← The Power of Balance
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- [00:00]
Ben Hodges
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Stephen Barden
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Power of Balance. I'm Stephen Barden. This is the third episode in the series on Speakers of Truth to Power in which I've tried to feature three completely different contexts in which power is challenged. What all three of my guests have in common was that they stood up in a crowd of silence and said, to power. Having thought things through very carefully and knowing the risks, this is wrong. This needs to change. My first Truth speaker two episodes ago was Harold Strachan. He came out of prison in apartheid South Africa and published a newspaper article in. In which he described the vile conditions that black prisoners endured. He did that knowing full well that he would at best be put straight back in jail and at worst be jailed and then harassed and abused by the regime for many years to come, which is exactly what happened. My second true speaker, Razan, is a postgraduate student in Norway who campaigned to have her university cut all ties with Israel, combining, yes, determination, principle and passion, but always with thoughtfulness and ensuring that she got her facts right. Today's Truth speaker comes from a completely different environment. He is retired US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commanding General of the US army in Europe, former senior advisor to human rights, first and persistent speaker of Truth to Power, particularly on guarding the core values and principles and constitutional obligations of the US military against political manipulation and exploitation, and for his sins. Ben is also one of the endorsers of my book, How Successful Leaders Do Business With Their World. So three very different people with probably very different political outlooks and taking very different levels of risk, but all standing up and saying very visibly and thoughtfully, power, you're wrong. You need to change this. Ben, thank you for being on the podcast. It means a lot and it's been a long time. So good to see you again.
- [02:43]
Ben Hodges
Thank you again for the opportunity.
- [02:46]
Stephen Barden
Thank you. What is speaking truth to power mean to you?
- [02:53]
Ben Hodges
Well, when I. When I hear this phrase, I assume it really means you're willing to speak against or to push back on something you get, like from a commander, a superior or political authority, maybe, to be willing to say, well, I disagree with that. I think if we do this, we're going to be. We're going to have trouble or this is not going to turn out the way you might hope it will. So, you know, being willing to do that. But also it means it can't just be based on emotion. I mean, you need to have your act together. If we're going to challenge authority, you need to make sure that you have your facts straight.
- [03:36]
Stephen Barden
Yeah, I Always defined, not always. I define speaking truth to power as, as pushing back to somebody with the ability to change things. So, you know, talking protest, protesting is not really, for me, speaking truth to power. You know, it's. It's protesting, it's.
- [03:55]
Ben Hodges
There's no, there's no anonymity in speaking truth to power. If you're in a protest, you're in a crowd, you can. And I'm, I'm not against that, but that. You're right, that should not be confused with or mashed together with speaking truth. Power means you have to identify yourself basically to whoever it is you're hoping to get to change.
- [04:19]
Stephen Barden
And you're taking a risk, of course, because you're identifying yourself, you're taking a risk. And I mean, I think it was Foucault, the French philosopher, who said that one of the things about speaking truth to power and its authenticity is the risk is the courage it takes to say, hey, this is just not right. This is wrong. You're damaging morality, you're damaging our country, you're damaging all that sort of stuff. And it's quite simple in terms of that. In the military, how does one balance, keep the balance between insubordination and, if you like, undermining of the institution and the person if necessary, on the one hand, and that I was only following orders, which was the refrain, the Nuremberg Trials on the other, how is that balance kept?
- [05:21]
Ben Hodges
Well, it's a very interesting question, and it's not a yes, no type of answer. Actually. The army's tradition, military tradition, which kind of evolved in the late 70s, early 80s became. We adopted the old German tactical leadership of doctrine of Alphrag's tactic of mission orders, meaning accomplishing the. The end state, the desired end state was more important than doing the actual specific tasks that had been outlined. And in order to do that, because that was based on a recognition of the reality of the uncertainty and friction that is in combat, as described by Cloudswitz. It's impossible for a guy who's writing an order to, to know 100 for sure what it's going to be like out there at the pointy end. And so in order to get it the task or the end state accomplished, your subordinates to have to be empowered to retask themselves to do something different than was assigned, as long as they accomplish the end state that you want, because the conditions will be uncertain. And so that became our leadership doctrine. And that requires junior leaders to be confident that they can retask themselves to do something different from what was specifically assigned as long as they're accomplishing the desired end state. So that, that became the culture. I don't want to say that every single officer or leader, you know, embraced it or was, had the courage to do it, but that was, that was our leadership doctrine and it was what it was the culture. I grew up in starting back and when I was commissioned in May of 1980 and almost every commander I ever had expected me to do that. The best, the best commander I ever had, he was a three star corps commander. I was a, a colonel and his chief of operations and then his chief of staff. And he had this mechanism, he called it phase one and phase two. He would tell us, he said, look, I'm gonna, if I give you instruction or guidance or whatever, when we start, we're in phase one, that means I want you to push back. I expect you to push back if you disagree or you think we've got it wrong or something else. He said, but after phase one, then we're in phase two. That means, okay, you know, I expect you to carry it out. You've had your chance to push back. Now phase two is I, I expect you to carry it out as if it was your own idea. So that's, that's how most effective commanders balance that.
