Bill McRaven Calls For a New President

Retired Admiral Bill McRaven, formerly commander of JSOC and later SOCOM, has penned a piece calling for the replacement of President Trump "the sooner, the better." I'm one of the kind of people he's trying to motivate, and he's speaking in language I understand. The argument has an unusual structure, one rarely seen in American politics.

The piece is fifteen paragraphs long. The first ten paragraphs are purely about honor, as are his last three. He lays out numerous examples framed around two specific recent events of men and women of honor showing honor to and for each other. Honor is indispensable to society and to politics, so this kind of argument is not out of place. Without honor, there is only power, and the direct exercise of power is expensive. Showing respect for each other and each other's interests lowers the cost of running a political system, and indeed a society. It allows us to accept that others may assume positions of power and authority, because we believe they will respect us enough not to use that power irresponsibly; and because a concern with being seen as worthy of honor by us will mean they behave honorably and respectably. They are and ought to be motivated by 'a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,' as the Declaration of Independence puts it. It is not for no reason that the Founders, who were concerned not only with 'lives and fortunes' but also 'sacred honor' built so successful a system of governance.

It is also unsurprising that a man whose life is built around honor would find Donald Trump especially objectionable. Trump is not concerned with the proprieties of honor at all. He uses the language and forms of honor to reward and punish, but without regard to whether the rewards or especially the punishments are merited. It is proper to regard him as ridiculous in this way -- just last week Jim Mattis drew a connection between the insults Trump had directed at him and those directed as Meryl Streep to declare himself 'the Meryl Streep of generals' -- but it is not completely our of line to feel this misuse of honor represents a dagger at the throat of basic social connections. McRaven's closing argument, in his last three paragraphs, suggest that our ability to maintain the military power that holds the order of the world together is fundamentally threatened by Donald Trump. His arguments as to why a disdain for promises and alliances and respect for the interests of allies are perfectly reasonable.

So thirteen of the fifteen paragraphs are places where McRaven and I share a basic worldview about the role of honor and its place in the world. It's really only parts of two paragraphs where we come apart, but those two are enough to call the whole thrust of his argument into question for me. They are these:
It is easy to destroy an organization if you have no appreciation for what makes that organization great. We are not the most powerful nation in the world because of our aircraft carriers, our economy, or our seat at the United Nations Security Council. We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.

But, if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice — what will happen to the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny or left abandoned by their failing states?
The problem with the first paragraph is the assumption that our power comes from "ideals of universal freedom and equality." It is true that many Americans believe that these are universal ideals. But ideals like 'equality' are not universally held, and the appeal to these things as if they were universals is a category error, as this essay explains in detail.

Category errors are very serious philosophical mistakes. McRaven is not a philosopher, and as the essay notes this error is extremely common among those we tend to name as our 'foreign policy elites.' Nevertheless this is an error of thought with severe consequences. It is one that has drawn us into wars, and could again, to fight for values that aren't even held by the people we think we are defending. The most prominent of the Kurdish fighting organizations, for example, are Communists. Communists don't believe in 'universal freedom,' and while they profess a view of 'equality,' they don't mean anything like what Americans do by the term. The idea is not that everyone is endowed equally with basic liberties, but that society should control everything in order to ensure something like an equal distribution of goods (or at least an equitable one, since those with greater needs might receive more; though in practice, the 'equities' somehow always align with closeness to the political elite). Such a state is in most respects aims at the opposite of our traditional notion of 'equality,' and is completely opposed to our ideal of freedom.

Which brings us to the second paragraph. The problem here is not an opposition to oppression, which is noble. It is the list of conflicts. American honor might compel us to do something to defend allies like the Kurds, but it cannot compel us to fight in South Sudan. Most Americans could probably identify that Sudan is a nation in Africa, but I'll bet you that the percentage who can tell you where the Rohingyas live is vanishingly small. Honor bonds are mutual relationships, not one-way duties of provision. The Kurds have one with us because they fought with us against a common enemy, and bore a lot of the burden of the fighting while we mostly provided fire and air support. Where no deep relationship with us exists, honor does not and cannot compel us to fight someone else's war. We might choose to do it, and think it worthy of honor that we chose to bear a burden we did not have to bear. Honor cannot compel us to do it. If they want an honor bond of the sort that would compel us to do it, well, formal alliances are negotiated formally, and usually between nations rather than between a nation and disfavored ethnic groups.

