No, Mr. Secretary, generals do not have civil service protection or tenure. They serve at the pleasure of the president.

And if you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.

Five of the ten living former Secretaries of Defense ratcheted up the warfare against President Trump when they signed what they called an “Appeal to Congress.”  The gist of their complaint is that they want to veto the President’s choice of his principal military advisor and other senior officers who serve at the pleasure of the President. They like their guys, and they don’t like the President’s choices. The conclusion that the five signers seek to foist on the American public is in their third paragraph: “We, like many Americans -- including many troops -- are therefore left to conclude that these leaders are being fired for purely partisan reasons.”

Their “Appeal” is nonsense, but dangerous nonsense. It combines historical ignorance with their own partisan attempt to attack President Trump in a way that would weaken civilian control. If their “Appeal” were granted, it also would further the politicization of the military by plunging Congress into disputes relating to military matters that the Constitution entrusts to the President.

The Five Resistors’ “Appeal to Congress”

“The Army is a dangerous instrument to play with.”

I shall begin at the end — with the rebellious former secretaries’ conclusion: They sum up by charging the members of Congress to “do their jobs” by “urging them to take George Washington's warning to heart.”

I wonder how many of the signers knew the historical background and significance of George Washington’s advice which they quote to close their Appeal: “The Army is a dangerous instrument to play with.” When he wrote that in February 1783, Washington was warning Hamilton against trying to use the military to further political ends and undercut civilian control of the military. It was one of Washington’s many affirmations of the necessity for civilian control of the military.

And if the President — any president — does not have the sole power to relieve senior military officials, and if he is required to report to both the House and the Senate to “justify each firing” as the Appeal advocates, then the president no longer has full control of his senior military officers or of the Army.

Washington’s warning fully supports civilian control over the military, including — especially — over those whom the signers refer to as “senior U.S. military leaders.” And our Constitution reposes that civilian control in only one man — the President. By trying to usurp this presidential control of the military, these former secretaries are attempting to weaken the bedrock principal that the military must be controlled by its civilian masters.

Thus, General Washington’s warning most certainly does not support these rebellious signers’ efforts to hamper civilian control over the military. Just the opposite; Washington refutes them.

Aside from this example of historical ignorance, there are many other reasons to repudiate the rebellious signers’ “Appeal.” Let us consider some of them.

More historical fiction

The Rebellious Five imply that the reliefs of the “senior U.S. military leaders” are highly unusual. The opening sentence of their “Appeal” announces that the signers are “deeply alarmed” by the dismissals. They are “reckless” and raise “troubling questions.” Most civilian readers likely would conclude that such dismissals rarely occur. In fact, in the history of the U.S. Army, replacement of generals has been rather common. At least it was common until Vietnam, and you know our won-loss record since then.

Firing general officers was relatively common during the Revolution, the Civil War, and World Wars I and II. In World War II out of 155 officers who served as division commanders (2-star generals) in combat, at least sixteen were relieved of their commands. There also were significant reliefs of generals who commanded Army corps (typically 3-stars).

Not all the firings were done by other generals. Until he finally settled on U.S. Grant, President Lincoln fired generals as if they were contestants on The Apprentice. He hired and then fired at least six commanders of the Army of the Potomac—Generals McDowell, McClellan (twice), Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade. Prior successes were not a vaccine against relief — Meade had been the victorious commander at Gettysburg.

And, of course, General MacArthur’s military record did not protect him from being summarily fired by President Truman because of his disagreements with the Truman administration’s policies.

In short, President Trump’s firing of these senior officers was not so unusual, much less unprecedented, as to demand a congressional investigation as the Rebellious Five would have us believe. And history has treated Truman well for his forceful affirmation of the principle of civilian control of even the highest commanders.

General C.Q. Brown, Jr.

General Brown is the only senior officer mentioned by name in the Appeal. The Rebellious Five wrote that he and the other unnamed senior officers were relieved despite their “exemplary operational and combat experience.” That may be true. It also is irrelevant. In a well-run military, prior exemplary service does not anoint a senior officer, even a general, with tenure. Nor should it.

As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Brown’s role was to be the principal military advisor to the President. He is responsible, among other things, for developing and executing doctrine governing training all the Nation’s military forces, and for preparing strategic plans for the employment of those forces across the world.

