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Former General: Hegseth’s Loyalty Tests Are Paralyzing Military Promotions | Command Post
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A
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B
I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark.
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C
And I'm Mark Hertling, a Bulwark contributor. And with Ben, we're also the folks who are giving you Command Post every Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. So thank you for joining us.
- [02:08]
B
Yeah, thanks for joining us. If you are new to the Bulwark Takes feed where you're probably finding this video. Make sure to check out the other videos in the channel. I'm sure there's a lot more you're going to like, including our weekly Command Post episodes and a bunch more other stuff. So be sure to like the video. Subscribe talk in the comments. And you can find more of this kind of stuff@the bulwark.com I should note, as you mentioned, we are recording this on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 18th. So we are watching very closely. If there's going to be a bunch of news about Iran in the near future, we're not going to be talking that today. We have a bunch of other stuff to talk about, like the secretary of defense getting involved in hiring decisions of senior officers. We we've got news about Kristi Noem. We've got some cleanup from the Munich security conference. But if there is news about Iran, come back here. We will definitely talk about it.
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C
Yeah, a bunch of things to talk about today. And that's why I mentioned the Wednesday afternoon taping, Ben, because it seems every week when we tape on Wednesday, by Thursday morning when this comes out, there's like five more stories breaking. So we're never catching up. But we'll continue to talk about all things military. Plus, I think today we're going to have a bunch of questions toward the end. Is that right?
- [03:22]
B
I know we have at least one listener question we're going to incorporate. So stay tuned for that and please do send us your questions. First thing we're going to talk about, you published an article in the Bulwark America's Generals Shouldn't Face Political Loyalty tests. You read about this report first from a FOX News reporter and then later confirmed by a few other places that the list of army officers to be promoted from colonel to brigadier general has been held up for months, reportedly because Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth personally instructed the secretary of the army not to approve the list because of one guy. One guy, allegedly a Colonel Dave Butler, who Secretary Hegseth, his apparent objection is that Colonel Butler used to serve under someone Hegseth doesn't like. Can you break down for us how this process works, what is going on and how normal or abnormal this is?
- [04:23]
C
Yeah, it's very abnormal. Although holds are placed on general officer promotion list multiple times, I've had good friends put on hold because of things that people were investigating. One guy had when he was a young captain, a DUI as an example that didn't come out until something called a post board scrub. Another commander, a colonel, was held off the brigadier general list that I know a dear friend of mine because of something one of his soldiers did in combat and a senator was holding him accountable for that. But I think what we ought to talk about very quickly, Ben, first is how do generals get promoted? How do Colonels become generals. It is an interesting process because there are literally a couple of thousand colonels, and every year the army picks. The Army, I'm talking specifically picks somewhere around 30. It can be as many as 33 or 30 or as few as 28. But the reason that number stays the same is that's how many other generals leave the service through retirement or, you know, death or whatever during a normal year. So they're replaced. And the number of generals in the army is capped by Congressional authorization. So you can't have more than what you're authorized. But the process itself is fascinating. And most Americans don't know. I've sat on a couple of general officer promotion boards, one to brigadier general, another one to two star generals. You usually get 18 officers who are senior to the. To the rank that you're selecting in a room, and they look at a person's file, all 18 of them, and then they conduct a secret vote. They have a conversation after looking at the individual's picture, and they say, here are the people we think are best serving the service right now and have the potential to serve at the strategic level of the military when you're a general officer. So it is a very dynamic and fascinating and extremely fair process to select these individuals that are then passed along to the civilian authorities in the Secretary of the army, the Secretary of Defense, who then hands the completed list to the President, the President sends it to Congress, Congress approves it. That's how it works. So it still maintains civilian control over the Army. What we're talking about in this case is one individual, as you said, Colonel Dave Butler, who is a unique specialty in the military. He was an infantry officer at his earlier years, but he since specialized in being a public affairs officer, which means he's the Army's communicator. And in the case of public affairs officers, there's one general in the Army. So this guy competes with all the rest of the men and women who are public affairs officers to get that general or colonels to get that general officer rank. So it's really strange that one individual like this would be pulled out with no reason given. And the Department of Defense had been asked, why are we pulling him or why are we blocking from the list this individual? And the answer has been a little bit fuzzy. They haven't said why, other than the fact that the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, told the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, to pull him off the list because of his past actions serving under General Mark Milley.
