Who Really Politicized the Pentagon?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Is the era of rounding up government or academic “experts” to declare their support or opposition to ongoing controversies over?

Recall the 1,200 partisan healthcare “professionals” of June 2020 who flipped to assure us that it was mysteriously now medically OK to break quarantines—but only if to publicly protest during the post-George Floyd unrest.

In 2021, “Seventeen recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences” assured there would follow no inflation from the Biden administration’s massive borrowing and spending.

Most recently, five former Secretaries of Defense—William Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, and Lloyd Austin—co-authored a public letter to Congress. They blasted the Trump administration’s dismissals from command of several generals—including the current chairman of the joint chiefs, General C. Q. Brown Jr.

Oversight of anything in government is always welcomed. But there are a number of inconsistencies in the letter that unfortunately diminish the force of its argument.

Consider just one recent pre-Trump presidency—the tenure of Barack Obama. He fired Gen. David McKiernan as commander of all American troops in Afghanistan. And he did so without much explanation.

Obama then fired his replacement Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Obama also dismissed, arguably quite unfairly, one of the signees of the current letter, Gen. James Mattis, from his directorship of U.S. Central Command—without any coherent or convincing explanation.

Obama, for reasons both good and bad, also approved the firings of Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette, an aircraft carrier group commander. The list of Obama’s dismissals goes on and on: Air Force Major Michael Carey, Vice Adm. Tim Giardina—and most controversially Army Gen. Michael Flynn who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014

So, for example, is the political firing of appointees to non-partisan defense advisory boards. President Biden fired 18 such nonpartisan appointees to service academy boards—without explanation. President Obama, upon entering the White House, fired almost the entire board of the nonpartisan American Battle Monuments Commission without cause—and replaced them with ideologically akin appointees.

The Pentagon in the past was not always completely candid about either shortfalls in recruitment or the reasons for such reduced signups. Some would argue that it was near suicidal to drum out some 8,500 veteran officers and enlisted men for refusing the COVID-19 vaccinations, the vast majority of whom had acquired natural immunity from the virus. Now the military concedes they are sorely needed and is inviting them to reenlist.

One likely explanation is that they apparently felt that inordinate political Pentagon DEI emphases and public congressional commentary from Pentagon brass about supposed endemic “white privilege” or purported racist cabals were aimed at them. In 2021, Secretary of Defense Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Milley seemed to weigh in before Congress on highly political and polarizing matters of critical race theory—even connecting the January 6 demonstrations to supposed “whiteness”, opining on “white rage,” and recommending the controversial racialist works of Ibram X. Kendi.

Third, the Pentagon over the last four years does need a shake-up, given the humiliation in Afghanistan, the greatest disaster in a half-century since the 1975 flight from the embassy roof in Saigon. Confusion reigned over the Chinese military and likely spy balloon that nearly traversed the continental U.S. with impunity. The U.S. failed to respond promptly and disproportionally to several Iranian-connected terrorist attacks on U.S. military installations in Iran, Jordan, and Syria. And the Houthis brazenly disrupted Red Sea international maritime traffic with near exemption for months.

Recruitment until recently was stagnant. Stockpiles of key munitions were dangerously low. And the U.S. had not found any strategic resolution after interventions in Afghanistan, Syria, or Libya.

Fourth, over the last decade there have been flurries of all sorts of professionals’ letters—from military, economic, and political “experts” decrying the particular policies of the administration in power. Most do not resonate since many of their criticisms would be equally applicable to other administrations of the opposite party and thus fairly or not, are deemed political.

The recent past Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, contrary to the law, inserted himself into the chain of command. He quite improperly contacted his Chinese military counterpart to warn him about a supposedly dangerously erratic President Trump. And in recent retirement, he claimed the ex-president—and now current president—was a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous man to the country.” That seems a fairly politicized thing to do.

It had none.

Remember, the partisan letter was solicited by Biden campaign advisor Antony Blinken, soon-to-be-secretary of state, to arm candidate Biden in the upcoming and last debate of 2020 with some sort of defense against the incriminating contents of the laptop.

Because the letter was timed to the final 2020 debate in the last weeks of the election, and because it was known at the time to be patently false, but passed off by Biden as authenticated by “authorities”, it may well have played a pivotal role in determining the outcome.

The point is not to criticize the critics, but rather to bring some humility into the conversation that the firings of defense secretaries, high-ranking military officers, and appointees to military advisory boards predated Donald Trump, as did the politicalization of the military.

Whether that proves an accurate diagnosis can be adjudicated in the upcoming months by a number of barometers:

Will current restorative surges in recruitment be sustained and more than meet formerly unmet targeted enlistments?

Will currently envisioned defense cuts target the unnecessary programs that hamper battle efficacy or instead harm operational ability?

Will lost deterrence return to the U.S?

Will the Pentagon procurement pivot from traditional military systems and platforms, following lessons in the Middle East and Ukraine, in order to emphasize drones, and cheaper and more numerous munitions?

And lastly and most importantly, will the generals who replaced those fired prove more adroit in defending U.S. interests and less political—or less so?

The realities that follow from these firings, not necessarily the firings themselves, or the anger at them, will answer those questions.

First published in American Greatness