[On April 11, 1951, President Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his position as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. MacArthur is one of many U.S. Generals who have a great deal to tell us about our wars, our military histories, and many other political and social contexts, so this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of other famous generals, leading up to a complex layer of our current military and American moment.]
On two ways to AmericanStudy our current military moment, and a painful third context.
When I planned this weeklong blog series, and even when I drafted the earlier posts in it, I didn’t expect that we’d be fighting a foreign war when it aired (maybe I should have, given, y’know, everything, but this was one thing that the worst president in American history hadn’t previously done; although he’s come close with both the invasion of Venezuela and the constant attacks on boats in that nation’s vicinity and beyond, on which more in a moment). One of the most awful things about our war with Iran (a very competitive list to be sure) has been the clear ease, and frankly apparent delight, with which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has discussed the commission of war crimes as a key element of our conduct of this war. And while I don’t think for a second that Hegseth usually speaks for our generals or other military brass, it’s important to note that when it comes to the most blatant such war crime thus far—the multiple bombings of an Iranian elementary school, apparently planned to draw in first responders with the first strike before bombing them with the second—a war crime, to add one more awful layer, that seems to have been planned by AI—our military leaders at least had to sign off on the ill-intent of Hegseth et al.
There is of course plenty of precedent for U.S. military leaders signing off on genocides, even if I might have hoped that they’d be able to resist such orders from this particular crew. I did have relatively recent cause to hope for such a resistant response: from this past December, when Admiral Alvin Holsey abruptly stepped down from his position as head of the U.S. Southern Command. Holsey gave no public reason for his resignation, and some reporting claimed that it was simply a planned retirement; but it came in the middle of his appointed three-year term, and in that role he had been in charge of the aforementioned unlawful attacks on boats in the Caribbean. And moreover, Admiral Holsey apparently had been pushing back against Hegseth for months when it came to those illegal strikes—as, again, I would hope any military leader would when it comes to any illegal acts and doubly so the commission of war crimes, even if far too often in both history and our present moment they have apparently not done so. War might be hell, but for nearly a century now warring parties have agreed to follow a set of shared rules for avoiding war crimes, and if a leader like Admiral Holsey refused to continue breaking those rules, good on him.
I can’t write about the use of the military in 2026 without including a distinct, and distinctly horrific, additional context: the presence of military forces on the streets of American cities, in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. In this Saturday Evening Post Considering History column for Hurricane Katrina’s 20th Anniversary, I noted that the aftermath of that disaster provided a painful foreshadowing of this modern military use, one about which Brigadier General Gary Jones argued, “This place is going to look like a little Somalia. We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.” So I don’t want to pretend that Trump’s use of military forces in cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis is something entirely new under the sun—but I also would argue that, as in so many other arenas, this administration has taken these worst aspects of our history and extended and expanded upon them. As we approach the 2026 midterm elections, it’s worth keeping an eye on whether they will try to use the military in that setting—and if so, what our generals and other military leaders will do in response.
Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Generals or other military histories, past or present, you’d highlight?
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