- [08:14]
Stephen Barden
So it's almost a case of putting forward a proposition, getting the arguments for and against coming to a conclusion, and then taking, if you like, cabinet responsibility or responsibility. That's basically what was happening. I mean there have been numerous instances of speaking truth to power, I suppose, or insubordination, whichever way you might want to wanted in the military. The ones closest to me, of course, is, is Mike Jackson telling Wesley Clark, who was his commanding officer, you know, I ain't going to start World War III for you. And that. I interviewed Mike Jackson years later and I said, how did you, you know what, how did you get to that conclusion from, from seeing that it was that you disagreed, if you like, that he wanted you to block the airfield so that, so no more Russians could fly into, fly in to actually saying I'm not going to do this, which was a big move. And he told me, he went through that whole process which the military has, of reviewing, of looking at it, of taking advice, and it took a long time before. And that speaks to what you said after what you said earlier on, that when you're speaking truth to power, you really have to take the context and the situation very, very carefully, don't you? It's not emotional. So would you consider that as speaking Truth to power. And would you consider that as, as an effective way of speaking truth to power?
- [09:59]
Ben Hodges
Well, I think that the, the context of, of an alliance, of a coalition, multinational organizations, you've got sort of a different structure and different considerations as well. I, of course I'm familiar with this story and General Clark as the supreme allied commander and General Jackson and his role. I don't know what all communications would have gone back and forth between General Jackson and London and the ministry and his own government, but this is, this is part of the nature of coalition warfare and the alliance. We've always had situations where the spectator would say we're going to do this and then the nations to say, oh wait a second, you know, and you know, and so I don't know whether or not General Clark had done all that he should have done to get, did he have that mandate, frankly, to do that. So speaking truth to power inside an alliance also means making sure that you've got the, the political bit lined up. I, I remember being when in Afghanistan, I'm sorry in Iraq when I was the CJ3, the chief of our plans and operations for multinational corps Iraq and we had a massive manpower shortage in order to effectively guard the various detention facilities that were down in central and southern Iraq. And the, the senior military policeman, he scared me to death. He said I think we're going to have a massive jailbreak and then it's going to be a disaster. And so I, I asked our British forces that were part of multinational corps, I said need you to take over responsibility for guarding this so that we can, you know, we need more manpower so I can take this company and put it here. And, and they refuse saying that this was a red card for them that they could not have anything to do with American detainees. That was a shock to me. I had not been aware of this particular head card. But you know, they were in line with their political guidance and, and I had failed to appreciate that. So although it really pissed me off it was political within the context of the coalition, they were correct.
- [12:30]
Stephen Barden
Are we getting to a stage now where in fact the military is seen and even, maybe even seeing itself and I'm not just talking us, I'm talking military throughout Europe perhaps, and, and, and, and Britain seeing itself as really subordinate to political will and short term political will.
