During the last administration it was hard to go a week or even a day without someone decrying a supposedly appalling “attack” on members of the press by President Donald Trump. These assaults largely consisted of Trump objecting to loaded questions and other gasbaggery from members of the fourth estate.
We expect politicians with partisan agendas to spar with journalists. Not so much members of the armed forces speaking in their official capacity, which is what happened last week after Tucker Carlson of Fox News dared to comment about the role of women in the military. The Second Marine Expeditionary Force responded with a snotty, childish tweet, telling Carlson: “Come back when you’ve served and been pregnant.” Generals, other currently serving officers and the Pentagon’s press secretary joined in the ensuing sortie.
The implication was clear: Civilians who dare to criticize military policy should expect to be harshly rebuked, not by their fellow citizens or even by elected politicians, but by members of the armed forces in their official capacity.
Even those less skeptical of US military adventurism than this columnist would agree, I hope, that our boys — excuse me, our brave men and women — should not be intervening in journalism of all places. Boots on the ground in Ethiopia? Maybe, maybe not. In a cable news studio? Phew.
The behavior of these “woke generals,” as Carlson called them, should horrify Americans, regardless of their views on, say, women in combat. The fact that the II Marine Expeditionary Force later issued an apology doesn’t change the reality that dressing down a journalist undermines the basic principle of civilian control of the military.
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