So now the U.S. Navy has dismissed Capt. Brett C. Cozier from command of the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. His offense? Bluntly explaining that if sailors stricken with the coronavirus are not removed from the ship more quickly, the Navy will have failed not only the sick sailors but also the entire crew.
Unbelievable! In the Trump administration, telling the truth to protect those in one’s command is now a firing offense.
Actually, we shouldn’t be surprised. In this month’s Atlantic, the lead article is “How To Destroy A Government” by George Packer. The article breaks down the step-by-step process by which Donald Trump, who knows next to nothing of formal processes and cares even less about institutional purposes, has subverted the State Department and Justice Department to serve his own self-aggrandizement.
He has done this mostly by targeting independent, stand-up individuals for destruction, and then using their demises as object lessons of what will happen if one isn’t loyal to him, as opposed to loyal to duty, honor and country — i.e., one’s oath of office. When combined with placing willing (and sometimes ruthlessly competent) accomplices in positions of power, this process has been lethal.
It is well worth the time it takes to read Packer’s concise description of how destroying first James Comey and then Andrew McCabe (combined with appointing William Barr), and then destroying Masha Yovanovitch (combined with appointing Michael Pompeo), have brought the Justice and State departments to heel. There is no reason to believe Trump won’t follow the same search-and-destroy tactic with the U.S. military.
It reminds one of the warnings which Masha Gessen gave in her article “Autocracy: Rules for Survival” which was published in The New York Review of Books the week after the 2016 election. Her points of resistance to the coming debacle were:
Believe the autocrat.
Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.
Institutions will not save you.
Be outraged.
Don’t make compromises.
Remember the future.
And yet, in this macabre Trump-world where we find ourselves, people do ignore obvious outrages by straining to believe the best and by rationalizing the worst. They do get lulled into complacency by small signs of arguably normal behavior and small sounds of possibly reasonable explanation. They do assume institutions have more moral fortitude than the individuals who populate them. They do tire of being outraged as bizarre becomes normalized. They do compromise for the sake of getting through just one more day, week or month. And they do forget about future promise while grasping or even groveling for present security.
So far, every one of the seasoned diplomats, lawyers and military officers who have been used and then discarded by the current administration have remained quiet about what they have seen and heard. To wit: Gen. John Kelly who addressed the Wasatch Speaker Series in February. We have heard from some incidental participants who’ve served their purposes before being tossed out on their ears. But not one active careerist has sounded a timely alarm or raised a noble rallying cry. Only on the periphery have retired judges, retired admirals and generals and retired civil servants condemned the wholesale dismantling of American mores and moorings.
We all wait and hope for the first voice to start the pent-up chorus of condemnation. Maybe it will be Capt. Crozier’s voice. Maybe one of the Navy’s current admirals will speak up. It certainly won’t be Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who, judging by his swift dismissal of Crozier, is apparently one of Trump’s willing henchmen.
In the meantime, we need not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for America – the U.S. – us.
Russell C. Fericks
Russell C. Fericks is a past U.S. Army officer and an attorney at the Salt Lake City law firm of Richards Brandt Miller Nelson.