- [12:57]
Ben Hodges
It, it has to be. You know, we all take an oath to support in the U. S. Military. You're supporting fin the constitution of the United States. It's not to the president, it's not to the it's to the Constitution. And most other nations have their own different structures and traditions. But the point is, in democratic countries, the military is always subservient to the civilian leadership. It has to be. And so where you have the, the challenges is when the civilian leadership tells you to do something that is either unethical or illegal or there's a, or if there's massive risks involved. And so to be candid, this is what I worry about the most with this particular US Administration. We have now that it's clear that the Trump administration, in this second go round, they've made sure that there are no, there's no Secretary of Defense or civilian leaders that are going to say no to him as they did back in the first administration. And so, you know, the principal quality for Secretary Hexaf, the Secretary of Defense, is that it can do a lot of push ups. And he's a Fox News TV personality and he's 100 loyal to the President. No matter what it is, he will carry it out with enthusiasm. And, and so that, and then unfortunately, the Secretary of the Army, Navy and Air Force, those civilian appointees, are also in that same vein. So that shifts the entire burden to the shoulders of the uniformed officers. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, which would be the American equivalent of the journal inspector of the Bundeswehr, or the Chief of Defense Staff for UK and Canada, for example, puts all the burden on the chairman and on the service chiefs, the chief of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to decide how are we going to do this now? What the process. Of course, you don't want the generals publicly standing in front of the media saying the Secretary is insane, we're not going to do this, you know, blah, blah, blah, because of the importance of the tradition of civilian leadership of the military, which goes back to, you know, our founding fathers in the aftermath of being colonies where you were under military control. And so the way it should be happening is as things are being developed, you know, the conversation between the uniforms and their civilian authorities, like Mr. Secretary, you know, this is, you know, what, what you're considering or what you're telling us to do is going to require this, this and this here's risk. But it also, you know, we have a problem with the law here. We can't use military to do certain tasks. It's unconstitutional. And it's not an accident that the Trump administration in the first weeks got rid of all of many of the exist existing senior four stars. But also they got rid of the lawyers, the top lawyers in the services. And these were all signals early on about what was going to be expected. And so I think now this is not. The fact that you've got civilian authorities pushing the military to do certain things is not new. The fact that you've got almost unanimous support among the civilian authorities to do things which are either illegal, unconstitutional or entirely inappropriate, like deploying Marines into Los Angeles under a completely false premise. These are the kind of challenges where the uniforms have to say, we're not. We're not going to do this. Which is what General Milley got in trouble for the past previous Trump administration when he was asked about using the army against protesters during the Black Lives Matter period. And he said, oh, you're not going to use soldiers to shoot against. Shoot American citizens. And. And then they asked him, well, can't they just shoot them in the legs or something like that? And of course, General Milley said, absolutely not. But that's the reality of the situation that our senior leaders are in right now. Yeah.
- [17:47]
Stephen Barden
And when I was saying subservient, I mean subservient to party sectarian politics.
- [17:54]
Ben Hodges
Politics.
- [17:55]
Stephen Barden
And interesting that now you've also got where the civilian government starts to punish pushback. And I'm thinking of General Milley, particularly where his security detail was taken off in where he has been, you know, they tried to humiliate him as much as possible. And I'm puzzled as to why he has received so little public support. I may be wrong. From his erstwhile comrades.
- [18:36]
Ben Hodges
Yeah. This has been a massive disappointment to me that almost none of the retired four stars, his former peers and former bosses and predecessors as chief of the army and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that they have been silent. Now, it's possible that some of them absolutely agree with the Trump administration's approach, that they are in fact MAGA supporters themselves in their retirement. Others would face significant financial because of the board 0 now or the type of work they might be doing now, or they may fear some other kind of retribution. I've spoken to five of them, you know, after Mark's General Millie's security details removed, after his pictures were taken down from the hallway where the chief of army and chairman pictures, portraits are always there, you know, I mean, in one of the most cynical sophomore things, acts of retribution, to have his portrait taken down. I mean, just ridiculous. But so I spoke to at least five different retired four stars, army and Navy, and I said, what. What do you. I mean, what do you think about this? And they would also. It's just absolutely terrible. It's disgusting. It's wrong. Okay, so crickets, nothing. You know, one, one friend taught guy that I've known for decades, he said, well, the American people are going to solve this. You know, we don't want to revolt to the generals. It's, it's inappropriate and there is some tradition in this that you don't want. Even retired generals. I get a lot of criticism myself for being as vocal as I am. Of course, I'm a three star, which doesn't have quite the nuclear throw weight that a four star does. And some people think that I should just shut up because yes, I'm retired, but it still says general, Lieutenant General, retired, but these are not normal times. And so I've had other guys say, yeah, I agree this is terrible, but our organization would be shut down immediately if I did. So it's, it's, it's unfortunate. And, and of course that only emboldens the administration when they don't get people pushing back. There was a wonderful article. Wow, wonderful. A very provocative and insightful article written in the, I think it was in New York Times just the other day, opinion piece by the former secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall. And he talks about fear and how fear people in all walks of of our society, big law firms, universities, businesses, huge media organizations, are giving in out of fear to the demands of the administration. And he said, including some of our military. So this is speaking truth to power. It always briefs well when you're in an academic setting. But here these are people that have spent three to five years in combat, so there's no question of their physical courage, but their unwillingness now to speak out tells me they're either they're fearful of something or they agree.
