President Donald Trump has a disturbing way of talking about the U.S. military. Consider the following Trump quotation about the recent attack on US troops in Niger:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have generals that are great generals,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI gave them authority to do what\u2019s right so that we win. My generals and my military<\/em><\/strong>, they have decision-making ability. As far as the incident that we\u2019re talking about [in Niger], I\u2019ve been seeing it just like you\u2019ve been seeing it. I\u2019ve been getting reports.\u201d [emphasis added]<\/p>\n For Trump, it\u2019s not the American people\u2019s military, it\u2019s \u201cmy\u201d military. Generals are not Congressionally-appointed officers, they\u2019re \u201cmy\u201d generals. Trump has a fundamental misunderstanding of his role as commander-in-chief, as well as the role of the US military. He sees himself as the big boss of \u201chis\u201d military, with generals as his personal employees whom he can order around and fire at will.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And by “order around,” I mean the issuance of orders regardless of their legality, a point Trump made back in March of 2016, in response to a debate question<\/a> by Bret Baier:<\/p>\n BAIER: Mr. Trump, just yesterday, almost 100 foreign policy experts signed on to an open letter refusing to support you, saying your embracing expansive use of torture is inexcusable. General Michael Hayden, former CIA director, NSA director, and other experts have said that when you asked the US military to carry out some of your campaign promises, specifically targeting terrorists\u2019 families, and also the use of interrogation methods more extreme than waterboarding, the military will refuse because they\u2019ve been trained to turn down and refuse illegal orders.<\/em><\/p>\n So what would you do, as commander-in-chief, if the US military refused to carry out those orders?<\/em><\/p>\n TRUMP: They won\u2019t refuse. They\u2019re not going to refuse me<\/strong>. Believe me.<\/em><\/p>\n BAIER: But they\u2019re illegal.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n TRUMP: And – and – and – I\u2019m a leader. I\u2019m a leader. I\u2019ve always been a leader. I\u2019ve never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they\u2019re going to do it. That\u2019s what leadership is all about.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n As I wrote then<\/a>, Trump\u2019s fundamental misunderstanding of leadership, and especially his boasts about the military obeying his orders irrespective of their legality, disqualified him as a presidential candidate. Of course, Trump\u2019s dictatorial statements didn\u2019t deter his determined fans. Indeed, they elected him because they wanted a Strong Man, not because they feared one.<\/p>\n So here we are, with a dictator wannabe as president, treating the US military as if it\u2019s his personal Praetorian Guard<\/a>. If the Republic isn\u2019t dead, its heartbeat is fading fast. Meanwhile, the sordid and corrupt Empire of Trump \u2013 just by its endurance \u2013 grows ever stronger.<\/p>\n William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views<\/a>. He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu<\/a>. Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author’s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Donald Trump has a disturbing way of talking about the U.S. military. Consider the following Trump quotation about the recent attack on US troops in Niger: \u201cI have generals that are great generals,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI gave them authority to do what\u2019s right so that we win. My generals and my military, they have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-29903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29903"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29905,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29903\/revisions\/29905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29903"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=29903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}