In liberal democracies with strong norms of civilian supremacy, how should military leadership respond to a president’s repeated interventions into the military’s attempts to uphold justice and good order and discipline within its own ranks? While rare, this potentially dangerous dilemma presented itself recently and cuts to the core of military professionalism.

In 2019, the U.S. president reached down to a level in the military justice system almost unheard of to pardon two Army lieutenants and an Army Special Forces officer who had murdered unarmed civilians or prisoners, as well as reverse the demotion of a Navy SEAL who had been acquitted of murder—after a problematic prosecution—but convicted of posing for a photograph with the dead body; two of them were charged after their own teammates reported them.[1] The president’s interventions appeared to condone war crimes, but despite some attempts to resist these actions, the flag officers ultimately fell into line.

Even with civilian supremacy, a professional military is ultimately responsible for its own integrity, and sometimes, the drastic and costly response of resignation—rather than early retirement—is called for. By resigning, a flag officer renounces his/her ability to speak further to—and for—the organization, yet few actions would say more to and about the U.S. military than a principled refusal to act in the service of wrongdoing.

Maintaining Justice and Good Order and Discipline in Bureaucracies 

Although legal, the president’s actions were highly irregular. Moreover, he justified them with a pre-modern conception of warriorhood the U.S. military roundly rejects—“We train our boys to be killing machines” and therefore should not punish them for how and why they kill—wanted the men to join him on his re-election campaign trail, brought two of them onstage with him at a fundraiser, and socialized at Mar-a-Lago with Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, the most flamboyant of them in criticizing and taunting his commanding officers.[2]

This appalled many in and out of the military, because it seems to absolve war crimes and intimidates others who might report wrongdoing.[3] It risks eroding U.S. military professionalism and morality; obedience to the chain of command; and its personnel’s moral, spiritual, and psychological integrity.[4]

Furthermore, it tarnishes America’s reputation and endangers American warfighters in future conflicts. The U.S. is held to a higher standard, not just because it is the world’s dominant power, but also because liberal democracies’ universalistic and rights-based claims come with additional burdens of their own making—and rightfully so.[5]

Resignation as Speech Act

Whether in response to long-term strategy/policy or a specific, punctuated incident, no active-duty flag officer has resigned on principle—as opposed to taking early retirement—in the past twenty years, and overall, it is practically unheard of.[6] 

Both early retirement and resignation allow for new leadership in the wake of failed expectations—for example, a political party leader resigning after dismal electoral results. As speech acts, however, only resignations can do more than atone for the past by using principled dissent to try to shape the future.[7]

Self-Policing and Civil-Military Relations in Liberal Democracies 

Because resignations, too, can erode good order and discipline as well as civilian supremacy, they should be rare. Officers should not resign over reasonable policy disagreements. Resignation as speech act should be reserved for issues that cut at the foundations of the military as an institution, such as this set of war crime exonerations.[8]

As with any professional bureaucracy, it is in the military’s best interests that most people stay and work within the system to prevent and fix mistakes, check its excesses, and provide continuity. Moreover, the structure of liberal-democratic civil-military relations intends the military to be a permanent professional class that remains stable underneath the turnover of its appointed and elected civilian leadership.

When civilian leadership fails, however, the military must take the lead in ensuring its own oversight. For example, when the military’s impressive operational capabilities have not been matched by strategic acumen, it must ask its civilian leadership—and itself—hard questions and demand accountability.[9] Likewise, when the commander-in-chief acts to erode the military’s moral conceptions of just war, it must defend its distinct system of justice.

Understandably, most people want to stay onboard and work from within. Some of them think they are too valuable to the organization, but in reality, no one is so invaluable that the institution would fail without him/her—if that were the case, then the institution has already failed. Some think the opposite, that their singular actions would be ineffectual, but if anyone’s protest could resonate, it would be that of flag officers. When toiling behind the scenes becomes no longer enough, then every organization needs some individuals to publicly declare their own values and that of the institution and profession, and through speech acts such as resignation if necessary.

Resignation as speech act entails personal sacrifice, as it symbolically severs connection with the military and forgoes future increments to one’s retirement benefits. These lost material and psychological goods are not insubstantial for a flag officer, but because resignation is materially equivalent to taking early retirement, the costs are not so severe as to compel uniform silence in response to significant threats to the military institution and profession.[10]

Leadership, Sacrifice, and Physical and Moral Courage 

Under outrageous circumstances, silence from flag officers signals that personal sacrifice is expected only of others. Even in massive, highly-specialized militaries, respected commanders still share in their troops’ deprivations, and shared suffering should not be limited to physical hardship.