- [22:11]
Stephen Barden
Yeah, fear plays a huge, huge part in it. There's no, there's no doubt about it. And hence, by the way, why my first topic on this, speaking truth to power was this man, Harold Strachan, who was jailed by the apartheid regime, came out and said the conditions for black prisoners is far worse than I've ever seen. He said, and, and so he spoke, he actually published an article on it. And so the regime promptly put him back in prison. And I think the issue you're talking about as well in terms of the US Government is that so much, as you said, has been the infiltration of loyalists, of Trump loyalists into so many levels of the military. I read the other day that former Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, do you remember who went, who publicly criticized the senior officers about the withdrawal from Afghanistan? He has now been appointed by the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexith, to lead the promotions review board.
- [23:22]
Ben Hodges
Well, there's several army senior army officers that were nominated to fill four star positions. Every one of them was rejected by the secretary. And the thinking is that is because they all had some sort of connection to General Milley, that this, this is a continuing retribution against Melee even though these officers would be the best qualified to fill these positions. So it's kind of where we are. Again. I don't want to act like everything was perfect leading up to this moment, but. But it does reflect that what can happen when the officer corps, including especially the retired officer corps, are unwilling to say and do things to remind everybody that the oath is to the Constitution and that the civilian leadership has a responsibility to fulfill its obligations to the Constitution. Also, you know, you made reference to the Nuremberg defense. That was something I learned as a cadet all decades ago that, you know, you, Hodges, when you become a lieutenant, you have a responsibility to obey lawful orders. Even if you don't like them or it's terrible policy, but it's still your obligation to obey the lawful order. But if it's an unlawful order, you have a duty not to obey it. You have a. You have a duty to say, no sir, I'm not going to shoot prisoners or no, we're not going to do this, or no, we're not going to burn this village down to deny it to the enemy. I mean these kinds of things. Of course, most of those were pretty simple. And, and you're, and you. It's ingrained. You can't say, well, look, I had no choice. I was just following orders that we called that the Nuremberg defense. The hard part is when it's not so obvious, when it's not so black and white as shoot those prisoners as opposed to deploy US Marines from the 29 Palms training area down to Los Angeles to protect federal property. That federal property was not in any risk. The police, the National Guard were all there. You use of the National Guard under state control is okay. Federalizing it under certain. Only under certain, certain circumstances is okay. But this was all about the administration theater. To have marines had to come in and save Los Angeles. Is anybody that was there know? That was ridiculous. I was disappointed. I never saw or heard anything coming from the Marine Corps. Maybe there was huge pushback behind closed doors. I just never saw it or heard it.
- [26:15]
Stephen Barden
A lot of things have now springing to mind as you're talking about it. One of the things that you're saying here is that you were taught at a very early stage of your, your career where you had an obligation to obey orders which were lawful, legal orders, and where you, you had an obligation to actually disobey those orders when, when they were unlawful. It is in the, it is in the detail. It's in that. In which, of course, is most of life, isn't it? Where, you know, you need to, to, to think more clearly. And it reminds me, I saw a, a clip of an interview you gave to a, a British anchor last year in which he was asking you about Gaza. And you said you need to take the political context into account and the outcome that is desired. Do you also believe that old contexts need to be understood not just within the political context, but within their historical and social context as well? And is in fact the military one of the best placed organizations to study and to think about the historical and social context of conflict so that they're able to say, guys, this is wrong because this is the historical context, this is the social context of it, rather than just this is the political context.