- [07:48]
B
Yeah, and it doesn't appear from the reporting to be that he did anything specifically in that service. It's just that President Trump doesn't like General Milley because General Milley opposed some of what President Trump wanted to do with the military after the 2020 election and for a few other reasons. Millie was Trump's choice to serve as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in his first term. In fact, Trump decided not to choose the recommendation from the Secretary of Defense and chose Millie instead. Then Trump soured on Millie. This guy happened, this guy, Colonel Butler, happened to have been ordered to work for Millie. That was his job. And he did that. And now it's coming back to bite him because they said, oh, well, we don't like Millie. So we don't like anyone who is associated with Millie, voluntarily or not. So tell us more about, like, this guy was just following his orders, right?
- [08:37]
C
Yeah, he was. He was assigned to a duty assignment. That's what people do in the military. You're told where to go, what to do. Here's your next duty assignment. And if you look at Colonel Dave Butler's career, and I have some of the things he did, he was a command public affairs officer for some of the, the most effective units in the military. And he's done a phenomenal job throughout his career. He's worked for special operations, he's worked for units that are in conventional operations. He's polished his skills in a variety of schools and assignments where he is actually far exceeded his peers in terms of his knowledge and his ability to communicate. But as you said, he was the chief communicator. He was the spokesman for the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Milley, when he later became the Chairman of the Joint Staff. As you said, President Trump picked him when another one, another officer was tasked, recommended, excuse me, I should say by the secretary, by the Secretary of Defense at the time, General Mattis. So Milley was a selection by Trump and then suddenly, like you said, he went sour on him. And, and it seems like everyone associated with him has been slammed by Hegseth. This isn't the first one, by the way. Another officer that was asked to retire was Lt. Gen. D.A. sims, who was actually up for promotion to four star. And yet he was found to be connected with General Milley and he was told to retire. It was time for him to leave the service. Now, Ben, I've got to caveat all this by saying we may not know the rest of the story. There may be more to this, but if there were, I would Think the Secretary of Defense and his spokesperson Sean Parnell would provide a little bit more information, such as, hey, the secretary has lost confidence in Colonel Butler or General Sims, but they haven't done that. And it's obvious what is going on. And the result is it sends a chill through the rest of the officers corps to basically keep your head down and don't make waves and be careful who you work for. Which is the most, you know, truly terrifying part of this whole thing.
- [10:59]
B
Yeah. So for those who aren't aware, the way it works in the military for officers is essentially that you are always competing either to be promoted or to get kicked out, essentially. I mean, you can get several. In some positions, you can get several tours in a row at the same rank. But, you know, as you go from second lieutenant up to general, the pyramid just gets steeper and steeper. So, you know, as officers are thinking about, you know, am I going to make captain, am I going to make major, am I going to make colonel, Am I going to still have a job? What is it? I mean, what happens to that? The whole core of officers, as they're watching someone get singled out because, hey, you worked for a guy who we once liked and now don't.
- [11:37]
C
Well, you know, what I should cite is probably the army values. There's two specifically that should be questioned regarding this whole issue. There's seven army values. Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. Those are driven into soldiers throughout their career. So the two that are fascinating are the duty concept, do what's right, do the things that you're asked to do it the best possible way you can do them. And the other one is personal courage. Speak up when you have to counter and perhaps disagree with your authorities to get the best solution set. So when you've got this kind of a chill, as I said before falling over the officer corps, where they don't feel like they can speak up or they can't perform their duties when they're assigned because they may be assigned to an individual that someone in the administration or a political master doesn't like. Again, it's debilitating for the professionalism of the force.