Flag officers expect their subordinates to give up their very lives when someone else deems it necessary, so it is not disproportionate to ask officers to consider what would amount to only hardship or inconvenience, however austere.[11]

In this case, the Secretary of the Navy––a civilian position––and a SEAL admiral threatened to resign if President Trump continued interfering in stripping Gallagher of his trident pin, but neither did, and the Secretary was fired while Gallagher kept his trident.[12] A few days later, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael M. Gilday issued a fleet-wide memorandum exhorting his men and women to “be standard-bearers…above reproach,” to act with the integrity and honor that “are central to who we are,” and, as leaders, to exemplify “ethical and professional behavior” at all times.[13]

In calling on others to hold the moral line, this letter could be criticized for constituting leadership-by-memo, in a meaningful case when leaders should have set an ethical marker for the institution and profession.

Principled refusal is expected, according to the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which instructs warfighters to refuse to obey not just “clearly illegal orders,” but also orders that require moral judgment to determine their illegality, for example, orders that would violate the proportionality principle by foreseeably causing excessive civilian casualties.[14] While the manual states that subordinates have no obligation to make their own such judgments and may presume that an order is lawful, there is a duty to disobey when illegality is manifestly clear, and for high-ranking flags, there are no reasonable superiors who moral judgments should substitute for their own.[15] Immoral orders are not always illegal, but the manual’s treatment of the law of armed conflict demonstrates the U.S. military’s belief in the relevance of ethics for legality.

Although active-duty military cannot hold foreign service appointments, elected or appointed political/civil positions, or speak publicly on political issues in their official capacities, they can participate in political clubs and political fundraising events when not in uniform, display political bumper stickers on private vehicles, and write letters-to-the-editor on political issues so long as those views are identified as personal and not representative of the Department of Defense.[16] Far from trying to quash all political engagement, these regulations recognize the dual role of soldier and citizen.

The culture of military reticence is so strong, however, that most military personnel do not engage in even that speech permitted to them. Retired officers also rarely speak out, partly because their retirement pay is technically “retainer pay” rather than a pension, which subjects them to the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as the possibility of recall for service.[17] Yet, retired flag officers have been known to speak their mind, including in 2006 when several publicly called for defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s resignation and during the 2020 election cycle.[18]

Because active-duty personnel must refrain from official political speech, it is essential that flag officers speak on a-political matters such as threats to the military’s foundations, and with the only method available to them if necessary—their exit.

Like all virtues, military integrity is difficult to cultivate and dangerously easy to lose, and its erosion would have enduring effects for how the U.S. fights wars, its international standing, and the cost in civilian and military lives.

Each officer must decide for him/herself how to defend the military as an institution. But many military academy students and instructors, as well as active-duty officers and enlisted, were outraged by the effective promotion of war crimes in these pardons.[19] They rejected being characterized as killers; they awaited moral courage from their leadership and were angered on behalf of the institution where they make their careers and of which they want to be rightfully proud.

Flag officers’ responsibilities should include making sure their personnel maintain that youthful moral conviction in defense of the American military’s mission and identity, over the next twenty to thirty years of their careers, as they become institutionalized in the bureaucracy and acquire pressing personal responsibilities that may incentivize silence. The military is right that leadership matters; in these and similar situations, it especially needs principled leadership by example.

On balance, the U.S. military’s reluctance to speak publicly is correct for the American conception of civil-military relations and civilian primacy. As Aristotle suggests, the golden mean is usually closer to one extreme than the other.[20]

But it is possible to speak too little, to the extent that it harms not only the profession but also the institution’s future ability to remain largely silent and politically neutral. Sometimes, drastic speech is required to protect institutional neutrality. Some officers speak out and stay on, knowing they will thereafter be sidelined.[21] Others choose to retire, mostly quietly.

While there would be some value from a wave of quiet-yet-principled early retirements, principled speech acts such as resignation or retirement should be accompanied by repeated literal speech that explains one’s intent rather than ambiguously retiring in silence. By being explicit about one’s reasons for stepping down, it helps guide those who remain in the institution, and it completes the speech act of resignation by denying the intentional ambiguity that often accompanies early retirement.[22]

For example, Marine Lieutenant General Gregory S. Newbold retired early in 2002, citing family reasons, although there was speculation otherwise at the time; four years later, he went on the record regretting that he had not spoken publicly then on his opposition to invading Iraq.[23] In contrast, in 2005, Major General John Batiste, U.S. Army, rejected a promotion to three-stars and asked to retire, citing his opposition to Rumsfeld and Iraq policy.[24]

There is no shortage of physical courage in the military and its leadership. Many service members would find it easier to put their bodies in harm’s way than to speak publicly against wrongdoing in their own ranks and to suffer the professional and personal consequences.