- [27:58]
Ben Hodges
Well, that would require. But also an officer corps that is educated to understand these things. And you'll remember that General Millie took a lot of heat from Republican members of Congress who were criticizing him because, you know, of this amorphous thing called critical race theory. And people saw this as the military was becoming too woke, whatever that means. And that we need to be focused on lethality, on being able to kill stuff. And I don't think these are incongruous that General Milley, you know, graduate of Princeton University, probably read more books than anybody in Congress. He understood that officers need to appreciate, respect the social context as well as the political context, the cultural context, historical context in which military force may be applied. Everybody I know in uniform always prefers that diplomacy and economic and information elements of power are used first, that the military is only a part to reinforce or to give some strength to those other elements of national power. But that means you've got to appreciate that where the military force might be applied as you make the recommendation at the top levels to the civilian authorities who are considering strategic objectives, of course, you would need to understand that. And another Clausewitz reference, he said, the first duty of the general and the diplomat is to understand the nature of the conflict before you enter it. And most of our problems in the last 75 years have occurred because we didn't truly understand the nature of what we were getting into. There was a continuous, ongoing conversation. When you have a normal, healthy sort of civil military relationship between the Department of Defense, the Congress, the admit, the administration itself, you know, as policies and strategies are being developed. This is not, you know, you walk in one day, okay, I want you to invade this country. Well, we can't do that because I mean, this is a continuous, ongoing process that has cycles, it has built in reviews. You've got the testimony in front of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee who were performing their Article 1 constitutional duties of oversight of the military. I mean, it is a remarkably transparent process. Even though so much of the specifics may be classified, the overall processes is there and you've got tons of media that are constantly looking at all these things. So a lot of it's done in broad daylight. And this is where the emphasis, and certainly something that I have always tried to emphasize in at least over the last several years, the importance of clearly identifying the strategic objective before, before we start sending troops somewhere. I mean, frankly, that's the easiest thing to do. Launch drones or launch long range cruise missiles to hit a target. That's the easiest thing in the world to do. But we know from decades of experience that never solves the problem. It has it. It gives instant effect in multiple different facets, but that seldom solves a problem. You know what, what the US Air Force accomplished just a few weeks ago with the help of the US Navy and our Israeli friends against Iran was incredible, I mean militarily incredible display of air power. But we are no better off today in my view, with regards to Iran than we were before that strike. The, it doesn't look like, I mean, based on assessments that have come out, that the, the regime looks any weaker. In fact, they have, they have arrested and executed hundreds of suspects. And the aftermath, there still is enriched uranium out there somewhere and the knowledge on how to do it is not destroyed. So maybe, maybe the program was set back a year or two, but we don't even really know that. So the, my point is what, what was the strategy here? What, what do we want Iran to look like? Do you want the region to look like in the aftermath of doing this strike? What, what else? What are the other components of the strategy? And that means coming to grips with the Netanyahu government, coming to grips with this new government in Syria. It, these are all. And this is hard, I mean this is really, really hard. That that part is missing. Just like it was missing in Afghanistan for 20 years. We only had a clearly defined objective the first year. After that we had policies that were not connected to a in state.
- [33:18]
Stephen Barden
Was it missing in Iraq Ultimately, yeah, absolutely.
- [33:22]
Ben Hodges
Yeah. Yeah. You know, the, the going into Iraq, at first it was all about toppling the Saddam Hussein's government and replacing it with some other democratic whatever. Because in, in the idea, and I, I'm not against this, that if you got democratic countries, they're less likely to attack their neighbors and, and to do other things. The problem is when you set about regime change, you better know for 100% certainty that the guy that you're going to put in there is going to be successful and accepted. And obviously we got that completely wrong. We didn't appreciate the, all the broader context and I would say that most of us really didn't fully appreciate the differences between Shia and Sunni and all the implications there. And so we lost the plot on Iraq and ended up staying there for 20 years and 5,000Americans killed, not to mention thousands of allied soldiers and civilians killed as well.
- [34:33]
Stephen Barden
When you were actually active in active service, and particularly as commanding general of United States Army Europe, you must have come into a sit into situations where you were speaking truth to power, where it actually was a risk to you. Are you able to talk about that? Any, any instances of that?
