Donald Trump’s Coming Clash With the Military Generals

Why some of the candidate’s words jar those in uniform

To most Americans, the U.S. military may as well be a foreign country. Only 1% of the nation’s citizens have served in uniform since the 9/11 terror attacks 15 years ago Sunday, where many of them waged two wars. Those who did serve internalized a set of customs, rituals and traditions distinct from the rest of the country.

It is Donald Trump’s obliviousness to that distinction that upsets many who wear a uniform. Trump polls well among veterans as a whole, since they are more likely than the rest of the electorate to be older, white and male. But his support seems to wane among those who have made the military a career, especially officers who have commanded at the highest levels. They are the ones who serve as that delicate synapse between young Americans willing to die for their country, and the elected leaders who order them to be ready to do so.

Trump says he knows more about ISIS than the
generals do .. ha...hahaha ..ha ...hahaha..haha

Some of Trump’s first shots heard around the Pentagon’s E-ring were more tone-deaf than anything else. He called the Navy pilot-turned-Arizona-GOP-senator John McCain “not a war hero” for being captured in Vietnam. He disparaged the sacrifice of a Gold Star family who lost their son in Iraq. At one point in the campaign, he suggested committing war crimes, like targeting the families of Islamic State terrorists. Others were falsehoods. “I know more about ISIS than the generals do,” he declared last November. “Believe me.”

More recently, he has betrayed an ignorance of the checks and balances that guide, and limit, an American president’s control of the U.S. military. “Mr. Trump does not seem to realize that active-duty generals are long-serving, apolitical professionals who do not belong to any one Administration or President,” says David Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded all U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. “On January 20th, there won’t be any Trump generals or Clinton generals. There will only be America’s generals, no different than today.”

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