Physical courage does not equal moral courage, however, although the two are often conflated, and physical courage cannot substitute for moral courage. The military profession is especially demanding in that it requires of its members both distinct forms of valor. Both types of bravery exercise certain temperaments, but just as boldness alone does not yield physical courage, neither do intellect or knowledge of truth by themselves generate moral courage. The highest courage combines both physical and moral bravery, and the latter includes the ability to accept accountability and take responsibility, and to “hold the line” in the face of moral danger to oneself, one’s organization, and those who look to one’s leadership.

Yvonne Chiu is an Associate Professor of Strategy & Policy at the U.S. Naval War College and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Her book, Conspiring with the Enemy: The Ethic of Cooperation in Warfare, won the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award 2019. Views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Naval War College, U.S. Navy, or U.S. Government.

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Header Image: The Gateway Arch, St. Louis Missouri, 2019 (Tyrell Mayfield)

Notes:

[1] In May 2019, the president pardoned Army First Lieutenant Michael Behenna, who was convicted of murdering an Iraqi man taken prisoner. Then in November, he granted Army Major Mathew Golsteyn and Army First Lieutenant Clint Lorance pardons and restoration of rank, and blocked Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s ejection from the special operations force. See Mihir Zaveri, “Trump Pardons Ex-Army Soldier Convicted of Killing Iraqi Man,” The New York Times, May 6, 2019. Presidential Pardon for Michael Chase Behenna, U.S. Department of Justice, May 6, 2019. Dan Lamothe, “Trump issues pardons in war crimes cases, despite Pentagon opposition to the move,” The Washington Post, November 15, 2019. Dave Philipps, “Trump Reverses Navy Decision to Oust Edward Gallagher from SEALs,” The New York Times, November 21, 2019.

[2] Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), “The case of Major Mathew Golsteyn is now under review at the White House. Mathew is a highly decorated Green Beret who is being tried for killing a Taliban bombmaker. We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!,” Tweet, October 12, 2019. Helene Cooper, Maggie Haberman, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Trump Says He Intervened in War Crimes Cases to Protect ‘Warriors’,” The New York Times, November 25, 2019. Samantha J. Gross and David Smiley, “Pardoned soldiers are Trump’s special guests at closed-door fundraiser in Aventura,” Miami Herald, December 7, 2019. Maggie Haberman, “Trump Brings 2 Officers He Cleared of War Crimes Onstage at Fund-Raiser,” The New York Times, December 8, 2019. Rebecca Klar, “Navy SEAL at center of war crimes case meets Trump at Mar-a-Lago,” The Hill, December 22, 2019. Dave Philipps, “From the Brig to Mar-a-Lago, Former Navy SEAL Capitalizes on Newfound Fame,” The New York Times, December 31, 2019.

[3] Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, “IAVA Flash Poll on President Trump’s War Crimes Pardons on Memorial Day Weekend,” IAVA.org, March 23, 2019. Lindsay L. Rodman, “Post 9/11 Veterans Have Mixed Feelings About Trump’s War Crimes Pardons,” Just Security, May 24, 2019. David S. Cloud, “Senior military officers rebel against Trump plan to pardon troops accused of war crimes,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2019. Dave Philipps, “Trump’s Pardons for Servicemen Raise Fears that Laws of War Are History,” The New York Times, November 16, 2019. David Frum, “There Will Be No Victory in Dishonor,” The Atlantic, November 17, 2019. Michael A. Robinson, “Trump’s pardon of two former Army officers sparks controversy. Here’s why.,” The Washington Post, November 17, 2019. Quil Lawrence, “Veterans React to 3 Controversial Pardons Issued By President Trump,” National Public Radio, November 18, 2019. Haley Britzky, “‘What happens after that is out of their control’—Former military leaders and lawyers react to Trump’s war crimes pardons,” Task & Purpose, November 19, 2019. Jeff McCausland, “Trump’s new pardons beg the question: Is the American military just a ‘killing machine’?,” NBC News, November 19, 2019. Richard J. Danzig and Sean O’Keefe, “We Led the Navy. Trump Does Not Share the Military’s Values,” The New York Times, November 25, 2019. Pauline M. Shanks Kaurin and Bradley J. Strawser, “Disgraceful Pardons: Dishonoring Our Honorable,” War on the Rocks, November 25, 2019. Anna Mulrine Grobe, “Does Trump’s Navy SEAL pardon undermine military justice?,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 27, 2019. Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino, “Do Americans approve of Trump’s pardons for court-martialed military officers?,” The Washington Post, December 16, 2019. Dave Philipps, “Army Denies Request by Soldier Pardoned by Trump, Setting Up Showdown,” The New York Times, January 9, 2020. Thomas B. Edsell, “The Savage Injustice of Trump’s Military Pardons,” The New York Times, December 4, 2019. Julie Vitkovskaya, “We asked veterans to respond to The Post’s reporting on Clint Lorance and his platoon. Here’s what they said.,” The Washington Post, July 4, 2020.