To accomplish those duties, as the President’s principal military advisor the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs must have an open relationship of mutual trust with the president that enables them both to function as a unified team. As Tom Ricks wrote in The Generals, “One of the few predictors of how well a war will go is the quality of discourse between civilian and military leaders.”

The failure that occurs when there is a lack of meaningful “discourse between civilian and military leaders” was blindingly obvious to Vietnam veterans who suffered, bled, and died due to a failed strategy when Lyndon Johnson did not conceal his disdain for advice from his senior military leaders.

But a degradation in the “quality of discourse” between President Trump and General Brown would have been inevitable. They had sharp, even irreconcilable differences on a fundamental issue for the military — DEI — including on matters such as racial discrimination and preferences in the military for recruiting, schooling (such as the Service Academies), promotions, command billets, and other key assignments.

President Trump’s views about DEI are well-known. General Brown, however, was “all-in” for DEI. Take a look at this Memorandum addressed to the Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Air Education and Training Command.

Under General Brown’s command the Air Force was to have a “goal” of limiting slots for new white male officers to 43% of the total. For all white people, 67.5%. Of course, they say that these were not quotas but were “aspirational” only. As a now-discredited former TV star used to say, Riiiight! And just to make sure that officers are tracking these “aspirations,” they were given less than two months to come up with a “diversity and inclusion outreach plan” showing how they will meet these non-quotas. And they were commanded to report on their progress yearly.

Anyone who has ever served in the military knows that when the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force state their “aspirations” and demand a written plan and regular reports, any officer who wants to have a career damn well better satisfy them. As a wise old sergeant counseled me many years ago, “When a general tells you that he would like such-and-such, it is not a preference, it is a command.”

It would have been a disservice both to President Trump and General Brown, as well as to the Country, for President Trump to retain General Brown as his principal military advisor when their views on the issues of racial discrimination and preferences were poles apart. President Trump did the right thing by affording him a gracious send-off:

I want to thank General Charles ‘CQ’ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family.

Is “exemplary operational and combat experience” a vaccine against relief from duty?

Another of the phony reasons that the Rebellious Five gave for their “deep alarm” and calls for a congressional investigation was that General Brown, and the other senior leaders had “exemplary operational and combat experience.” They say that this “make[s] clear that none of this was about warfighting.” What an absolute crock of . . . . No, let me rephrase that. The only conclusion that one can draw from this asinine statement is that the five signers are either dishonest or too dull to have ever been the Secretary of Defense.

I will give just one example. In World War II, at the conclusion of the battle for Sicily, the Commanding General of the 1st Infantry Division, the famous “Big Red One,” was Major General Terry de la Mesa Allen. By 1943, General Allen had one of the most distinguished combat records of any division commander in the U.S. Army. He had whipped the men of the Big Red One into a first-rate Nazi-killing machine. In August 1943, Allen led his division in the week-long battle for Troina, Sicily. None other than General Patton said Troina was the toughest fight of the Sicily campaign. But General Bradley relieved General Allen of his command shortly after his hard-fought victory. The reasons for Allen’s firing were never made completely clear.¹

But what is clear is that his “exemplary operational and combat experience” did not save General Allen from being fired. And, needless to say, there was no call for a congressional investigation.

Politics drives selective outrage.

Four of the Rebellious Five served as Secretary of Defense under Democrat Presidents Clinton (Perry), Obama (Panetta and Hagel), and Biden (Austin).² The number of senior Democratic loyalists who are unbiased about Donald Trump is approximately equal to the number of hens’ teeth in Waco, Texas. Surely, they aren’t the least bit biased or bearing some political grudge?

Given the faux outrage that the Rebellious Five project over the President’s desire to have senior military officers in whom he has total confidence, it is useful to reflect back on some of the things that did not cause these stalwarts to get their pantaloons in a wad and call for a congressional investigation.

• The Afghanistan withdrawal — Did the strategic disaster that resulted in a donation to the Taliban of billions of dollars’ worth of arms and equipment raise any “troubling questions” for these worthies? Did any of them call for the Secretary of Defense to be investigated over that farce? Of course not. The responsible SECDEF is one of the illustrious five signers of their Appeal.

