Leadership Under Fire

Who else would do this?

A dash of history brings us to the present

In Iraq in 2007, Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Mitchell Burghardt was called to the scene of a bombing that had killed four US troops. As he tried to disarm another explosive device, a watching enemy fighter detonated it, blowing GySgt Burghardt high into the air before depositing him into the dirt. As he lay there all he could think of was that he did not want to wind up like his father, who was a 3-purple heart Vietnam veteran who was paralyzed from the waist down. He describes what happened next:

They started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, ‘Good, I’m in business.’ ‘As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. ‘I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn’t going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher.’ He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute. ‘I flipped them one. It was like, ‘OK, I lost that round, but I’ll be back next week’.

GySgt Burghardt salutes the enemy

Now there is a man not to be messed with.

In my post of yesterday I compared President Trump’s reaction to his attempted assassination with that of a soldier under fire for the first time:

I think that every soldier who is facing fire for the first time thinks, “How will I perform? Will I acquit myself with honor?” Trump showed the world how he reacts under fire. After being shot, he got on his feet and launched a figurative counter-attack, fist in the air and exhorting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

I also should have drawn the comparison with GySgt Burghardt. Like Gunny Burghardt’s promise to “be back next week,” Trump was back the next day when he landed in Milwaukee for the GOP convention. And like Burghardt’s one-fingered defiance, the expression of rage on Trump’s face left no doubt that he was still in the fight, and he was angry.

Also not a man to be messed with.

The test of a man

One of my subscribers,

W Fleetwood

wanted to post a comment on yesterday’s article, but comments were limited to paid subscribers only. He told me that he thought his comment was important enough that he purchased a paid subscriptions just so that he could make it. I agree that he made a significant point, so here is what he said (with slight non-substantive edits):

Those of us who have been shot at always wonder how celebrity types would react under fire where we find out what you're made of, where we find out who you really are. Now, in the case of D. J. Trump we know.

Under fire, winged, facing the reaper eyeball to eyeball (And I say this as an absolute, unalloyed compliment.), he reacted like a damned Rhodesian! Stand straight up, face the enemy, and snarl at them! I have never been a "Trump guy" but I am now. Donald will do to ride the river with.

I think that the last sentence is a reference to an oft-repeated quote by Colonel Charlie Beckwith, the original founder and commander of Delta Force: “I’d rather go down the river with seven studs than a hundred shitheads.”

Commenter Fleetwood made an important point, and it was reinforced in a brief conversation I had yesterday with a soldier who has a tremendous amount of combat experience, much of it under close enemy fire. We were discussing the attempted assassination in general, and President Trump’s personal reaction in particular. His comments were right in the 10 X ring (to use a shooting metaphor).

He said, “You see what a person is made of and how they will perform when they come under fire. We have both seen people who freeze up or can’t perform when that happens. Others rise to the occasion. But you can’t fake it.” 

The soldier is correct — You can’t fake it. When Trump came up, face bloodied, fist in the air, and snarling “Fight!” people knew that they were seeing the real man and that he couldn’t possibly fake that.

Trump’s was the sort of instinctive response that could never be scripted after polling or testing with focus groups. No speech writer gave him a script. No advisor suggested that he should react forcefully and with undisguised anger, before allowing himself to be pushed off the stage by his Secret Service detail. That came from the core of the man.

What do Americans want in a President?

This morning, I saw Lawrence Jones interviewing a woman on Fox. He asked her what she thought of Trump’s reaction immediately after the shooting. This sixtyish year-old lady said that when she saw his reaction, she knew that we had a warrior and that he was going to fight for us. Thus, she summed up what many Americans are thinking.

Leadership by our president is important to all Americans, regardless of their party affiliation or preference. And I venture to say that it is important to people across the globe who value liberty and seek security. Toughness and the ability to confront risk and even life-threatening danger without shrinking from the fight are especially important when our president is dealing with foreign leaders. We want our allies to see this character in our president, but even more, we want our adversaries and enemies to understand that they are not dealing with some lightweight, that the President is not a man to be messed with.

Some other presidents have shown similar strength. Teddy Roosevelt demonstrated it when he was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin, but then continued with his address to the audience. Here is how the New York Times describes it

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” Roosevelt told the astonished crowd as he got started. “But it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!”

He apologized that as a result he might not be able to speak as long as normal — and then proceeded to give a 90-minute stemwinder. Only at that point did he agree to be taken to the hospital. The bullet had been headed straight for his heart before stopping, lodged against a rib four inches from the sternum.

After that, there could be no doubt (if there ever had been any) that Teddy Roosevelt was a man to be reckoned with. Or, as Charles DeGaulle would say, he was “a serious man.”

Until July 13, my favorite recent example of a demonstration of such strength by an American president was the story told by Texas Congressman Wesley Hunt on the Sage Steele Show.¹ Hunt, a West Point graduate and combat veteran, described a meeting between President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the leaders of the Taliban. Trump told them that he wanted American troops out of Afghanistan, but that it was going to be a phased withdrawal, “with conditions.” He then told the Taliban leader that if during the withdrawal they “harmed a single hair on the head of an American” he would kill him.

When the stunned translator hesitated, Trump said, “Tell him. Just tell him what I said.” After the translation, Trump them pulled out a satellite photo of the Taliban leader’s house, handed it to him and walked out of the room. It worked.

A serious man, indeed.

A parting question

I will leave you with this question: can anyone – anyone – conceive of Joe Biden (or any member of his cabinet for that matter) being wounded at a rally like Trump was and then getting to his feet, maintaining his awareness of where he was and what was happening, and then reacting the way that Trump did?

1. Sage Steele is a serious and courageous person in her own right, as is her father, an Army officer and my West Point classmate, Gary Steele.