Meanwhile McRaven has omitted a significant honor concern that touches on this project of removing the president 'the sooner, the better.' The class of public servants, to include military servicemembers, is honor-bound to uphold the will of the American people. This will is expressed formally and permanently in the Constitution, and less formally and permanently in the elected government of the day. The current impeachment hearing (if it is that) was kicked off by a letter to Congress from an unnamed intelligence officer who has chosen to remain in the shadows rather than testify even incognito. The intelligence community has no constitutional standing even to exist, but it is legally bound to the Executive Branch, whose elected leader is a President of the United States. The State Department, similarly, is now a merely statuatory authority that is in open revolt against the Constitutional authority. The New York Times just ran an article openly praising "the deep state" for its attempt to resist and remove the elected leader of their branch of government.

McRaven must know that having military officials throw their weight behind the removal of the Constitutionally-named Commander in Chief would set an alarming precedent with echoes to ancient Rome. There is no guarantee that allowing the unelected bureaucracy or military replace the elected and Constitutional leadership would happen only once. It certainly cannot be said to be consistent with the honor owed to the Constitution or the constitutional structure to advocate for the bureaucrats to be allowed to override the election.

Now Congress has constitutional authority to remove the President if it chooses to do so, but it is supposed to be for 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' not because the President lacks honor. He does, I agree. That is a big problem, I agree. But the cost of removing a President outside the constitutional norms, at the behest of an unelected bureaucracy and even unnamed intelligence officers, is too high to be borne. There will be an election in a year and a week. If the American people want rid of him, they will have the chance to do it themselves.

20 comments:

  1. Well said. I agree with all of it. I would ALSO point out a categorical failure in McRaven to notice his blind spot in regards to honor when he neglects the oath he took to uphold and defend the Constitution. Deposing a sitting President outside of the Constitutionally mandated process is indeed a violation of that oath. Now, he IS honor bound to refuse any and all illegal orders issued by the CinC, but note that he makes no such accusation that illegal orders have been issued. I would submit that voicing the opinion that the President should be deposed is no violation of his oath (the same oath I took), but actually attempting to do so certainly would be.

    And what kind of honor do we ascribe to an oathbreaker?

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  2. The President is honoring as best he can his promise to America to get us out of endless wars.

    As for him having no honor we are in basic disagreement.

    He maneuvers, he misleads, he distracts.
    Well; he’s in politics. Shifting alliances and showmanship are part of statecraft. Most of his misdirection is aimed at enemies foreign and domestic. The domestic enemies are in open revolt and sedition since election night.
    If Trump weren’t apparently trying to win a civil war bloodlessly and by maneuver he wouldn’t have to constantly wrongfoot and confuse *his own rebellious executive branch*.

    He’s dishonorable when he betrays us.
    He hasn’t, to his cost. To his peril.

    As for Lucius Cornelious McRaven Cataline I took the same oath he did.

    If he thought Afghanistan was difficult wait until they try America on for size.

    *Chuckles in Pashto*

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  3. ...if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice....

    The subtext I see in this bit, possibly colored by my irritation at the subtext being overt text from Progressive-Democrats, is that if you don't care in the way I do, you don't care; if you don't help the weak that I designate and stand up against oppression and injustice that I define, then you don't help, and you refuse to stand at all.

    Never mind the need to prioritize the weak and the oppression and injustice that we do care about and help and stand against, even if we agreed up and down the line, since we cannot cover everyone, and the means and mechanisms of caring, helping, and standing necessarily vary across individuals.

    Eric Hines

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  4. If the President does not honor the electorate of the US, the rest of it is irrelevant in the extreme.

    As time goes on, it's more and more apparent that Eisenhower's grave warning was meant for these days.