- [12:45]
B
Yeah. You mentioned the process at the very beginning of how generals are chosen. And you mentioned that balance of how you want officers to be professionals. Right. Just like a doctor or a lawyer. You don't want someone who's necessarily going to tell you what you want to hear. You want them to be expert in the thing that they are expert at, even while the civilians are ultimately in charge. Which gets to this listener question from Jeremy Bates. Thank you, Jeremy. General's questions for you. He says, what is your assessment of the integrity of the current high level military leadership? Has the administration being able to replace the officers that were there, replace principled leaders with less principled leaders, and can we trust the senior leadership of the military to uphold their oath if they're given clearly illegal or unconstitutional orders?
- [13:30]
C
Well, I'll answer the last part of that question first, Ben, and say that I firmly believe that officers will uphold their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign, domestic, and the rest of the oath that I could recite for you, but I won't. So I'm fully of the belief that officers will continue to execute their oath, obey only lawful orders and make sure they push back against unlawful ones and, and make sure they're taking care of their soldiers and accomplishing the mission in the best way possible. The problem is in the first part of the question and it gets back to the word I used before chilling. Are officers now intimidated by their civilian masters? Are they concerned about how they are going to be perceived? And even to the point, are they concerned about who they are serving alongside or what connections they have had in the past? I have heard many senior officers saying that they're very concerned about the potential of their past connections, even before the Trump days, to other officers, just because they work for them. And that to me is very damaging to the profession of arms because you shouldn't be worried about who you work for, you should be worried about how well you perform your duties.
- [14:54]
B
Yeah. We're going to move on in just a second to another topic concerning leadership. But the subtitle of the article you published at the Bulwark is Keeping Politics out of the Military is what keeps the military out of politics. This is what we should all, in the long term, be concerned about. When the military swears an oath to the Constitution and can trust that it is a professional organization that doesn't have a partisan leaning one way or the other, that it's just focused on defending the country. Right. And they obey the leadership, the civilian leadership, because that's what their job is. Once the administration goes in and starts saying, actually we want the military to reflect a certain type of politics, that doesn't just make the military a tool of politics, it also makes the military a participant in politics. And in a democratic country where you want the citizens to be in charge and not the people with the guns, in the long term, it's a very dangerous thing because once you politicize the military, they get to start expressing their opinions. And when the military has all the power, well, I mean to get right down to it, that's the reason we fought a revolution 250 years ago.
- [15:57]
C
The other thing I'd say too, because you brought up some really great points and I think I probably should state this. I write a lot about what goes on in the military, but most of my writings and our speakings on command post in another forum are about what's right. What have I seen, what analysis have I'm conducting that will benefit the nation and give the best results and what kinds of things are happening in strategy that I've seen fail in the past or succeed. But the more important thing is during my four decades long career wearing the uniform, I worked for both Republicans and Democrats. And I never questioned that before. And in fact some of the Republicans I worked for were much better than some of the, some of a few of the Democrats. And what I'd say is if I'm switching tides as a, as a guardian of our nation's security, depending on political input, boy, I'm not a profession at all. I am not a professional at that point. I have now become a political hack. And that's something we don't want. The men and women who are wearing the uniform and who are speaking out are saying this just isn't right. It's not what we do. Like we saw in a couple of occasions when soldiers were behind the President and cheering. That is first of all against regulations. And it's something that leaders in the military should warn their soldiers against because then you lose trust from the American people. Because half of America is red, half of America is blue. And the military serves both half. And so should the politicians. They should not be put in a position, the military should not be put in a position where they're asked to serve one side or the other.
- [17:47]
B
So speaking of leadership, which we've been talking about, we have to talk about the story that just came out from NBC about Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. I'm going to summarize here, this is from the early days of her stint as secretary. 23 year old Kosti had fallen overboard from the Coast Guard Qatar Weishi and there was a huge search and rescue effort. Search and rescue is one of the things the Coast Guard specializes in. So they surged aircraft, I mean helicopters, airplanes, more ships out to the Pacific to look for this Coastie who had volunteered to serve the country had put their hand up, sworn note The Constitution and the Coast Guard rallied to try to find and save this person. Kristi Noem found out about this effort. She found out that one of the airplanes they were using to try to search for this person was otherwise scheduled to be conducting deportation flights or assisting in the mass deportations. And so she ordered them to stop searching for this overboard coasty and to return back to conduct deportation flights. So the Coast Guard was able eventually to find other ways of replacing the aircraft. And they said ultimately they unfortunately did not find this young person who was never found, a presumed loss at sea. They said ultimately it probably didn't make a difference in the search and rescue. But still, the effect of saying, I care more about shipping people out of the country than I do about trying to save the life of someone who swore to protect the country, I mean, that just says volumes. And you, you know, you've led people who took that oath, who put their lives on the line for the country. What does that say to you, Ben?
