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Tom Nichols Profile picture
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20 Apr, 4 tweets, 1 min read
I should have know that people would be "whatabouting" this and would whine about one comment about Biden.

Biden is the president. Sequestered or not, the chief executive can and should set an example by respecting the deliberations of a jury. He's not just another pundit. /1
It was not some huge or fatal error. But if you care about the rule of law, you do not want the president ahead of time speculating about the "right" verdict. That's something Trump would do. Presidents should say: "I have faith in the justice system." Period. /2
It doesn't *matter* that they were sequestered. That's not the issue. The issue is that if they'd gone any other way, the President would be in the position of saying "well, the jury got it wrong." You don't want Presidents in that position. Not a huge error, just unwise. /3
I realize everyone's on an emotional high and I understand that, even if my half-Vulcan parentage does not encourage it. But "everything Joe says is right" is no better than the cheerleading for the Former Guy.
Presidents should not prejudge jury verdicts.
/4x

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Tom Nichols Profile picture
18 Apr
There are plenty of military folks who value education; military is sending one of my uniformed students for a PhD at a top school. (I am being vague to protect privacy.) But increasingly, I note that there are many who also say things like "Harvard" with dripping contempt. /1
Some of this is the recent division between conservative America the rest of the country over those commie pinko university socialists, but that's always been present in the military: Bob Gates pleaded to "embrace the eggheads" when he was SECDEF. /2
But I could tell you stories that go way back, like the ROTC student who got into an Ivy League school and her service didn't want to pay for it. "Why should I send you there when I can send five of you to a public school?"
And they complain that the elitists won't join up. /3
Read 6 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
18 Apr
And yes, since I am critical of how military education works - the place I've spent my career - I will say more at another time about it. But the problem with PME is simple: It's run by the military. /1
That is, PME institutions are intended to create a fusing of civilian and military education to produce a better officer corps, more agile, more intellectually flexible to face the challenges ahead even if we can't be sure what they are. /2
My own school - FOR WHOM I DO NOT SPEAK, if that's not clear enough - has for 50 years been trying to prevent the intellectual civil-military rift that created Vietnam. VADM Turner's convocation address back in the 70s is very clear on this. /3
Read 8 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
18 Apr
When I first started lecturing to military audiences about civil-military relations 25 years ago, I said U.S. civ-mil relations were a excellent model.
I would never say that now. We have a dysfunctional civ-mil situation in so many ways. /1
Too many civilian political leaders lack military experience, and so they defer to the uniformed military too quickly. It's all "TYFYS" and "Tell us what you need to get the job done" and no real control other than some budgetary constraints. /2
We've gone from a citizen-soldier model to an army of venerated Spartans, who are treated - and who believe themselves to be - superior to the civilians they are supposed to serve and protect. We are creating a Latin American officer corps, isolated from society and above it. /3
Read 8 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
16 Apr
This is very American thinking. "If we keep doing this, does it make it better?" It's like asking: "If I take keep taking blood pressure medication, will my BP become normal?"
No. And you don't have to take it. And it does have side effects And maybe nothing will happen. /1
Part of the reason people hated the AFG mission is that it wasn't a "mission," it was prophylaxis. And that doesn't have an "end" or a "solution," you just stay in a bad situation to prevent a possible worse situation. Or you can accept the risk and move on. /2
The public has never sent a clear message about this, and the Pentagon is an organization based on risk-aversion, and presidents were trapped between catcalls of "warmonger" and "coward," and so Biden has made a decision, which is what presidents should do. /3
Read 4 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
16 Apr
Just to continue pissing people off about this, civilians who talk about "forever wars" were not "at war." We were never asked to sacrifice a damn thing. Volunteers were in combat and in danger in two short actual wars and then in protracted, preventive security ops. /1
Americans wanted to be "at war" to gain clear "victory" in places where that wasn't possible. We destroyed AQ, the Hussein regime, and most of ISIS. All things that made us more secure, and then we said: "Okay, just keep doing whatever it is that's working, we're busy." /2
As @dandrezner once wrote, U.S. governing elites were not constrained by foreign policy issues because the public doesn't really care about. The military was war weary and overstretched, but the public just didn't care that much, no matter how much they say they did. /3
Read 12 tweets
Tom Nichols Profile picture
15 Apr
If you wonder why I bristle at "forever war" terminology about AFG, imagine a war where far more Americans are killed - say, 35K- there's never a peace treaty, and we stay for another 70 years to help nation-build.
Totally unacceptable! Insane! Forever!

That would be Korea.

/1
This is not an argument for staying in Afghanistan. It's an argument for making sure that when we debate the use of force and the risk to our security, we don't get sloppy with terms like "war" just to engage in political point-scoring. I think leaving AFG is unavoidable now. /2
I think Trump did it wrong and caused a lot of damage. Biden's doing it better, but it's still the best of a lot of bad options, in part because we obsessed on the word "war" which implies that any end is either "victory" or "defeat," neither of which is going to happen here. /3
Read 5 tweets

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