- [35:03]
Ben Hodges
So I'll give you something on the lower level and then something on the higher level. You know, sometimes speaking truth to power, this, this won't be as gripping or make for good reading, but sometimes you ignore certain things. I mean, not because what you're being told to do is illegal, but because it makes no sense or it's that divergence. Maybe it's a policy that's that divergence from what the overall national strategic objective is. The classic example was about sharing intelligence and, and sharing communications with nations that were not 5 EY. For example, even though we had American soldiers under or operating in the space controlled by other nations that were not fi. By. And so of course my guidance to my chief of intelligence was, look, I, you know, the US has made a policy decision. We're going to do this, this, this, but yet the intelligence sharing is, is not aligned with that. So I want you to share intelligence until you begin to sweat as you imagine the investigations that are going to follow. And then go ahead and take one more step and then you're there. I mean that was. So we, we found, we found ways to make sure that everybody had what they needed. We. While still protecting sources and methods and, and so on. But that, that's, that's a puny little thing. But I felt strong enough and confident enough about it that it was the right thing to do and, and I wanted to protect my soldiers from negative outcomes on a. On a higher level. The former. The Secretary of Defense at the time. I don't want to be too specific here, but look, the US had made the decision at the end of the Cold War to start drawing down its troops, its forces in Europe. I mean, we didn't need 300,000 anymore. It made. Made perfect sense. But as always, we overdid it and we cut too much. And so by 2014, the time that I was. I came into command in US army Europe at the end of 14, the Russians had invaded Ukraine already in 2014, had annexed Crimea, were in Donbass. And this was after our last tank had gone home. And the army was in the process of dismantling our combat aviation brigade, which had all of our attack aviation, because this was a big army decision that had been made a couple years before. And, you know, you can't just undo a huge army decision where hundreds of millions of dollars are involved and in fact, have already been reallocated different places. You can't just say, okay, stop. We're not going to just inactivate this brigade. And my predecessor did all he could to undo it, but they said, no, we can't. So the army eventually was going to come up with a rotational basis, on a rotational basis to bring back capabilities that we needed in Europe once again to deter Russia as well as to usher our allies. But there was. It was not possible to do that with everything that was needed in the one area where I was most concerned was air and missile defense, because I looked at what the Russians had, and I saw what little capability we had to protect, you know, air bases, transportation, infrastructure, all the stuff we would. Would need. And so I started getting louder and louder about it because I knew that, you know, we were competing with the Pacific, we were competing with the Middle east, where all the other areas where the military had to be. But I thought it was my duty to make sure that nobody was confused, that we are very, very vulnerable. I did not want to end up in a history book someday where, you know, the commander was never told us, and we had no idea that it was such a, you know, whatever, just say I knew that was not being well received back in the Pentagon at the Secretary level. And I was told a couple different times that I need to shut up and, and stop doing this. So, I mean, I didn't. I wasn't carrying a sign protesting outside the Pentagon about it, but in an interview or every. At every opportunity, I would highlight the fact that you know, we could barely protect Ramstein, let alone all the other airports and seaports that we would need in case of a crisis.
- [39:50]
Stephen Barden
Do you think that the the military needs to review itself so it doesn't succumb to the undermining of its values? The undermining of values, the undermining of ethics. The undermining of.
- [40:09]
Ben Hodges
This is a great, a great question, Stephen. And of course, it starts in our military academies and other commissioning sources where young women and men are educated to become officers, just as I I did when I was a cadet at West Point from 1976 to 1980. I mean, I can vividly remember sitting in the classroom being told about the Nuremberg defense and what your duties are. And it made perfect sense. And, and that was reinforced throughout the rest of my army life. And in fact, you know, this oath to the I still carry my Constitution with me everywhere I go as and we would affirm our oath to the Constitution every time a soldier was promoted or one reenlisted or any other thing. And a commissioning so that soldiers felt confident in understanding. My oath is to the Constitution. And so you wanted that in the fiber that needs to be continued to be the process. I still do it whenever I talk to military audiences. But also I think that it's going to take a few people sticking their head above the parapet in terms of retired 4 stars saying this is enough. This is absolutely unsatisfactory. You will have seen and your some of your listeners would have seen about a month ago, the president made a visit to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is one of the two biggest army bases we have on on a if everybody's at home, which is never but if everybody were there, over 50,000 soldiers from 18 Airborne Corps and Special Forces and blah, blah, blah, that's, that's the base. And so it's where the so home of the airborne and most elite for many of the most elite forces are based. And so not an accident that he would have picked that spot to go there. And of course, troops I've seen troops cheer for Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. I mean, soldiers always will