- [19:27]
C
What I'll tell you is what harkens back. I don't know what the decision process was by the Secretary of Homeland Security, but I will say that one of the key elements of being a military person and wearing the uniform of our country is we will never leave a fallen comrade. So when you lose someone at sea or you lose someone in combat, and I've experienced that kind of experiences before, where you have to find that individual who's been taken a POW or has been killed and you haven't recovered their remains, you do everything in your power to find that individual first, it becomes a priority mission. Now, what we don't know is what were the competing demands for equipment? Why did Secretary Noem redirect this airplane from the search and rescue mission to somewhere else? Could it be complemented by other type of aircrafts? If you need that specific C130 because of its capacity and its effect, we don't know. But the optics sure are bad. And they go to something we call toxic leadership. There is formal leadership, informal leadership, and toxic leadership where we're asking people to do things not for the greater good of the country or for the men and women that stand beside them. We're doing it because we want that to happen. And in this case, it really seems, or at least the messaging seems, that Secretary Noem wanted something that she thought was a higher priority without consideration of never leaving a fallen comrade.
- [21:09]
B
Yeah, I don't think there's a. A huge amount more to say about this story other than I really feel for the family of that person who has probably heard about this story by now because, I mean, how are you supposed to feel your loved one, right, goes and, and embarks in this honorable career to serve the country and the leadership. Again, we don't know all the details, but from what this NBC report says, it sounds like really just turn their back on. Turn their back on them.
- [21:38]
C
And we have to ask the question, would that C130 staying on station had made, would it have made a difference? Could it have seen the, the sailor, the Coasty that was overboard? We don't know that. And that will always be the, the thing that strikes me of, sure, you can replace airplanes or you can pull airplanes off station, but if that particular aircraft might have been the one that saw that Coastie, then it wasn't worth it to pull it off duty station at that point.
- [22:09]
B
Yeah, unfortunately, we will never know. The last thing we have to talk about here is that you also wrote about the recently concluded Munich security conference. You wrote there was a lot of attention paid to Marco Rubio's speech. He was sort of the primary representative of the Trump administration at this major international conference about diplomacy and military affairs. You paid attention to a couple other things, too, that I think we should dig in about. Your article on the bulwark is called Europe is America's Secret Weapon, and we're giving it up. And, and I this is an angle that I don't think anyone else had pointed out. It wasn't just that Rubio was there, it was that Secretary Hegseth wasn't, and under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby was. So let's start there and say in a, in a situation where diplomacy and subtle messaging is everything, what does it say about who we sent, who we, who the Trump administration sent to this conference?
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C
Well, first, I ought to say the Munich Security Conference is a place I'd been a couple of times, and it is a forum there. There are no documents signed. There's no new deals made. It's just Wolfgang Ischinger, who's an ambassador, a German ambassador, set this conference up to really put forth competing ideas. But in every conference I've ever seen, other than the last year, the Secretary of defense of the United States has always been there. Sometimes the secretary of state goes, sometimes the vice president goes. So it's as much about the message as it is about who's sending the message. And when you're talking about a security conference, one would think that our secretary of defense, who's sort of in charge of security from a military Perspective would want to be there. And so are all the ministers of defenses from the various countries that go even from outside the European area. So it's a fascinating conversation. But what's interesting is both Secretary Rubio is the State Department chief and Undersecretary Colby talked primarily about the national security strategy and the national defense strategy and how much it has changed. Now, there were some commentary about how some people rose in the audience and gave them a standing ovation. We don't know who those people were. It probably wasn't everyone, because it's a packed ballroom where they hold this thing. But it was a reiteration of some things, like allies have to carry the load, and we are no longer going to support people as we supported them in the past. And there were some, you know, quite frankly, I don't want to say lies, but untruthful statements made by both Secretary Rubio and Under Secretary Colby having to do with how much European nations spend. And I got to tell you, this has become a talking point that Trump has allowed countries to donate 5% of their GDP to defense matters. That is not true. There is not a single nation that has 5% of their GDP going to defense spending. The highest one is including the United States.
