Retired flag officers appear to violate UCMJ with criticism of President

Victor Davis Hanson:

Sometimes retired generals are deified. Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower won two presidential terms in landslide elections.

At other moments, war heroes such Generals Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay were vilified as near insurrectionaries for their blistering attacks on sitting presidents.

In such a climate, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which became effective law in May 1951, prohibits active generals from disparaging their commander in chief — in the way perhaps MacArthur had bitterly pilloried then-president Harry Truman over the Korean War. Article 88 of the UCMJ makes it a crime to voice “contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State.”

But no one quite knows, and debate continues over, whether such codified prohibitions on free expression apply to retired generals receiving military pensions. Yet, given the spate of recent “contemptuous words against the President” leveled from retired generals, it seems that few worry about regulation AR 27-10 of the code: “Retired members of a regular component of the Armed Forces who are entitled to pay are subject to the UCMJ. (See Art. 2(a)(4), UCMJ.) They may be tried by courts-martial for offenses committed while in a retired status.”
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One, a retired general need not under any circumstances stoop to invoke Nazi Germany, Hitler, or Fascism to criticize the current commander in chief.

Two, any disparagement should not hint at any active resistance to, much less the removal of, an elected president other than through constitutionally mandated elections.

Three, the condemnation should rest on clear factual evidence, not emotive anger or partisan disagreement.

Four, there should be no semblance of coordination among retired military officers. They should avoid even the inadvertent appearance of a sudden chorus of like-minded retired military officers acting in concert to attack the policies of their current president with whom they disagree, and whom they disparage in personal terms.

Indeed, to do otherwise, whether by intent or inference, would suggest a harmonized effort to nullify the authority of an elected president — a dangerous escalation to extra-legal efforts that would be a first in American history.

Unfortunately, in this age of dissension, a number of our most esteemed retired generals and admirals, many of them heroic combat veterans, in their fury at President Trump, have not met these modest ethical expectations. However well-meaning, they seem to have little inkling of how their advocacy and speech have only further polarized a divided country whose streets are currently in chaos.
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Trump has actually been an above-average commander in chief in many regards.  He stopped Obama's use of amateurs to direct the war against ISIS and allowed the military to do what was necessary to take out the terror state which they promptly did.  He has taken action against's Iran's proxy war against the US and its allies without getting bogged down in another conflict.

Trump has a negotiating style that lets adversaries know there will be unpleasant consequences if they do not take appropriate responses to attacks by domestic terrorists.  What the retired officers seem to think is that Trump was going to order the troops to shoot all the Antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists who were rampaging in the streets of cities.  What Trump wanted was for Governors to use the National Guard to restore order by implementing the proper force to space ratio within the cities making it hard for the terrorists to move to their next target.  When the states did that it quickly got the situation under control.

What I find really troubling is that these former flag officers are so out of touch with reality and seem to actually think Trump is a bigger threat than those who are destroying our cities and killing people  That so out of touch it is hard to believe they even think it.