Meet Your Commander-in-Chief

Most Americans know that Donald Trump “dodged the draft” and managed to find a neighborhood doctor willing to diagnose him with bone spurs. He avoided obligatory military service during the Vietnam War era. With that in mind, I think all of us should find his July 2017 outburst at a Pentagon meeting deplorable.

Ма́ршал Росси́йской Федера́ции TRUMP
Reporting for duty

It seems that Pentagon military leaders, ones who actually put on the uniform to serve and fight for our country, were worried that the new president lacked foundation and background pertinent to our nation’s key defense alliances. They decided that a meeting that could provide him with such a background would be beneficial for all concerned. The meeting would fill the “gaping holes” in Trump’s understanding of America’s post-war history and provide him with information that would help him in his role as Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. History and geography were not among Trump’s strong suits. His strong suit appears to be dark blue.

Tillerson and Trump

In addition to military generals, Rex Tillerson (former Sec. of State) and Gary Cohn (former National Economic Council director) were present at the Pentagon briefing. Also present was then-Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, one of the most knowledgeable military advisors on Trump’s staff.  Mattis had served in the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. In all, General Mattis has 44 more years of military experience and 29 more military service awards than does Donald J. Trump.

Trump's military background  (left) versus the background of just one general in the room.
Trump holds the Order of  Lenin medal with the Make Russia Great Again cluster.

What they didn’t know at the time was that the new president had the attention span of a gnat on Adderall measurable in nanoseconds. Complex geopolitical strategy does not lend itself to eyedropper feedings. They began the briefing, Trump got bored and angry, and eventually, he interrupted the meeting with his own views.  Among his misguided ideas were:

• We should rent our military out to our host countries like South Korea since we are defending them.
• NATO was not our friend since some countries hadn’t paid their fair share.
• The Iranian nuclear deal was bad.
• Our war in Afghanistan had gone on too long, and the generals were responsible.
• When we “win” a war, we should get to keep all the oil.

It was at this point that Trump called Afghanistan a “loser war” and called his military leaders: “You’re all losers. You don’t know how to win anymore. I want to win. We don’t win anymore.” He went on to say, “I wouldn’t go to war with you people, you’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

Tillerson later stood with a small group after the meeting and called the president, “a fucking moron.”  Word of this eventually got out and he was fired eight months later.  I wholly disagree with Rex Tillerson’s assessment.  Since he used an outdated term I will stick with that as a basis of my disagreement.  Under the old psychiatric classification system, a moron had an IQ of 51-70, and this is inconsistent with my personal observations of our subject.  Upon further investigation of the old classification system, we find that an idiot checked in at an IQ of 0-25, and an imbecile topped out in the 26-50 range.  I find that Trump vacillates between categories and lives somewhere between idiocy and imbecilic with occasional flashes of relative moronic brilliance.  All of these terms are no longer acceptable giving way to the term “intellectual disability.”

We should be careful in our classification however, as moderate mental subnormality may prevent him from being held responsible for his actions.  The only other reason to press for a better-defined classification of Trump’s intellectual disability would have been to prevent him from reproducing.  We all know that horse left that barn years ago; at least five times by most counts.

The takeaway here might be that, while we need a Commander-in-Chief to lead our military, perhaps we should require presidential candidates to at least pass a test that acknowledges a basic high school level of history and geography.  Morality is another matter and in this regard, the ballot box is our friend.  Perhaps this analysis partially explains why they can’t keep size 5 and 6 MAGA hats in stock.

Footnote:  I was surprised to find that the Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision of 1927, which upheld the right of the states to enforce compulsory eugenic sterilization of the intellectually disabled, had not been overturned.  The case is tragic and provides an insight into the damage that can be wrought by narrow-minded individuals with the power of government to back them.