Yesterday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth behaved reprehensibly. Their speeches before several hundred assembled military commanders and their senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) were tantamount to incitement—a genuinely dangerous effort to suborn the military’s oath and condition them for using violence against their fellow Americans.
Their words should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the civilian leadership intends to use the threat and actuality of violence to infringe on Americans’ constitutional rights. Where Americans, like me, can take some comfort is in the quiet professionalism displayed by our military in this disgraceful and dangerous maelstrom.
Hegseth called all the military’s commanding officers to Quantico, Virginia, for a pep rally. The secretary’s office previewed it as him giving a speech on grooming, standards, and his “warrior ethos” vision. Trump said it would be “a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily … talking about a lot of good, positive things.”
What transpired was the commander in chief darkly asserting that “we’re under invasion from within.” Trump extolled his executive order “to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.” He said he had instructed the secretary of defense to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” The president claimed Washington, D.C., was more violent than anything our military experienced in Afghanistan.
Hegseth preceded the president, calling for a “historic reassertion of our purpose.” Sounding like the infamous sergeant major from the HBO series Generation Kill, he emphasized the importance of grooming standards and physical fitness. He also asserted an end to “stupid rules of engagement,” saying that the military’s job is to “break things and kill people.”
While it’s embarrassing for a not particularly successful National Guard major to lecture officers and senior NCOs who have spent 30 to 40 years defending the United States about the need for a warrior ethos, at least Hegseth’s lines fit within the advertised pep rally. What did not was the civilian leader of the Department of Defense instructing that “if the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign”—especially when coupled with the president’s calls for violence against fellow Americans.
These are unprecedented and dangerous words from the civilian leadership of our military. What was reassuring was how the military leaders reacted. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine introduced the secretary as the secretary of war—distasteful, since only Congress has the authority to change the department’s name, and it has not done so. But that was probably unavoidable in the circumstances and was more than balanced out by the comportment of Caine and his colleagues. They exemplified the professional restraint of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at State of the Union addresses: present but not participating in the politics.
Trump was clearly taken aback, encouraging them: “If you want to applaud, applaud.” They did not, just as the chiefs do not applaud at the political festival that is the State of the Union address. It is the appropriate professional response by the military when forced by their civilian leaders into being present at political events.
Trump is sure to be disappointed, as he was disappointed at the niceness of soldiers during the Army parade over the summer. Before today’s event, the president threatened: “I’m going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders, and if I don’t like somebody, I’m going to fire them right on the spot.” Nobody was fired on the spot, but the president and the secretary may retaliate for this disciplined response. Congress, the other constitutionally empowered source of civilian oversight of the military, ought to put its weight behind preventing any retribution.
During the 1867 constitutional crisis, Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Army, was pinioned between Congress impeaching President Andrew Johnson and that president threatening to disband Congress. Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, appointing Grant the civilian war secretary concurrent with his military appointment. Congress threatened Grant with five years in prison and a $10,000 fine if he accepted the appointment.
In what feels like an important decision for our time, Grant determined that in peacetime, the legislature has the superior claim to military subordination. Our current Congress might profit from the example and exercise its Article I authorities to establish military policies and shield our military from partisan onslaughts of the kind we saw today.
There will be critics who want these military leaders to resign in protest, but this is a bad idea. It further encourages the public to consider the military in partisan terms and leads them to respect our military less. The best posture for the American military in febrile political times is inertness. They cannot save us from the leaders we elect or the officials the Senate consents to confirm to high office, and we should neither want nor expect them to. That’s on the rest of us.
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