Military Decisions Today are Disasters Tomorrow

Trump's military review panel will undermine our national security for decades to come

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Building a strong military is a long game

Donald Trump is considering forming a board of retired generals to review all of the currently serving 3 and 4 -star generals in the military for their “leadership qualities.” This idea is driven exclusively by right wing politics and will damage the military not just today but for decades to come.

Let me tell you how I know.

I remember well the spring of 1990. The Cold War was finally over and the Army was looking hard at what it should look like for the future. After decades organized to fight the Warsaw Pact flooding into Europe with mass mechanized forces there was a quiet realization that the world had changed. With it, so too must the U.S. Army.

I had graduated West Point in 1987 and became an Aeroscout Helicopter pilot. I did a tour in Korea as a scout platoon leader, then headed straight to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia to take over another scout platoon in a Cavalry squadron. When another platoon slot opened in our sister Apache battalion I jumped on it and moved across the airfield.

Within months it was obvious the Army was looking to let folks go and the nature of our work was changing. The days of massed tank warfare seemed to be over and the large military wasn’t needed anymore.

I was looking at my options when word came out of the first round of draw downs as the Army looked to trim its ranks. One of the first offers for for West Point graduates like myself who were given a six year post graduation commitment to the Army to have that reduced to allow us to leave sooner. I saw dozens of my classmates and friends take the opportunity to punch out.

I sat down with a mentor and we took note of the many exceptional officers we saw leaving. Truly great men and women were leaving, who I thought we would be the first of us to see stars on their shoulders in twenty or thirty years. I pondered my own path.

He told me that the fact was many really good people would leave to find good jobs and steadier futures. He urged me to stay in uniform because the Army would need good leaders with their hearts in the mission for many years in an uncertain future.

The future was certainly more exciting than any of us saw then.

The long tail of today’s decisions

I tell this story because of the recently Wall Street Journal reported draft Executive Order being floated to Donald Trump to create a “Warrior Board.” From the article:

“The Trump Transition Team is considering a draft executive order that establishes a “warrior board” of retired senior military personnel with the power to review three- and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership.

If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,””

Yes, you read that right. They want to take retired general officers and give them the power to review serving 3 and 4 star generals for the “requisite” leadership qualities. In light of the fact that the entire right is aligned on the idea that the military is infected with the “woke mind virus” because of programs to encourage minority success, openness to service for both gay and transgender Americans, opening of combat roles to women, and honest discussions about racism and its impact on the military.

What you will see is a bunch of ancient old men, who may or may not have seen combat, deciding if current serving officers with 30 or more years of service are too “woke.” Men and women who’s experience includes likely multiple tours of combat during the entire Global War on Terror and have navigated some of the most turbulent global and domestic times of our history.

The idea in itself is galling enough but what I want to discuss is the chilling effect it will have on junior ranks with this naked politicization of the military and how that will impact us for decades to come. You see, we learned after 9/11 that the decisions made in 1990 were impacting our ability to fight a war just a decade later and on for years to come.

The good ones leave

After Desert Storm the incentives to leave really ramped up. This 1993 article in the Chicago Tribune lays out the insane incentives the Army was offering officers to leave early before retirement.

Maj. Steve Barclay will leave the Army on Friday with a check for $72,000 to ease his transition to civilian life. He is one of about 26,000 officers and career sergeants encouraged to leave the military voluntarily under a new $750 million bonus program.

Some of his fellow officers won`t be so fortunate. The bonus program is the carrot to reduce the number of majors by about 800. The stick is the threat of forced separations.

Even though numerous messages were sent to field units, and generals were asked personally to encourage eligible officers to leave voluntarily, only about 600 majors signed up. In the first week of June the 200 holdouts will receive letters forcing them out as part of the Army`s RIF, or reduction in force.

These majors will leave with separation payments around $20,000 less than the bonuses paid to officers who end their service voluntarily, according to Army officials.

”The drawdown isn`t about quality, it`s about quantity,” said Lt. Col. Jean Thornton, a personnel manager at Army headquarters. ”We have got to reduce the officer corps 24,000 by 1995” (About 100,000 officers are in the Army.)