    Parenthetically, if a Navy commander can't see to the training of boat-captains to prevent open-sea collisions, I suggest that his "honor" is in sore need of review.

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  5. Three points:

    1. "But, if we don’t care about our values, if we don’t care about duty and honor, if we don’t help the weak and stand up against oppression and injustice — what will happen to the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny or left abandoned by their failing states?"

    What about the Americans, sir? What about the TEA Party, financially attacked by the IRS, slandered by politicians and media and academia for trying to keep our nation from going broke? What about preserving an identity as Americans instead of warring ethnic and gender identity groups? What about teaching a sense of honor in our schools and universities instead of a sense of racial and sexual grievance? What about social, media, and political attacks on the police? On due process? On the idea of equality before the law? You seem to care much more for the Kurds than the Americans, sir.

    2. I understand you could not speak out during their administrations, but I would be more persuaded that your real concern was for honor if you called out Obama and Clinton, who clearly have no more sense of honor than Trump, and I would argue that they have less than he does.

    3. Finally, for what? You give no details as to what you believe Trump has done that merits removal. I would rather have 15 paragraphs about that than some questionable rhetoric about honor. If we are supposed to remove him simply because he has no sense of honor, then we should have removed Presidents Clinton and Obama as well, and Hilary Clinton should be in prison, probably along with a number of current and former FBI and intelligence officers who apparently think they are part of the Praetorian Guard.

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  6. " But ideals like 'equality' are not universally held, and the appeal to these things as if they were universals is a category error, as this essay explains in detail."

    Thanks for the link to that essay. It significantly changed my view of what happened & is happening there.

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  7. You’re welcome. That’s an essay I wish many more people would read.

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  8. “ He’s dishonorable when he betrays us. He hasn’t, to his cost. To his peril.“

    I don’t take him to be disloyal. Not to America; to his wife, to the people who work for him, to anyone who crosses him even momentarily no matter what he owes them. But I agree that he exhibits a kind of basic loyalty to the American project.

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  9. raven6:41 PM

    So he is engaged in a duplicitous power play orchestrated by my sworn enemies, those socialists who have openly admitted they want to kill me and mine. Deep state indeed. And I am to respect his honor? Was not the military supposed to serve the civilian gov? I feel sorry for the Kurds, and the Afghans, etc- I really do. But I feel more sorry for the thousands of dead we have lost, and the thousands more grievously wounded, in a misguided attempt to do "something"- that something has never really been explained. So we spend our lives and fortunes defending some ostensibly necessary far off sandbox and open our immediate border to the barbarians in the south.
    What about us?

    I do not trust him. The criminal corruption in DC is so widespread, so deep, as to defy description. My trust in the military goes about to company commander level- above that,
    it gets pretty thin. Too much politics.

    The most pertinent fact in this whole imbroglio is this-
    Donald Trump is the first non professional politician elected to President in the last hundred years. He is the first to truly not be one of them. That is why they are so shit-bird frightened of him.

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  10. ymarsakar10:34 PM

    Hey McRaven, do you even know the Deep State Alliance supports Trum? Nobody is getting rid of him, not even the Cabal, unless you literally go up to him and stab him in the heart or blow up the White House / Pentagon (again).

    Is this Admiral even in the loop and cleared for this intel? If not, he is wasting his time.



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  11. ymarsakar10:43 PM

    As time goes on, it's more and more apparent that Eisenhower's grave warning was meant for these days.

    The military industrial complex is composed of NASA (look up the background of Von Werner and other Nazis that founded NASA), various black ops agencies funded not by Congress but by the 2.1 trillion the Pentagon keeps losing, and various other organizations. There's even some magicians from JPL.

    This has to do with that incident where Eisenhower tried to inspect Grumm Lake, aka Area 51, and they told him he, as President of the USA, lacked the need to know and thus the clearance. Eisenhower responded "I have a few Army divisions I can use to "clear" your little problem". Approximately.

    When your so called Leader of the Free World, most powerful person on Earth, has to threaten his own subordinates to clear him to inspect a "not so secret base anymore".... you don't realize what situation your country is in if you think the Military Industrial Complex is just Lockheed and Martin.