[4] Former members of Army 1st Lieutenant Clint Lorance’s platoon, for example, who turned him in for ordering his men to fire on three Afghans and later testified at his court-martial, describe their own sense of abandonment, loss of faith in military and civil institutions, and ill-effects––including reckless behavior and suicide––due to the ultimately-successful campaign for Lorance’s pardon. See Greg Jaffe, “The Cursed Platoon,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2020.

[5] A Westphalian-based world does not require consistency between a country’s domestic values and foreign policy, but liberal democratic governments and societies are vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy in a way that other types of governments are not. Unlike particularist forms of political governance (e.g., many authoritarian systems), liberal democratic systems based on universal philosophies bear the extra burden of consistency, because the strength and sincerity of their domestic principles are called into question when blatantly disregarded by the same actors overseas. See also: Yvonne Chiu, Conspiring with the Enemy: The Ethic of Cooperation in Warfare, New York: Columbia University Press, 2019 – esp. Chapter 3; Yvonne Chiu, “Kurdistan: The Taiwan of the Middle East?,” Society, Aug 2018, 55(4): 344-348.

[6] In the strategy realm, for example, two ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost over seven thousand U.S. military lives and over US$4 trillion, yet seem no closer to succeeding nineteen years in, and a major foreign policy realignment by the current president is widely considered by military experts to threaten American interests. Then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis prominently resigned in December 2018 after the U.S. announced the withdrawal of American troops from Syria, but he had already retired from the service and served in that position as a civilian. See Joe Gould and Leo Shane III, “US Congress Passes Waiver for Mattis to Lead Pentagon,” DefenseNews.com, January 13, 2017. Helene Cooper, “Jim Mattis, Defense Secretary, Resigns in Rebuke of Trump’s Worldview,” The New York Times, December 20, 2018. James N. Mattis, “Full Text of Letter to Trump from Mattis,” The New York Times, December 21, 2018, p. A10. Even in the storied “Revolt of the Admirals” in 1949 over the cancellation of a Navy supercarrier, the unification of the services under a Department of Defense, and the role of the new, separate Air Force, there were no resignations, and the only early retirement came from naval aviator Capt. John G. Crommelin, Jr. (Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan resigned in protest early in this ordeal, but it was a civilian position.) For more on the Revolt of the Admirals, see Jeffrey G. Barlow, Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945–1950. Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 2001; Keith D. McFarland, “The 1949 Revolt of the Admirals,” Parameters 11, no. 1 (1981): 53-63. In 1997, Air Force General Ronald R. Fogleman took early retirement in objection to the Secretary of Defense’s plan to punish commanders for failing to prevent the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) by denying Brigadier General Terryl J. Schwalier promotion to a second star. See Eric Schmitt, “Criticism Over Blast Leads Top Air Force General to Retire,” The New York Times, July 29, 1997, p. A13. See also, Richard H. Kohn, editor, “The Early Retirement of Gen Ronald R. Fogleman, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force,” Aerospace Power Journal 15, No. 1 (Spring 2001): 6-23.

[7] Resignations can also serve an important leadership function by accepting leadership responsibility even in the absence of personal blame. For example, the UBS CEO resigned in 2011 when a rogue trader lost US$2.3bn, HSBC’s head of compliance resigned in 2012 after executives ignored pervasive money laundering through HSBC accounts by Mexican drug cartels, and the CEO of Target resigned in 2014 after a massive data breach and after the CIO had already resigned. See Giles Broom, “UBS Chief Executive Gruebel Resigns After $2.3 Billion Loss,” Bloomberg News, September 24, 2011. Eyder Peralta, “HSBC Executive Resigns During Money Laundering Hearing,” National Public Radio, July 17, 2012. Anne D’Innocenzio, “Target tech chief resigns as it overhauls security,” Associated Press, March 5, 2014. Danielle Douglass, “Target CEO resigns after massive data breach,” The Washington Post, May 5, 2014.