- [25:23]
B
Including the United States.
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C
Including the. In fact, United States is somewhere in the middle to the bottom third of those who contribute amount of money. We contribute about 3.2, 3.3% of our GDP, and yet President Trump is telling everybody else to contribute 5% of their GDP. It just doesn't make sense. It's a talking point. That is false, and I think we have to point that out.
- [25:49]
B
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. You mentioned Poland. Poland got a little bit close. They got like, around to four and a half percent. We're nowhere near that. And neither is anyone else in NATO. But this is the really important point I think you made, which is the message that Rubio and Colby were sending was, hey, Europe, you can't free ride on us anymore. You're going to have to carry some weight. We're not going to solve everything for you. We're not. We're not picking up the tab anymore. And your point, as someone who used to command the U.S. army in Europe, is, wait a minute. Our presence in Europe is like the best deal, the best secret weapon we have. It enables us on three continents. It's not like we're getting nothing for this. It's actually a huge benefit for us. Walk us through that.
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C
Well, you know, during the Cold War, there were about a Quarter million soldiers in Europe between the walls of East Germany and West Germany defending the territory. After the peace dividends, when Russia, the Soviet Union kind of faltered and failed, that was drawn down to about 90,000. I was personally involved in the last withdrawal of forces from Europe. It's now down, or it was down to about 30,000 U.S. army soldiers in Europe, about the same level of combined Navy and Air Force forces there under the command of European Command. But the thing is that's a drop in the bucket in terms of force requirements. And it also provides security not just for Europeans, but for us. We used to call Europe, US Army Europe, eucom, European Command, a lily pad for other places we could go so many other places, much faster to include our allies in Israel. I spent a lot of time in Israel when I was the US Army Europe commander, including some of the hotspots in Africa and the Middle East. We were using the European bases as critical jump off points for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in Kosovo, as well as in other places that the President said he solved. All the wars in that are still raging, truthfully. So when you talk about the amount, let's go back to the GDP, by the way. So if the US spends about 3.3% of our GDP on the military, a fraction of that is spent in Europe. And I know because I used to have a budget over there. So it's a worldwide GDP for the United States and it's a very small percentage of that GDP that goes to the US Military inside of Europe. But beyond that, we have things like hospitals, landing pads, airfields, naval bases, jump off points for parachutists out of Italy into other countries in the world. So for a very small price, I think the forces in Europe fight way above their weight class or they are prepared to fight way above their weight class for a fraction amount of funds. And I just think there's so many talking points about how Europe is spending so much and we're not getting anything in return. I might suggest, and I could argue that we get more out of our presence in Europe than the Europeans get out of our presence there.
- [29:03]
B
Yeah, I wouldn't argue with that. And I encourage you have this great list. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but you have this great list in the article. Again, it's Europe is America's secret weapon and we're giving it up of the of all those things that the logistics centers, the hospitals, the trauma centers, the naval bases where our ships can dock safely and comfortably in Spain, all these things that we have in Europe that enable us to do other things in the world's hotspots. I really recommend people go read it and I think we're just about out of time. But I would be remiss if I didn't remind people to send your questions to command post@the bulwark.com and to go to the bulwark.com become a Bulwark plus member. And I got to say, the comments we get on These videos@thebullbrook.com are fantastic. I'm often in there talking with people. The conversation continues. So become a bulbous member if you want to contribute to that. And we will talk to you next week. General, thanks so much.
- [29:53]
C
Thank you, Ben. Always good to be with you. Jack Harndale was helping his daughter Emily lift an awkward dresser up a staircase when he slipped and fell backwards. A week later, Emily asked him how he was doing.
- [30:03]
B
I'm good.
- [30:05]
C
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- [30:21]
B
You guys do that?
- [30:22]
C
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