• In their penultimate paragraph the Rebellious Five express their outrage that the military is being “distracted from its core mission of defending the nation.” We have seen that happen before but with an absence of outrage from our esteemed signers. None called for a congressional investigation when then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, bowed to a Biden order that required the DOD “to prioritize climate change in all our activities and incorporate its security implications into analysis as well as key strategy, planning, and programming documents.” “Prioritize.” Talk about being “distracted from its core mission of defending the nation!” What a bunch of phonies.³

• I don’t recall any of these luminaries demanding an investigation of the disgraced Mark Milley’s mutiny against the President when it was disclosed that Milley had instructed other officers to ignore a presidential order for a nuclear strike unless Milley OK’d it. Selective outrage indeed.

• DEI — Speaking of their claim that the firings have “distracted [the military] from its core mission of defending the nation,” did any of these stalwart patriots ever raise a single question about the readiness of the Army to accomplish its “core mission of defending the nation” when the Army was publicly fawning over this guy?

  

The military’s destructive DEI policies and their effect on recruiting, retention and morale never stirred any of these five worthies into action to petition Congress about it.

When I was researching the Big Red One for this article, I found more proof of the effectiveness of the DEI effect on the military. Judge for yourself:

Nota bene: Showing this collection of obviously unfit soldiers is not an effort to bash out-of-shape people generally. No one expects the average civilian worker to be able to excel or even pass a military PT test. But the patches on the left shoulders of these soldiers mark them as heirs to the Big Red Ones who stormed ashore on Omaha Beach and then continued to burnish their reputation in the blood-soaked jungles of Vietnam. We can be excused for looking at this photo and asking, “What happened?”

These are the guys I want fighting for us. How about you?

If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.

Bear with me while we engage in a short hypothetical here. Assume, dear reader, that you are a person with a national profile and reputation. You have been asked to sign an “Appeal to Congress” that is critical of the current president and that calls for a congressional investigation. It surely will be picked up by the national media. Because you agree with its thrust, you agree to sign the Appeal. Then you learn that one of your cosigners is the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.

What do you do? Do you sign the Appeal, knowing that you are thereby associating yourself with the Grand Wizard? Do you want those fleas?

I will not speculate about your answer. I think I know.

I now give you Leon Panetta, loyal to his own clan as David Duke was to his Klan.

Panetta was one of the most prominent of the Gang of 51 former intelligence officers who defrauded the Nation by publishing a letter to convince voters that Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” was a Russian plant, and that Trump was colluding with the Russians in such tactics. They were defrauding the American public. They did it because they wanted Biden to win.

You know the story: Panetta and the others published their fraudulent letter just three days before the Trump-Biden debate when Biden used it to support his lie that the laptop was not Hunter’s. Here is what Biden said during the debate about the New York Post laptop story:

There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except his good friend Rudy Giuliani.

Panetta was one of the leaders of the effort to arm Biden with this lie about Russian collusion. Studies have shown that the lie did swing the election in Biden’s favor. An astounding 71% of Democrats polled said that if they had known that the laptop contents were real and not “disinformation,” it would have changed their vote.

But it was later conclusively established, even by Biden’s own Department of Justice, that the laptop was Hunter’s and that its contents were real, not Russian disinformation. And even though the well-connected Panetta (who had a security clearance at the time) surely knew all this, he has never corrected or apologized for his election-rigging fraud.

Thus, the Gang of 51, with Panetta among its most prominent members, released their fraudulent letter, knew that Biden used it to his advantage during the debate (as they had intended), never corrected Biden, and never have apologized for their election-rigging that inflicted four years of Biden on the Country. Who has done more damage to the Nation, Leon Panetta or David Duke?

It’s not even a close call.

They all have fleas now.

1. General Allen was later given command of the 104th Infantry Division, which he led across France and into Germany.

2. The fifth, James Mattis, served under Trump, not a Democrat. He resigned in 2019 because he disagreed when Trump 45 announced that he wanted to withdraw troops from Syria.

3. Austin’s “Climate Adaptation Plan” and other DOD documents stressing the primacy of climate change in formulating military strategy have now been purged from the DOD web site, and a search for them returns only a “404” error message.