cheer for the commander in chief because, you know, they know, man, if the president's here, what I'm doing must be really important. And so it's a good thing. But it's also not a surprise that you would find that the military reflects the society from which it comes. And so of course we have if half of America are Fox TV watchers and our MAGA supporters, it's not a surprise that many of them would be in the military as well. It's not illegal, it's not terrible. Maybe it's bad judgment, but. Although on their part, but that's, that's not inherently wrong. But what happened that day at Fort Bragg when the President was there, he turned this into a political rally, which is, number one. It's, It. It's illegal. You know, congressmen cannot go on base in their state and then do advertising. They might stand out front in front of the main gate, but they can't go on base. So the President goes there and, and the whole nature of what he was saying, you know, going after Governor Newsom of California, going after his political enemies, I mean, it was a terribly awful political rally. And ahead of time, they, the, the chain of command had said, hey, if any of anybody feels uncomfortable being there, you're excused from the formation. So what that leaves is only mostly Trumpers that are in uniform. And then somehow the President's team brought in a vendor that was selling MAGA hats and all this nonsense that was, that's completely illegal. And, and I was, I was so sickened by this and disappointed because I know a couple of the senior commanders there, and they felt betrayed because a lot of stuff that that happened was never part of the rehearsals. And so these are things that were brought in. And. But I don't accept that. I mean, they, they should have known. Just the way Mark Milley said when, when he had that terrible thing where he was with the President in uniform out there going towards the church or whatever he said, I should have known that. That Trump would use me like that. Okay, so the leadership of Fort Bragg should have known that this was going to happen and should have made sure that every soldier understood, reminded them of their duty. And none of that happened. And so I think in this case, people should have been relieved or resigned, just. Or come out and publicly say do. To publicly do what Mark Milley did, to say I was wrong, announce it that way, and then take the risk that you'd be sacked. That, that incident right there is one of the worst things I've seen in my adult life of the military being used as a tool by an administration for purely partisan purposes. And what sickens me is that so much of the military there seems to have been willing to do this.
- [45:24]
Stephen Barden
And that's why I asked originally, you know, do we need to review the way we train the political, social, and cultural training of soldiers of the ranks, let alone of officer class as well?
- [45:40]
Ben Hodges
Absolutely, yes. Sergeants, you know, sergeants everywhere in that formation should have been saying, hey, you know what you're doing now, soldier, is incorrect, you know, or whatever. Or they should have been saying, sir. I mean, the best lesson I ever got on truth to power was from my company first sergeant when I was a young captain and I had just issue. I had been a commander for like a month and I had just issued guidance to my lieutenants about this big exercise we were getting ready to go do. This was in the 101st Airborne Division. And they all said, air assault, sir. And they leave. And I noticed that my first sergeant, Pedro Ramon Rosado Velaquez, 20 year veteran of the army, a Vietnam veteran, I noticed he kind of hung back. And I said, first sergeant, what's wrong? And he very slowly reaches over, shuts the door to my little office. He goes, sir, I tell you this. If we do your plan, we are up. And I said, what do you mean? And then he laid out five fatal flaws in my, what I thought was, you know, pure gold. I said, golly, get those stupid lieutenants back in here. And I said, and, and then I realized, you know, the old first sergeant, 20 years of experience, he probably knows more than I do about how to do this. Why don't I get him involved from the beginning as opposed to just letting him know what we're going to do. And of course, Pedro and I, we still stay in touch to this day, 40 years later. But I, I learned from him that. And he such a professional. If I'd said, first sergeant, thanks a lot, but no, we're going to do it, he would have done his best to carry it out. But he also had the courage to say, sir, if we do it your way, you know, this is going to be a disaster. And of course, he was exactly right.
- [47:23]
Stephen Barden
You've been senior advisor to human rights first since June 22, is that correct? Is that your.
- [47:30]
Ben Hodges
I did that for a year from 22 to 23.
- [47:33]
Stephen Barden
Okay. And have you been involved in, in human rights activity since then?
- [47:39]
Ben Hodges
Well, the, the things that I got involved in that I was asked to do as a senior advisor at Human Rights first was to help raise awareness about Russian war crimes, kidnapping Ukrainian children, for example. But also they asked me to help with the demilitarization of the anti immigration policies of. I think I'm mangling the English here, that sort of so much about anti immigration was militarized as an invasion and their animals and you know, this, this kind of thing. So what we did at Human Rights first was try to find ways to, to, to fight back against that to, you know, to not refer to them as animals, number one, but also my role was to demilitarize it. You know, I've seen an invasion. This is not an invasion. But when you, if you're trying to scare people, you talk about the invasion of, you know, thousands of gang members. So I've, I've continued to push back on that, on that sort of thing, because honestly, I'd not really thought about it that way until human rights first, you know, shined a light on it. And I thought, wow, that really does. It affects how people think about immigrants.