[8] When it comes to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, objecting to the lack of any coherent strategy speaks to systematic misuse of the military, which is different from disagreeing with a particular strategy, policy, or operation.

[9] While civilians in liberal democracies guide grand strategy, the military cannot afford to abstain from its own assessments of efficacy. Strategic coherence is often lacking, as the 2019 Afghanistan Papers show for example, and then the military must protect its own long-term capabilities by demanding clearer strategy and better strategy-policy match from its civilian leadership. See Craig Whitlock, Leslie Shapiro, and Armand Emamdjomeh, “The Afghanistan Papers As Published by the Washington Post,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2019. Craig Whitlock, “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war – Part I: At War With the Truth,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2019. Craig Whitlock, “The Afghanistan Papers: A secret history of the war – Part II: Stranded Without a Strategy,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2019. Craig Whitlock, Jenn Abelson, and Meryl Kornfield, “Responses from people featured in The Afghanistan Papers,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2019.

[10] Receiving military retirement benefits is contingent on the act of retirement, but flag officers (who are assumed to have served at least 20 years) claiming resignation for reasons of conscience would be legally processed by personnel/human resources offices as if they were retiring early, according to Navy Personnel Command. The speech act can thus be separated from most of its material consequences, which means that resigning in protest is functionally equivalent to retiring early, unless the officer explicitly declines his/her retirement benefits (which are legally considered retainer pay) in order to avoid the possibility of being called back into service. (Navy Personnel Command could not find any cases of flag officers resigning out of conscience or rejecting their retirement benefits for any reason.) When there is no misconduct involved, flag officers resigning their commissions still receive accrued retirement benefits at their current grades (if they met their contracted service time) or at a grade lower (if not), although time-in-grade waivers are frequently granted. Even in cases of misconduct or early retirement to avoid court-martial, benefits would in most cases be conferred to general officers and flag officers (GOFO) upon a retirement grade determination, and a board of inquiry if necessary; only in extreme cases would a GOFO be “dropped from the rolls.” (10 U.S. Code §1370 - Commissioned officers: general rule; exceptions. Naval Military Personnel Manual 1920-190, CH-23, 24 Jun 2008. SECNAV Instruction 1920.6D, 24 Jul 2019. Personal communication with Navy Personnel Command, Oct-Nov 2020.)

[11] Technological developments and increased specialization in warfighting have repositioned modern military leaders to the back of the field. While modern battle requires more specialized attention to planning, coordination, and management, this tactical evolution sometimes comes at a cost in moral and other aspects of leadership. See Yvonne Chiu, Conspiring with the Enemy: The Ethic of Cooperation in Warfare, New York: Columbia University Press, 2019 – Chapters 3, 6.

[12] Dave Philipps, “Navy Wants to Eject From SEALs a Sailor Cleared by Trump, Officials Say,” The New York Times, November 19, 2019. Dave Philipps, “Trump Reverses Navy Decision to Oust Edward Gallagher From SEALs,” The New York Times, November 21, 2019. Maggie Haberman, Helene Cooper, and Dave Philipps, “Navy Is Said to Proceed With Disciplinary Plans Against Edward Gallagher,” The New York Times, November 23, 2019. Joe Gould and Carl Prine, “US Navy secretary denies he threatened to resign over Trump SEAL intervention,” DefenseNews.com, November 23, 2019. Helene Cooper, Maggie Haberman, and Dave Philipps, “Esper Demands Resignation of Navy Secretary Over SEAL Case,” The New York Times, November 24, 2019. “US Navy Secretary Richard Spencer fired over Seal case,” BBC News, November 25, 2019. Meghann Myers and Carl Prine, “Esper explains why Navy secretary was fired over double-talk in SEAL trident controversy,” MilitaryTimes.com, November 25, 2019. “Richard Spencer, “Richard Spencer: I was fired as Navy secretary. Here’s what I’ve learned from it,” The Washington Post, November 27, 2019.

[13] Michael M. Gilday, “CNO Message to the Force” (R 022236Z DEC 19 MID510000756726U), December 2019, https://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/reference/messages/Documents/NAVADMINS/NAV2019/NAV19273.txt.

