The mission creep of the US military into political operations has been slowly infecting the ranks for years, but only recently fully metastasized. It is a spillover from the early Trump administration that saw Acting Attorney General Sally Yates “refusing to defend his executive order that imposes a temporary ban on refugees.” She was fired of course, because she served at his pleasure. But that was all that the media needed to lionize and hold her out as an example to follow. 

This of course was followed up by Lt Col Vindman who publicly testified against Trump during the first impeachment hearings. He was notably wearing his dress uniform at the time.

These were only the public figures though. Behind the scenes there were supposed public servants all over DC that were acting on partisan beliefs. Everyone involved in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation was acting in the interests of the Democratic party. The military was no exception to the general infection of politics throughout the “public service” sector.

The examples set by the political appointees and bureaucrats has been noted and now followed by partisan members of our armed forces. If they are able to do it public enough, with a large enough microphone, they can get instant hero status on social media. The reason that they get this is that the average American doesn’t understand that for the military, there is limited free speech, so they are applauded for behavior that they should know is wrong.

Here are just a few examples of the corruption in the ranks. Tucker Carlson recently delivered a monologue questioning the priorities of military leadership after they announced maternity flight suits, among other things. The official account of the II Marine Expeditionary Force responded to him on twitter as if he criticized women in the military. He didn’t, but that was lost on the Marines. Someone realized that they were in the process of really screwing up and apologized for the tweets. They have since been deleted.

The Senior Enlisted Leader of the US Space command also couldn’t help himself. He jumped into the fray with a video of himself in uniform in what appears to be his official office:

https://twitter.com/US_SpaceComCSEL/status/1370041512894025729

A final example is the National Guard unit from Guam was duped into a political stunt by Rep. Michael San Nicolas, D-Guam. After a speech given at CPAC in which Rep Greene R-GA seemed to refer to Guam as a different country, Mr. Nicolas thought it would be a great idea to march the guard troops from Guam to her office to make the point that they are a US territory. The fact that they let themselves be used this way is beyond me. Their leadership should have known better. They do not work for congress.

In each of these instances, If I were the commander of these troops I would have immediately removed them from their duties. Not because I disagreed with their politics, that isn’t the point. The Senior Enlisted Leader of Space Com in the example above probably just alienated about half of his command. Regardless of whether his troops believed in what he said or not, they know that he just set a bad example. You cannot be an effective leader is you are completely disrespected, especially over issues that you shouldn’t be voicing concerns about.

This also diminishes the entire military in the eyes of the people they purportedly serve. Every time a leader in uniform weighs in on a controversial societal issue, they are going to piss off a lot of people. Even more when they know that you should have known better than letting your feelings overwhelm you to the point of showing your ass.

This is incredibly dangerous for the military. It will destroy morale and set our troops to their own internal political infighting. It need to be squashed forcefully, and public examples have to be made. Politics are fine in the outside world where the taxpayers, who have all kinds of viewpoints, don’t pay your salary.