    The level of technology they have developed is way beyond the F-35. And that's only the lower level classified material and clearances. It is not the highest level.

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  12. ymarsakar11:00 PM

    Mattis resigned last year after he and Trump butted heads over removing U.S. troops from Syria at the time.

    Oh, so I was correct that Mattis did tell Trum what would happen in Syria with or without US troops. And he got fired, haha.

    Trum didn't fire Comey and Mueller, because Trum needed to protect his friendship with Hillary and prevent her from going to jail. Because if she goes down... who knows what will happen to Trum's family clan. They might get JFKed soon after.

    This is the guy Americans rely on to fight the Deep State? Haha. Not even a joke.

    Besides, you don't need Trum to fight the Deep State. They are fighting themselves right now. Oh you don't know anything about? Sighs...

    The problem with military compartmentalization is that the right hand truly does not know what the left hand is doing. Or anything else really.

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  13. ymarsakar11:12 PM

    President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others — who, from within the bowels of this corrupt and corrupting administration, have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.

    no, no, no, New York Times. Your BOSSES are the Cabal. GET THAT STRAIGHT, For once, God..... sighs.

    Those aren't the Deep State. Those are cannonfodder. Cannonfodder ok.

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  14. Echoing Tom, i would say that McRaven makes a decent enough theoretical case about honor, but does not connect it solidly to Donald Trump. We can intuit some of what he thinks is dishonorable about the current president, but he doesn't actually make the case.

    What we would need to know is not just "is there something dishonorable about Mr Trump," but whether it it significantly exceeds the usual for presidents, and who or what the alternatives are.

    I would add that the definitions of "honor" may not be the same to all parties here, and that may matter. Some people consider it dishonorable to insult a subordinate, but some professions - doctors, drill instructors, coaches, business owners - have more tolerance for this.

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  15. "But I agree that he exhibits a kind of basic loyalty to the American project."

    Robert Avrech, who is that rare thing, a conservative in Hollywood (he is an Emmy-award-winning screenwriter) referred to Trump simply as "a quirky man who loves America."

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  16. *cough*

    Given today's events--the Russian-brokered standoff between the Turks, Syria, and the Kurds--are we to understand "honor" as Einstein defined "insanity": continuing to do the same thing with expectation of different results?

    Perhaps McRaven should learn what others have figured out: Trump's strategies are VERY advanced. Results come in late, but come in the way he prefers.

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  17. Ymar Sakar8:05 PM

    Trum is backed by both celestial mars energy fate and the ds alliance. As i may have wrote here, no need to worry about the kurds. They will be taken care of one way or another. Thousands of years fighting turks. One american backstab is not enuf. They are not arvn.

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  18. "I don’t take him to be disloyal. Not to America; to his wife, to the people who work for him, to anyone who crosses him even momentarily no matter what he owes them. But I agree that he exhibits a kind of basic loyalty to the American project."

    Should we dare really ask any more of a politician?

    Appearances are important, but not, for instance, in the middle of a battle. Politics is warfare by other means. Perhaps the idea that it should be a 'polite' venue, and not a bruising arena is worth questioning.

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  19. Where no deep relationship with us exists, honor does not and cannot compel us to fight someone else's war. We might choose to do it, and think it worthy of honor that we chose to bear a burden we did not have to bear. Honor cannot compel us to do it.

    That's because if you are compelled to do something because other people will say that you are honorable because of your actions, you are not acting honorably but are in fact virtue-signaling. Your goal is not the task but to find the cheapest way possible to get a good reaction.

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  20. Perhaps the idea that it should be a 'polite' venue, and not a bruising arena is worth questioning.

    It's already been thrown into a cocked hat. See all the ad hominem smears that have gone down over the last several years--beginning most obviously with Tea Partiers as tea baggers, and continuing through the Republican Party being a Trump personality cult, Trump supporters being racists, and Michael Moore's latest slur.

    War is war, and it's bloody and messy, no matter the nature of the battle.

    Eric Hines

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