Posted on Jun 19, 2019
The Increasingly Dangerous Politicization of the U.S. Military
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If you can get past the anti-Trump diatribe in the middle (where the retired LTG author comes dangerously close to politically partisan speech in an article telling us not to be politically partisan) three out of the four recommendations the authors give at bottom are very good and reasonable. The 4th recommendation is ridiculous. Every POTUS is Commander-in-chief and absolutely free to say whatever he wants, publicly and in front of US troops. If his message is wrong, he will pay the price politically. But it is not the Chairman's job to police POTUS speech.
The Increasingly Dangerous Politicization of the U.S. Military
Posted from warontherocks.com
Office of the President (POTUS)
Freedom of Speech
DoD
Political Correctness
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 4
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He has good ideas but then the author does exactly what he says not to do. BTW, we've had commanders in chief do this sort of thing before and we are all still here, part of a free country. IMO, it is more about appearances than reality.
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I’m fine with a President that seems to sincerely care for our military and fights for rebuilding the budget to provide the equipage and training to meet their needs to perform. Anyone that doesn’t believe the military isn’t politicized as organization, which carries over into retirement is disengenuous. My preference is a CINC that takes action rather than act. Not so long ago we had two Democrat Presidents that were great actors. Don’t recall warontherocks noting that in the past.
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I have served under both Republican and Democrat administrations (roughly 60/40 D:R) as well as one of the authors of that article, LTG Barno (ret) - he was a one-star then. Sometimes the President at the time ordered me to do something I disagreed with. Actually, more often than not I questioned the wisdom of that, and it was also pretty evenly split between the Clinton, W, and Obama administrations. So far, I haven't been deployed under Trump.
Twice, that has affected who I voted for. But my ire at whether we were doing things appropriate for the military to do or for the best interests of the USA was usually a lot closer to me in the CoC then POTUS. More like people like the author, who couldn't articulate priorities and allocate resources in a way to actually leverage progress, leaving the ranks confused about what we should be doing while Sr Leaders checked another box to get promoted to higher positions. This happened over and over in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Having political opinions is American and patriotic, but it can also be predjudicial to order and discipline. We have regulations for that. We might not ever be able to get President Trump or his predecessors or successive Presidents to bat 1.000 on how they act, but we should be able to govern ourselves,
Twice, that has affected who I voted for. But my ire at whether we were doing things appropriate for the military to do or for the best interests of the USA was usually a lot closer to me in the CoC then POTUS. More like people like the author, who couldn't articulate priorities and allocate resources in a way to actually leverage progress, leaving the ranks confused about what we should be doing while Sr Leaders checked another box to get promoted to higher positions. This happened over and over in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Having political opinions is American and patriotic, but it can also be predjudicial to order and discipline. We have regulations for that. We might not ever be able to get President Trump or his predecessors or successive Presidents to bat 1.000 on how they act, but we should be able to govern ourselves,
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Col Joseph Lenertz
Thanks for the correction on LTG Barno...I have corrected my error on his rank. I agree we should (and the vast majority of us DO) govern ourselves and stay apolitical in uniform.
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