supposed know and enforce. Hell, I personally directed highly classified operations in the Northern Arabian Gulf during the opening night of the Iraq invasion with CNN less two feet away. Prior to the operation, the press was briefed, the limits of what they could do and couldn't do were clearly explained, they were monitored, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY all of our people were briefed and we made damned sure we knew what could be out in the open and what couldn't. Why? Because that was my goddamned job, that's why. And the Commander's job. And the Public Affairs Officer's job. And ALL of our jobs, actually.
If I failed to maintain operational security, if I failed to protect classified information, I would have been court martialed for dereliction of duty and rightly so.
Somebody ****ed up.
But it wasn't Trump this time.
SEALs are supposed to be invisible, that's their job. But, instead of maintaining proper OPSEC, keeping a low profile, SEALs grabbed all their gear and posed for selfies and press pictures with Trump in front of the cameras. That's on them, on their NCO, on their officers, on their commanders.
It's out in the open now and the military will have to deal with it. Either send these guys home or live with the increased risk and possible mission fail.
They should have known better.
They DO know better.
They ALL know better.
There's no excuse for this.
And that takes us to the third and most important point:
Pictures of Air Force and Army officers decked out in MAGA hats and waving Trump flags.
This is a violation of military regulation, specifically DoD Directive 1344.10 "Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces."
Military personnel are allowed to participate in political activities OUTSIDE OF THEIR OFFICIAL CAPACITIES. That is, as a member of the uniformed service, you can participate in lawful political activity as a private citizen. You may NOT do so in uniform, or in any official capacity.
And as an officer, what you are expressly prohibited from doing is attempting to influence your subordinates' political views in any fashion whatsoever. That is abuse of power and prohibited by a variety of regulations and laws.
It's not just that Air Force captain waving the Trump flag, it's the full bird colonel not ten feet away -- along with a dozen other senior officers -- who are not correcting her. The officers photographed wearing or waving Trump paraphernalia have compromised their ability to command. Any subordinate who happens to hold differing political views would have to suspect prejudicial treatment in such a command environment -- which is specifically why this type of partisan behavior in uniform is strictly prohibited.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
That's the thing right there.
These officers know better, or should. And these aren't separate items, one, two, and three. No, they're all part of a set piece.
They say a fish rots from the head.
And that's what you're looking at here. Rot. From the top down. Poor leadership starting with the Commander-in-Chief and permeating the Officer corps and NCO ranks. Partisanship. Open bias in uniform. Slack discipline. A lack of professionalism.
No wonder they failed to maintain operational security.
This is just another indicator of rot, like those collisions at sea last year, or the departure of actual professionals from senior civilian positions -- and the mockery and belittling of the same by the Commander-in-Chief himself -- and the demands for ethnic and political purity in the ranks.
This is how a military falls apart, how the mission fails, how rot grows in the ranks, how leadership is replaced with fops and amateurs and ineffectual fools. This is how military service becomes a haven for thugs and criminals instead of the profession of a nation's best and brightest.
THIS is how a professional service becomes a tool of oppression and fascism under the camouflage of patriotism and national security.
You're watching it happen.