- [49:05]
Stephen Barden
Yeah, it's the use of fear again, isn't it? That. And it's ironic. It's ironic that the, the military seems to be pushing back against the use of fear, and it's the politicians using.
- [49:17]
Ben Hodges
Fear, and they don't have to necessarily deal with the consequences of it. As think about these young women and men of the National Guard and regular army that are now deployed down to the, to the border. I mean, that looks good performative policy for the administration saying, we're serious about it. Okay, but now you're a sergeant and you see a family trying to come across the border. You know, what are the rules about use of force? I mean, it's, it's, it very, it's very, very difficult situations that we put young people into, which we put young people for the sake of achieving some sort of a visual showing that the administration's tough on, on immigration, and I think it's dangerous. And by the way, as all of your military professionals in your audience would know, that's taken them away from their real job, which is to be able to perform military tasks. They're no longer training on those things. They're now doing the work of the border guard.
- [50:29]
Stephen Barden
What do you think the impact will be on the Israeli army of their participation in the killings and the ongoing horror in Gaza?
- [50:45]
Ben Hodges
Yeah, I think this is an important question for the time we live in right now. I think, you know, certainly the United States, Germany, most countries generally, most democratic countries, supported Israel in most regards. You know, the, the survival of Israel, the Israeli state. But we're all having a real hard time right now with the Netanyahu government and use of force. And I remember, you know, after that horrible October 7th attack by Hamas that was so brutal, and, and then Prime Minister Netanyahu says, you know, okay, our mission is to destroy Hamas. I thought, well, you can't destroy Hamas. I mean, you, you can kill thousands of, but you can't destroy the idea that is Hamas. You Know, you have to, as we knew from our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and going back to Vietnam and other insurgencies, you have to eliminate the root cause. You can't just kill your way out of that problem. And in fact, by killing the civilians all around, Hamas only motivates young people to step up and want to join Hamas to fight back. And I have, I, I remember thinking, well, this is, I would hate to be the commander of the Israeli Defense Force or a brigade commander. I mean, what's my, what am I doing here? Just kill everybody that looks like they might be Hamas or destroy every building that might be used as a weapon storage site, many of which were not without a doubt. And I remembered that, that the international law, the burden is on the uniform, the soldier to protect innocent people, even if the enemy is using them as shields. International law and just your morality prevents you from killing, from, from accepting all the collateral damage. That doesn't mean we've never ever killed civilians or that there was some degree of collateral damage that was acceptable. But I can. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the extent to which we went to avoid civilian casualties, if you had, you had to have double confirmation that the guy you're listening to on his phone was actually Muhammad, blah, blah, blah, and that you took measures to ensure that there were no or minimal casualties if you were able to hit this guy on his motorcycle or whatever. So I thought about these young soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force. I mean, for the rest of their life they're going to carry that burden. And I have spoken with Israeli veterans, IDF veterans, that say it really is a problem that for the rest of your life even, you know, I was following orders or yes, Hamas are horrible. They butchered my, everybody in my village. That killing them is something that they're going to care for the rest of their life. And, and this is why you see growing opposition to what Israel is doing, growing pressure. And, and I think that even, even if Israel does somehow eliminate most of the Hamas and its ability to, to grow, it's. I don't think it's going to be, actually be any safer because the nations around it will not be keen to have normalized relationship with Israel. Yeah, yeah.
- [54:25]
Stephen Barden
And I think, and I think when I was talking, we were talking earlier on about social and historical context. Of course, October was, people keep on saying that is, that was, you know, the, the root cause of the invasion of Gaza, but there have been seven years of blockade before that. And, and, and, and as, as.
- [54:55]
Ben Hodges
Today.
- [54:55]
Stephen Barden
I was speaking to US Lieutenant General retired Ben Hodges in the third and last in our series on speakers of Truth to Power. And by the way, I was wrong about the blockade of Gaza starting seven years before October 7, 2023. It actually started in 2007. That's 16 years. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll be back for the next episode of the Power of Balance. I'm Stephen Barden.