Initially the president packed his administration with military officers. He has since broken with the men he once called 'my generals'
began his term by packing his administration with military officers. Since then he has broken with the men he once called “my generals”. On November 15th Donald Trump pardoned two soldiers accused of war crimes and reversed the demotion of Eddie Gallagher, a Navyconvicted in a military court of posing with a dead captive. When the navy sought to remove Mr Gallagher’s Trident pin, which marks outs, Mr Trump ordered that he be allowed to keep it.
“Populism laps at the edges of military professionalism,” notes Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University. And so it has proved, with the president’s involvement in Mr Gallagher’s case being merely the latest example. Mr Trump’s request for a grand military parade in Washington was widely viewed as a political stunt. In December 2018 he delivered a brazenly partisan speech to American troops in Iraq.
Mr McRaven’s willingness to do what Mr Mattis and Mr McMaster would not—mount an attack on the moral fitness of the president using the authority of their former uniforms—was cheered by the president’s critics. But it reflects a trend that many experts in civil-military relations find troubling: an increasing role for senior retired officers in electoral politics.
What connects these threads is the unique popularity of the American armed forces. A Pew survey published in July showed that they were one of the most trusted groups in the country, second only to scientists: 83% of people expressed confidence in the armed forces, above public schools , police officers or dastardly journalists .
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