Purge at the Pentagon!
Purge at the Pentagon!
It's OK to Lose Wars, Not OK to be "Woke"
Purge at the Pentagon! Reuters reports that the incoming Trump administration is drawing up a list of generals to be fired. These are generals associated with former Chairman of the JCS Mark Milley and anyone else branded with a scarlet “W” for woke. The current Chairman, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, may also be fired, as some within the Trump camp suspect he may have been a DEI hire.
This is how Reuters put it: Hegseth [Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary] has also taken aim at Milley’s successor, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, asking whether he would have gotten the job if he were not Black.
“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt - which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” he wrote.
Ouch. It does indeed seem unfair to CQ.
Retired General Milley is no fan of Trump, having called the president “fascist to the core,” so it’s time for vengeance against him and his cohort. General Brown might be collateral damage, but of course the general, if purged, will find seven-figure salaries available to him on the industrial side of the military-industrial complex, so don’t cry for him too hard.
What’s amazing about all this is reason for the purge. Wokeness. Vengeance. Not military incompetence.
Think about it. The U.S. military lost in Vietnam. Lost in Iraq. Lost in Afghanistan. And no general was fired for cause. Sure, Obama dismissed General Stanley McChrystal in 2010, but that was because McChrystal was an idiot. The last general I can remember who was fired for just cause by a president exercising true authority was Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. That was over 70 years ago.
As Army officer Paul Yingling famously wrote (“A Failure in Generalship”), a private is severely punished for losing a rifle but generals get promoted for losing wars. I doubt this is going to change. Instead, under Trump it appears the firing of generals is another leg of his vengeance tour, a purge of those who are perceived as disloyal.
Back in March of 2016, I wrote Trump had disqualified himself for the position of commander-in-chief because he had no understanding of the U.S. Constitution. For Trump, laws, principles, integrity, and character are far less important than loyalty and obedience to Trump.
If the Trump administration does indeed pursue a Pentagon purge based on vengeance, a courageous and principled officer corps should resign en masse in protest against this usurpation of authority. I’m no fan of the generals, but firing them because they’re associated with “woke” (whatever that means) and/or Milley is a misuse of power.
If you want to fire generals, fire them because they’ve failed in their primary duties, not because they’re allegedly “woke.”
On March 2, 2020, the White House announced that President Donald Trump would nominate Brown to become the next Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, succeeding General David L. Goldfein.
Maybe Trump is in a delusional loop living The Apprentice, firing those he hired as Best for the Job?
When I first worked at a state university, I encountered the dual culture of promotion by the Peter Principle (as the Pentagon is on steroids) and complacency in accountability (which is pretty much the entire federal government). I was told too many times how it was impossible to fire state employees, and so as to “not make the situation worse,” annual performance reviews were an exercise in giving positive strokes to even the worst employees. Well, I studied the state laws and took on the establishment.
Being a disciple of a kind of Peter Drucker, I always believed as he put it, “Organizations exist to make people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”
Trump could learn something from that wise counsel. He, and too many operate in an opposite universe where the worst traits define them. Any gift they may have (or had) are lost in oblivion. (Think Bliken.)
Over the years, I did fire a few who just wouldn’t make any effort, but most, after a writeup or two leaving their situation unambiguous, got to doing their job or were moved into a job they were competent to do. I’m pretty sure on competency and accountability alone (rather than political payback), our bloated 4-stars would be whittled to nothing pretty quickly.