Does Lt. Colonel Vindman’s uniform signal a slo-mo military coup and shouldn’t we be praising Trump for fighting corruption? (Plus a few more things.)
(For those of you keeping track, this is the companion post to my No. 32 Bookworm Podcast.)
On October 28 of this year, I wrote a long post entitled Under Obama, there came to be a cancer in the Pentagon. I was triggered, if you’ll pardon my using that now-noxious millennial word, by news stories about two Obama-era admirals and one Clinton-era general. I won’t re-hash the whole post here because you can read it at the link, but let me give you the high points:
Under Obama, the Pentagon purged high ranking officers at a rate unheard of in modern times. By the time he was through, he’d gotten rid of almost two hundred officers. Some, I’m sure, weren’t performing well, but an inordinate number were reluctant to get with the Obama program of turning the American military into a social justice experiment, complete with women in combat and openly transgender troops. I suggested in my post that those who survived the purge might be unlike America’s past military officers. Very unlike.
As my examples, I looked at three recent pronouncements from retired officers. The first was Admiral McRaven, who was in charge when special forces killed bin Laden. Although bin Laden masterminded the gruesome, terrifying mass murder of 2,996 people on American soil, McRaven made sure that bin Laden had a respectful Muslim funeral service at sea.
McRaven recently wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post, in which spent paragraphs boasting about the military and his military affiliations. He then claimed, in pretty stark terms, that Trump is vile. He ended by saying, again in stark terms, that it time for Trump to leave office ASAP. He didn’t say, “that’s why you should vote Trump out in November 2020.” No. He suggested an immediate exit:
And if this president doesn’t understand their importance, if this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office — Republican, Democrat or independent — the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it. (Emphasis mine.)
That crude suggestion, along with McRaven’s constant references to the military, can easily be read to mean that the post-Obama Pentagon will look favorably upon a military coup. [Read more…]
I was on the phone with a friend when he suddenly started yelling, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” He had just received in his email a news bulletin announcing a military takeover in Turkey. First reports indicated that the takeover was led by mid-level military officers accusing the government of having destroyed secular democracy in Turkey. (An accurate accusation.) That there were no high-level officers is unsurprising, because Erdogan purged them all. That all sounded good.