On March 15, the defense secretary Pete Hegseth common Sensitive details on an imminent attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen – including timing and targets – on signal, an unusual commercial application. Monday, a journalist revealed He had been accidentally added to this group of signals. Since the days, the story has made snowball in the familiar game of Washington Blame, with many Democrats, including the representative Jason Crow of Colorado, invoke Hegseth to resign.
But put the policy aside and there is another much more important place than we should look: to our troops. They are they whose life is in danger by such recklessness, and they should have a place in this national conversation.
From our foundation, the military secret was the key to the national survival and the security of the soldiers. During the American Revolution, on December 23, 1776Just before a commitment to Trenton, General George Washington wrote to a subordinate on the imminent surprise attack: “For the love of the sky, keep this for you, because the discovery can be fatal towards us.” To strengthen feeling in the ranks, Washington ordered “A deep silence … on the pain of death.”
Two hundred and forty-eight years later, in this signal group cat, Hegseth echoes these concerns. “I will do our best to enforce 100% opsec”, he sent by sms More than a dozen administration members (and a journalist) via the Signal application on March 14. The abbreviation refers to “operational security”, the practice of keeping the mission secret so as not to compromise the troops involved. The same day, the Ministry of Defense would have warned the staff Do not use the signal because it is a target of Russian hacking.
Protecting the operational details is prudent, as the upheaval show after having become the public that Hegseth, the Vice-President and the other senior officials of the Trump administration were so negligent with military life. A retirement general of the war in Iraq common“My father was killed in prohibition of nocturnal trail on the Ho Chi Minh path”, and the defense secretary “published information that could have led directly to the death of an American fighter pilot”.
The defense secretary leads to the most deadly weapon in the world, with millions of armed staff members and hundreds of thousands of civilians in support. Many millions of veterans and retirees like me pray for the success of the one who occupies this office.
Directing the Pentagon is leading the largest organization of the planet. It is a great responsibility, perhaps too much for one person. Hegseth himself wrote a book The speech “Man in the Arena” by President Lionizing President Theodore Roosevelt, who includes the line: “There is no error without error.” For a defense secretary, errors are certain. Some are fatal.
The error here was to choose convenience rather than the protocol – or anarchy On responsibility – which has imposed additional risks on the troops facing the most difficult consequences.
The news full of hope is that Hegseth should be well placed to learn from the episode. His most recent book, “The War On Warriors”, repeatedly values the “normal guys”. He calls them his “key district” and affirms that “normal guys have always fought and won, our wars”. While some would write it differently – replace “ordinary people” with “normal guys” – his concern expressed for those of the ranks is perfect.
In addition, Hegseth was particularly difficult for those at the top. In the same book, he writes: “I heard him of all the soldiers with whom I spoke for this book, dozens and dozens. They do not agree on everything. But the only thing they agree on is that US military leaders have a problem of integrity and responsibility. ”
This is the difficult situation of Hegseth. He clearly cares about the troops. He clearly made a mistake. But now he is one of the American military leaders, and it is up to him to show the integrity and responsibility he has so recently requested. If he does not manage his next steps well, the chef who has asserted the strongest of the elimination of the Pentagon's standard doubles will establish a dangerous double standard.
Because everyone knows that any “normal guy” who did what Hegseth did would be immediately consequences. In fact, HegSeth subordinates launched a investigation On March 21, this promised if someone was judged “responsible for unauthorized disclosure”, the person “will be referred to the appropriate criminal law entity for criminal proceedings”.
Hegseth himself said in 2016Discussing the use by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton of a private messaging server: “Any security professional – military, government or other – would be dismissed on site for this type of driving and was prosecuted for being so reckless with this type of information.” However, the Attorney General said Thursday that there is is probably not an investigation in the violation of the administration of security protocols.
When the Secretary of Defense will not be held at the same level as colonels, captains and corporals in the chain of command, this is a problem. The morale of the troops draws directly. Although we have a measure for the confidence of the country's consumers, we do not do so for our confidence in national security. If we did, the latter could be To believe as much as the first. Without confidence, there is no desire to fight, and the Willingness to fight Maybe the most important factor in all fights.
This is what is at stake for Hegseth. President Trump may not relieve him, but troops may not venerate it – which is another kind of pentagon killing. In such a massive organization, the secretary can only really influence a small size of subordinates, and the only way to really make things work is to obtain the complete support of everyone by acting with integrity and demonstrating respect for the life of military personnel.
It's not just that. The result of this scandal must be much more than the simple modernization of “loose lips flow the ships” to “report the troops to kill”. Hegseth must learn – and go beyond to persuade millions of people he has changed. There is simply no other viable option in an organization that supports the world order and sovereignty of our nation.
The wild logic of military service is that we exchange lives for objectives. Sometimes these decisions are made and made in a few seconds. On November 13, 2010, then-LT. General John Kelly (and later the chief of staff of Trump) speech About the loss in 2008 of two navies in Iraq. The two were killed in a vehicle suicide attack while keeping their barracks. Miraculously, the detonation left a security camera intact that held a recording of the last six seconds of the navies while the vehicle roared towards them.
While others were running, like Kelly tell Recording has shown that the two navies “are never remote. They never even started to withdraw. They never even moved their weight. The feet apart from the width of the shoulder, they looked into the danger, pulling as quickly as they could work their weapons. ” Kelly continues: “The truck explodes. The camera becomes empty. The two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think of their families, their country, their flag or their lives or their death, but more than enough time for two very courageous young men to do their duty – in eternity. This is the kind of people who are around the world tonight – for you. ”.
Four days before delivering this speech, Kelly had lost his own son, killed in combat in Afghanistan.
The only thing, the only thing, these troops are asking for is that people in the direction deal with the sacrifices of these “ordinary people” with the greatest respect and never risk their lives unnecessarily.
Ml Cavanaugh is the author of the next book “The best scars victories: How you can be more than before. @Mlcavanaugh