[14] United States Department of Defense, Law of War Manual – §5.10.2.4. (Office of General Counsel, Department of Defense, June 12, 2015, updated December 2016)

[15] United States Department of Defense, Law of War Manual – §§18.3.1.2, 18.3.2, 18.3.2.1. (Office of General Counsel, Department of Defense, June 12, 2015, updated December 2016)

[16] Reservists can hold political office if their active duty order is less than 270 days long. (Department of Defense, Directive 1344.10: Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces, February 19, 2008: §4.4.2.)

[17] UCMJ disallows “all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces” (10 U.S. Code § 934 Art. 134) as well as “contemptuous words” toward the civilian leadership (10 U.S. Code § 888 Art. 88.), and rightly so. That still leaves room for reasoned critiques on fundamental matters, however.

[18] The surprisingly-high number of retired flag officers making public statements during the 2020 election cycle and in some cases taking the unusual step of endorsing a presidential candidate can be attributed in part to concerns with military integrity and civil-military relations, including “a clear manipulation of our military to serve [the president’s] personal needs” (Admiral Steve Abbott), a lack of confidence in “the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief…[who] co-opt[s] [them] for political purposes” (Admiral Michael Mullen), and “militarizing” the response to political protest to generate “a false conflict…between the military and civilian society…[that] erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond” between the military and the larger society in which it resides (General James Mattis). These extraordinary public statements are driven by fears that a professional military is unsustainable when its apolitical nature is being undermined. See Courtney Kube and Dan de Luce, “More than 200 retired generals, admirals endorse Biden, including some who served under Trump,” CBS News, September 24, 2020. Michael Mullen, “I Cannot Remain Silent,” The Atlantic, June 2, 2020. James N. Mattis, “The Full Statement from Jim Mattis,” NPR.org, June 4, 2020. Paul D. Eaton, “A Top-Down Review for the Pentagon,” The New York Times, March 19, 2006. Thomas E. Ricks, “Rumsfeld Rebuked by Retired Generals, Ex-Iraq Commander Calls for Resignation,” The Washington Post, April 13, 2006. David S. Cloud and Eric Schmitt, “More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld’s Resignation,” The New York Times, April 14, 2006. David Margolick, “The Night of the Generals,” Vanity Fair, April 2007.

[19] Interviews, November 2019, December 2019, January 2020. Personal communications, November 2019, December 2019, January 2020.

[20] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Loeb Classical Library 73), translated by H. Rackham. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1934 [fourth century bce]): §§2.6.4–2.9.9, esp. §§2.8.1–2.8.8, 2.9.3–2.9.4.

[21] For example, Army four-star general and Army Chief of Staff Eric K. Shinseki had already provoked Rumsfeld’s ire with his concerns about insufficient troops being overextended across the world such that Rumsfeld nominated a replacement (General John M. Keane, who later withdrew before assuming the post) in 2002, a year before Shinseki’s term would end. Thereafter, Shinseki was effectively sidelined, and later testified to Congress in February 2003 that after the planned invasion of Iraq, “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably…required,” which was more than double the size of the intended force. See Bradley Graham, “Retired General Picked to Head Army,” The Washington Post, June 11, 2003. Thom Shanker, “Retiring Army Chief of Staff Warns Against Arrogance,” The New York Times, June 12, 2003. Thom Shanker, “New Strategy Vindicates Ex-Army Chief Shinseki,” The New York Times, January 12, 2007. Nicolaus Mills, “Punished for telling the truth about Iraq war,” CNN, March 20, 2013. Jamie McIntyre, “Myth of Shinseki lingers,” CNN, December 08, 2008.

[22] Despite the formal severance and associated costs that comes with resignation, the officer’s past service and moral authority cannot be erased. That remains with the individual and it leavens the cost of resignation, especially given the relative ease of moving into other parts of the military-industrial-political complex and if followed up by literal speech explaining the issues prompting the resignation.

[23] Gregory Newbold, “Why Iraq Was a Mistake,” Time, April 09, 2006. Thom Shanker, “General regrets not questioning war,” The New York Times, April 10, 2006. Thomas E. Ricks, “General With a Key Pentagon Role to Retire,” The Washington Post, May 02, 2002.

[24] Thom Shanker, “Army Career Behind Him, General Speaks Out on Iraq,” The New York Times, May 13, 2007. “Retired Generals Discuss Rumsfeld’s Leadership,” Talk of the Nation (National Public Radio), April 25, 2006.