Trump vs. the Generals

 National Review:

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Trump transition team is drafting an executive order to “create a board to purge general officers.” Such a board, the article’s subhead warned, “could upend military review process and raise concerns about politicization of military.”

To the first suggestion, on upending the military review process, you will find no shortage of active-duty service members who say, “Hell to the yes.”

On the second, the Biden administration’s stewardship of the Pentagon — from throwing it into the abortion debate, to mandating force-wide diversity, equity, inclusion seminars, to promoting climate activism at the expense of real-world mission requirements, to quixotic campaigns to weed out domestic extremists, the list goes on — represents the most extreme politicization of U.S. military forces in modern history. Therein is the inherent challenge that Republicans face in the courtrooms of newsrooms — radical progressive policies are considered routine, but the act of removing those policies is considered inherently political and divisive.

I fear we may be returning to the toxic practice of “history began yesterday” reporting, in which every proposed action by a Trump administration is written as a tectonic, norms-defying event without precedent or historic rationale. But the act of removing bad or distracted leaders is a tool as old as war itself. President Lincoln went through several field commanders before settling on Ulysses S. Grant. Patton took over for Lloyd Fredenhall, whose failure at the Kasserine Pass in North Africa resulted in a catastrophic American defeat. President Eisenhower replaced General Matthew Ridgway with Maxwell Taylor after a policy disagreement over military end-strength. Barack Obama purportedly found Marine general James Mattis too aggressive for leadership of the U.S. Central Command and fired him, an act all but celebrated by Manhattan editors and D.C. think tanks.

Perhaps the most relevant example here is that of General George C. Marshall and his “plucking” committee. This was the informal name given to a panel, not dissimilar to the one described in today’s Wall Street Journal, that Marshall established in 1940 to reform and modernize the U.S. Army leadership in preparation for entry into World War II. The committee aimed to replace ineffective or outdated senior officers with younger, more dynamic leaders better suited to the quickly evolving demands of modern warfare.

The committee, established by Marshall, identified and “plucked” over 600 senior officers they deemed unfit or too old for command in wartime. Rather than basing their decisions on seniority, the committee focused on competence, leadership ability, and physical fitness. This process allowed Marshall to infuse the Army’s upper ranks with officers who could handle the pace and rigor of large-scale-maneuver warfare. While Marshall was blasted on the floor of Congress and in the press for allegedly gutting U.S. national security, the men who ascended key Army billets are now legend: Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and Lightning Joe Collins, to name but a few. It was successful, but not permanent.
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As a communications officer in the Marine Corps, I interacted with officers of all ranks up to and including senior generals. It was obviously not my job to question the fitness of these officers but I could not help but notice some were better than others.  I found the same to be true when I later became the executive officer of a rifle company of Marines along the DMZ in Vietnam.