Warning Signs For US Military

There were a number of disturbing stories about the military this weekend that should raise some real alarms. First, the botched raid in Yemen that resulted in one dead American Navy Seal, a young American child, and an undetermined, but significant, number of civilian casualties. Any covert action of this kind has inherent risks and dangers (as Jimmy Carter fatefully found out) but serious questions have been raised about how this operation was approved. Reuters reported that Trump approved the plan "without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations". Other reports indicate that that approval came over a dinner with Trump, Pence, Kushner, Bannon, Secretary of Defense Mattis, NSA adviser Flynn,  and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff. Although the target had been selected and the plan prepared under the Obama administration, it was ultimately up to Trump to decide to go ahead with it or not and to full understand the risks. It is unclear whether that kind of analysis did take place especially since the NY Times reports "Mr. Trump’s new national security team, led by Mr. Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired general with experience in counterterrorism raids, has said that it wants to speed the decision-making when it comes to such strikes, delegating more power to lower-level officials so that the military may respond more quickly."

The young American child was actually the eight year old daughter of American citizen and terrorist Nawar al-Awlaki who was killed in a drone strike authorized by President Obama in 2011. Although some still question the legality of that killing, the President did "create" legal authority to do so. Al-Awlaki's sixteen year old son was also killed some months later. What makes the death of al-Awlaki's daughter in Yemen potentially more disturbing is the fact that Trump has advocated killing the families of known terrorists, which is definitely a war crime. In 2015, Trump said, "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families."

Earlier last week, a transport convoy moving Navy Seals was seen traveling through Louisville, Kentucky flying a large blue "TRUMP Make America Great Again" flag. Overt political expression by military personnel while on duty is forbidden. While this may seem like a minor incident, it is reflective of a recent FBI study that shows that white nationalist are attempting to infiltrate law enforcement here in the US in order to help tip off their members to potential investigations. It is not unreasonable to think that these groups are also interested in infiltrating the military as well.

Lastly, after the negative fallout from the botched raid in Yemen, the military's Central Command released a portion of some videos it claimed were part of the materials the raid in Yemen recovered. Central Command claimed that the videos were a DIY primer for bomb makers who wished to attack Western targets. Within an hour, Central command had to acknowledge that this material was in no way new intelligence as they were merely training videos that al-Qaeda had posted on the internet back in 2007. Of course, it is quite possible that important intelligence was retrieved in this costly raid in Yemen, but it is probably far too early to know that. The disturbing part of this story was Central Command's willingness to hype this old data is important intelligence. A scheduled news conference that was supposed to describe the importance of this data had to be cancelled. The question is whether releasing this material deceptively to the public was solely driven by Central Command or driven by the White House in order to deflect criticism from the questions about the process of how this covert action was approved.

Trump has not shown himself to be the most stable of minds, even threatening to send the military into Chicago. There is a reasonable chance that, at some point, the military will be asked to carry out an illegal order. If the military becomes increasingly politicized under Trump, it will be much harder for them to refuse to carry out those illegal orders. Either way, we will have a crisis of major proportions on our hands.