I want you to read that last paragraph carefully. “The drawdown isn’t about quality, it’s about quantity.” Those were Majors in 1993 with 17-18 years of service. If they had stayed in for another eight to ten years they would have been full Colonels or even Brigadier Generals in 2001 and Lt. Generals or even Generals in 2012 with 36 or more years of service.

Why do I mention that? Because everytime we bring up what Trump is talking about doing the MAGA talking point is that Obama did the SAME THING! You see the message they are supposed to use says that according to Breitbart in 2012, Obama had “fired” upwards of 197 general officers in his first term for not sticking to his Administration’s goals or being loyal.

Every time I post about it they like to throw an Opinion piece from the Editorial Board of International Business Daily (a right wing rag) citing Breitbart’s Facebook Page about how he was kicking them all out. It’s comically stupid but I kid you not…this is literally the middle paragraph:

“From Breitbart.com's Facebook page comes a list of at least 197 officers that have been relieved of duty by President Obama for a laundry list of reasons and sometimes with no reason given. Stated grounds range from "leaving blast doors on nukes open" to "loss of confidence in command ability" to "mishandling of funds" to "inappropriate relationships" to "gambling with counterfeit chips" to "inappropriate behavior" to "low morale in troops commanded."“

They are literally citing an article that says these general officers were fired from their commands and service for “gambling with counterfeit chips” and “inappropriate relationships” to attack President Obama. I wish I was making this up. I was still serving for part of Obama’s first term. We had an absolute rash of general officers and senior leaders getting in deep trouble with the military.

Obama had nothing to do with it.

The ultimate example is one I personally knew and was commissioned the same year as me in 1987. Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair who in 2012 was accused of sexual assault of a subordinate and abuse among other charges. As it turned out Sinclair had carried on an illegal affair with a female subordinate that had began as sexual innuendo, then gropings, and demands for oral sex.

He was relieved of his position and eventually demoted all the way down to Lt. Colonel, the last rank he had served honorably, and removed from the Army. That was not because he wouldn’t tow the party line. It was because his moral character failings finally were exposed. The President had nothing to do with it as the entire thing was handled by the military chain of command.

Then BG Sinclair at his Court Martial

Another huge issue at that time was the Navy’s Fat Leonard scandal. Where over 31 Navy leaders and officials were charged with crimes associated with a Thai contractor who bribed them with women, luxury vacations, and money to get tips on servicing Navy ships. Dozens of senior officers were caught up in it and lost their jobs and careers.

Don’t even get me started on Mike Flynn and his Islamophobia and obsession with women’s dress codes in his agency.

So, spare me the crying about “Obama did it too!” No, for reasons we had a batch of senior leaders that were not our best and brightest and it finally caught up to them.

Remember the 1990’s?

That takes us back to my story at the top. It was not about quality, it was about quantity. Many of our best and brightest saw the handwriting on the wall and got jobs on Wall Street, corporate America, or a flood that went to pharma who was hiring folks right and left as sales reps.

A lot of good folks stayed on. I would like to think I was one of them. I simply loved the Army. I was flying helicopters, traveling around the world, and had a nice secure life. I did leave briefly in 2000 and then returned after 9/11 to serve another 8 years.

Many of us cheered at that period where we finally saw toxic leaders, immoral behavior, and rank climbers finally get caught. Many of us had seen so many of these men and women climb the ranks in easy promotions because of the small number of officers that had stayed in. We saw truly toxic people ride their subordinates backs to success.

The officers that survived that period of scrutiny are often our three and four stars today. They have been through the ringer. So, this isn’t about war fighting capability or leadership. It’s about politics.

The danger is that those great young officers who will be generals in 20 years will see it and decide the juice isn’t worth the squeeze and leave now. We will have a brain and talent drain that will cost us not today perhaps but ten and twenty years from now in ways we can’t measure.

Just like decisions to push people out in 1993 led to a flood of truly rotten generals in 2010. The decision to punish good and decent leaders today over politics will push smart officers to seek greener pastures.

The nation will suffer.

So, we must fight this plan not just for today, but for the future of this nation.

But wait…

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the time I had to search the bodies of my soldiers for white supremacist tattoos because they were deemed unfit for service.

Funny thing how that relates now suddenly….