Given that the five men Donald Trump revealed to The Washington Post in March are among his national security advisers, some of the names on a roster of 88 retired high-level military figures who have signed a letter endorsing the candidate should come as no surprise. The letter states:
The 2016 election affords the American people an urgently needed opportunity to make a long-overdue course correction in our national security posture and policy. As retired senior leaders of America’s military, we believe that such a change can only be made by someone who has not been deeply involved with, and substantially responsible for, the hollowing out of our military and the burgeoning threats facing our country around the world.
For this reason, we support Donald Trump’s candidacy to be our next Commander-in-Chief. For the past eight years, America’s armed forces have been subjected to a series of ill-considered and debilitating budget cuts, policy choices and combat operations that have left the superb men and women in uniform less capable of performing their vital missions in the future than we require them to be. [...]
For this reason, we support Donald Trump and his commitment to rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically. We urge our fellow Americans to do the same.
While each signer had a lengthy (and frequently distinguished) career, Russell Berman at The Atlantic pointedly notes that : “None of the signatories was a service chief or led a major combatant command.”
Moreover, while 88 may sound impressive, Mitt Romney—remember him?—had endorsements from 500 ex-military, including a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
How these 87 men and one woman can positively view a candidate with as many contradictory views about national security as Donald Trump has expressed is hard to comprehend. Do they seriously believe, after so many years of their service, that this man would make a good commander in chief? Is he someone they could salute? A guy whose views vacillate between anti-interventionism and dropping nukes on the Middle East? If they think Trump can be trusted on any matter of importance, they should read David Cay Johnston’s scathing and tightly researched month-old book, The Making of Donald Trump.
Is it because most of them simply don’t want a woman as commander-in-chief?
Maybe their support has something to do with the fact more than half of them sit on the boards of weapons manufacturers and others with Pentagon contracts. As Johnston’s investigative reporting on Trump’s method of operation shows, he would be likely to boost weapons spending if he owned the companies making them.
Maybe they are like the cohort of retired military whom the Bush Pentagon trained to be pro-Iraq War analysts for Foxaganda and other “news” outlets.
Many of them don’t have long track records of making their political views publicly known. But there are exceptions. One of the more prominent is retired Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, a hard-core Christian nationalist who said the Christian god is bigger than Allah.
He is so far along the right-wing spectrum that even President George W. Bush had to reprimand him for his statements—made while in uniform—that the U.S. is and should be engaged in a holy war against Islam, that there should be no mosques in America, that Islam is not really a religion, that Muslims should not be protected by the First Amendment, that President Obama is a “secret Muslim” who “cavort[s] with the enemy” and that Jesus is a real “man’s man” who will return to earth carrying an AR-15. He also said:
"We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this. … [Our] spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
In other words, he’s an Islamophobic nut holding fascist tenets. Which, of course, would put him on the short list as a replacement running mate for Trump, if Pence decides to bail.