to, yes, the firing but also how he s written about it. well, there are two things that i would say right off the top. one is that the commander in chief moving down into the granular details of the uniformed code of military justice, which is in essence of rule of law for the military, is not good. it s very dangerous. it shouldn t be done. it s cautioned against even for generals to move down into the granular details of the ucmj because it perverts the system. i m not too happy with the secretary of the navy s attempts to pervert the system beforehand, and i think the president was justified in letting him go, the secretary of defense was justified in letting him go, but this whole business smacks of using the military for political purposes. let s go to the appearance in afghanistan. one of the things i teach my students is what s the first thing a u.s. president does when he s in trouble? he wraps himself in the flag of the military.
this is something that i think has to be a broader conversation with parties. you know that invitation to camp david was so controversial that even republicans in congress who are often loathe to speak out against the president felt the need to criticize that. let s move onto the rest of some of the chaos that s been happening between the department of defense and the president this week. so the firing of the secretary of the navy. do your members, do veterans know what to make of this? i think a lot of people are just confused. i mean, i think one of the biggest most frustrating things is there s so much that our country, our administration, the va, congress, that they all need to be focused on to support our military and our veterans. there are so many other issues not the least of which is military and veteran suicide, that this is another seemingly distracting and divisive issue. the ucmj is an incredibly
afghanistan but mark milley and general scott miller who is the four star general in charge of u.s. operations in afghanistan. a general with decades of expaerns in special operations. very well regarded. if you were pushing back against the u.s. military command structure, you re pushing back against top commanders like that referring to them as the deep state. this is something that certainly there s just probably no way to describe it other than to say it s not trau. spider, beyond my rarely seen excellent sports commentary, your final thoughts? completely aligned with what barbara just said. the notion of a military deep state which really is throwing darts very, very precisely at the ucmj that really underpins everything you do in the military to ensure that the
here. and again, i take great offense with the description of the military and certainly the ucmj process i was involved in deeply in some incredibly troubling issues as being part of the deep state. that s insulting to me and it needs to be eliminated. that s certainly not the issue. but as we ve all described, of course, the president has got some disruptive tendencies here. this particular case is about a former secretary of the navy who made a significant mistake and he needs to raise his hand and say i m out of here. i don t think there s any doubt in anybody s mind that the united states military is the most professional, the most incredible, the most amazing group of young men and women led magnificently by these great leaders we have tested in combat over the course of the last 18 years. thousands of whom will not be home with their families this thanksgiving. so keep that in mind.
back and say, okay, let s let the process that has already demonstrated itself to be failing in this case to just play out, i don t think that that s necessarily a call he had to make. timothy, it s a little bit foreboding what you just said because one of the critiques people pushed back on is the idea of the military justice system being villainized in this way, and you ve just called it essentially this conspiracy-based or this problematic institution. is that fair overall? think about the countries that are hosting the american troops. well, i think that in this case we certainly have demonstrated that the ucmj as written is something that was appropriate many years ago but needs to be updated. the way that it was used and abused in this case really shows problems. you had a prosecutor who went completely rogue, and he went out and committed crimes to try and get a wrongful conviction. and in the end, we went through a trial. they presented evidence. they didn t have it.