Qualms From Quantico?

Qualms From Quantico?

by Bill Kristol

“There was little that was surprising in yesterday’s speeches at Quantico from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. We already knew that Trump is a demagogue whose clownish solipsism shouldn’t mask the danger of his authoritarianism. We already knew that Hegseth is a Fox & Friends personality whose pathetic desperation to want to appear tough shouldn’t overshadow the damage he can do to our military.

Their speeches were predictably depressing and dangerous. My fellow Bulwarkians and I discussed them here and here. And JVL analyzed some of the implications of Trump’s speech here.

So I won’t dwell today on how alarmed we should be by Trump’s wish to deploy the military to fight a “war” against the enemy “within.” And I won’t dwell on how repulsed we should be by Hegseth’s apparent yearning for armed forces that resemble the Soviet military more than the American.

Instead, I want to mention a couple of aspects of yesterday’s news from which we can take some hope.

First, the general and flag officers at Quantico rose to the occasion. They listened in dignified and even stone-faced silence to Hegseth and Trump. Retired Army general Mark Hertling wrote ahead of the gathering that he hoped “the loudest message” the senior officers send “is no message at all—only that they have the quiet, disciplined silence of professionals who know their oath is to the Constitution, not to a man.”

That was the message they sent. It was impossible not to see it. And it was impressive.

I was also impressed by the many younger veterans who stepped up afterwards on social media to express disapproval of what Trump and Hegseth had to say. I was particularly struck by this post from a leader of the group Veterans for Responsible Leadership, reacting to Hegseth’s boast that “America’s warriors . . . kill people and break things for a living.”

This is a disgraceful message. There was a soldier that I served with in the army that later was killed in Mosul, Iraq that said the reason he joined the military was because he believed that it was the greatest force for good that the world has ever known. He said the military not only taught its soldiers to be lethal, but it also taught us to be compassionate and empathetic and care about not only the American people but also freedom-loving and -seeking people from all over the globe. This is the true warrior ethos that so many of us veterans know and love. I’m thinking about him a lot tonight and will be damned if sons of bitches like Trump and Hegseth will transform our great military into something resembling the Russians’. His memory and service must not be in vain.

Obviously, there are post-9/11 veterans who have been sympathetic to Trump and Hegseth. But I’m confident that many understand, especially after yesterday, that Trump’s vision of America—and Hegseth’s of the military—is not what they and their comrades-in-arms signed up and sacrificed for.

Yesterday also saw a notable contribution to our public discourse from a veteran of a different generation, a man who served a tour in the Army over six decades ago and then continued his public service with a distinguished career as a U.S. federal district court judge. William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Massachusetts now a senior judge, wrote a long and careful opinion in American Association of University Professors et al. v. Marco Rubio, finding that in one of the early ICE arrests this year the Trump administration had trampled on the free speech rights of an immigrant.

But Young chose to go beyond his important legal analysis of free speech jurisprudence to discuss the larger meaning of “our magnificent Constitution.” And so he addressed the practice of ICE agents’ wearing masks:

Can you imagine a masked Marine? It is a matter of honor—and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.

This remark was especially striking in the context of the speeches by Trump and Hegseth. For what they want, in a way, is to turn the U.S. military into an institution more like ICE: an internal police force, unconstrained by many laws or norms, bullying and intimidating people here at home on behalf of the current administration in Washington.

I have considerable confidence that the current crop of general and flag officers do not want a kind of a military that looks like or behaves like ICE, and that they would resist it. But what of the military leadership three years from now? The Washington Post recently described efforts by Hegseth to shape the next generation of senior officers. “Even at the one- and two-star level, the secretary’s team is scrutinizing old relationships and what officials have said or posted on social media, as they determine whom to send forward for a higher rank or assignment,” the paper reported.

What will the officer corps look like in three years? Can we be confident that Trump and Hegseth won’t succeed in turning the U.S. military into something more like ICE? The thought seems incredible. But that ICE would be doing what it is now doing on our streets would have been shocking just a year ago.

The opinion of Judge Young and the silence of the generals at Quantico offer some grounds for hope. But military officers and district court judges alone won’t save us. And it’s perhaps worth noting that neither the judge nor the senior officers were elected to their offices. At the end of the day, free government can’t be preserved without the commitment and courage of elected officials. So the question is: Can more of our elected officials rise to the occasion? Which means, can more of the American people rise to the occasion? That’s the question with which Judge Young concludes his opinion:

I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected. Is he correct?

Is he correct?”