Commentary
You Don't Send Ammunition to the Other Side
What some Americans are handing the enemy, and why they're doing it
I have written before about how hatred colors everything a person sees. Once a man lets hatred into his mind, into his soul, it filters through everything. It infects everything. It infests everything. And it is an ugly thing to watch.
The hatred of Donald Trump is that pervasive in our society now. It's colored our politics, our friendships, our family dinners. I've had friends turn on me over it, and not because I insulted them. For years I thought it was mostly just ugly. Six months into a shooting war, I don't think it's ugly anymore. I think it's dangerous.
The Men Who Used to Wear the Uniform
Over the last several weeks I've watched former military leaders go on camera and into print and tell the country that this war is being lost. That the president has lost control of it. That our people over there are being mishandled, undersupplied, left exposed. Some of these men had stars on their shoulders once. The newspapers can't print it fast enough.
I have not seen one active-duty officer say any of this. Not one.
Everybody in the military knows exactly what happens if they do. There's a name for the offense and there's a court that hears it, and they'd be court-martialed for it. The only ones talking are the ones already past the reach of that court, still carrying the rank on their business card.
What It Costs Us
Say everything they're telling us is true. It still shouldn't be printed.
Something can be true and still hand the enemy what he didn't have. He learns where we're thin. He learns what we can't resupply and how fast. He learns which weakness to push on. That isn't analysis. That's a gift, delivered free, in English, on the front page, by men who will never be shot at for it.
And it does damage here at home. A mother in Ohio reads that our sailors aren't getting supplied. A wife in Texas reads that the men at her husband's base are exposed and nobody is coming for them. She can't check a word of it. She can only sit with it. And when something does happen over there, the same people who put that fear in her will turn around and tell her whose fault it was.
You don't send food and ammunition and equipment to the other side to fight against your own. Nobody would defend that. In a war fought like this one, information is ammunition. And that truck is running every single day.
It Used to Have a Name
In the old days we called this what it was. Aiding and abetting an enemy in a time of war wasn't treated as commentary, and the penalty wasn't a stern note from an editor.
I know the objection. The Constitution defines treason narrowly, and it does it on purpose, and I'm glad it does. I'm not asking anybody to bring back hangings.
I'm asking a simpler question. If a retired officer uses the rank this country gave him to broadcast our weaknesses to the enemy, and he does it because it pays, what happens to him?
Nothing happens to him. He keeps his pension. He keeps his title. He's booked again next Tuesday.
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I think that pension should be at risk. In the worst cases I think prison should be on the table. A man who draws money from the American people for the rest of his life owes those people better than this.
Follow the Money
That's the part nobody wants to say out loud. This isn't about conscience. It's about money.
Outrage is the most reliable product on the internet right now. It travels faster than good news, it costs nothing to make, and it pays in views and likes and shares and subscriptions and speaking fees. The newspapers know this. The Facebook groups know it. The self-appointed watchmen with a camera and a ring light know it best of all. They found out they can get paid to be angry, so they're angry right on schedule.
I'll go one step further, and I'll tell you up front that I'm speculating here.
Several of the loudest voices in this country turned on this president at almost the same time, on the same subject, using almost the same words. That kind of timing usually isn't an accident. Did somebody pay for it? Is it possible? It's possible. Is it true? I don't know. I don't have that inside information and I'm not going to pretend I do. But the question is fair, and asking who profits from a coordinated turn isn't a conspiracy theory. It's just arithmetic.
This Is Not a Free Speech Issue
People bring up freedom of speech, so let's go down that path.
Say whatever you want about the president. Scream it. Print it. Put it on a sign and walk it up and down the street. I'll defend that, and I mean it, because I've used that same freedom on presidents I couldn't stand.
Free speech is the right to criticize your own government. It has never been the right to supply your government's enemy. When a man's words stop being an argument aimed at the American public and start being useful to a foreign one, he's walked out of the argument and into the war. It has nothing to do with tone. It has to do with who's actually listening.
I Am Not in the "He Can Do No Wrong" Camp
I've been accused of the opposite problem. Reverse Trump derangement, where the man can do no wrong. I'm not in that camp and I never have been.
He's a human being. He has made mistakes, he's made many of them, and he'll make more. He answers his critics by calling them traitors and losers and low IQ people, and that isn't how I would do it. I've said so publicly and I'll say it here.
But a man doesn't have to be perfect to deserve my support. And his critics aren't right just because he's imperfect. On the substance of what he said about these people, I think he's closer to correct than the way he said it. If a man won't stand behind his country on something this important, and the reason is that outrage pays better than loyalty, then he isn't a watchman. He's a salesman.
I want to say the other thing too, because people assume otherwise about anybody who supports this war. I hate war. I don't like war. Who does like war? The ones who like war are the ones who make money from war, and I have never made a dollar from one in my life.
Why This War Is Bigger Than It Looks
Here's why I support what the president is doing, even hating what it costs.
There's a system in this world older than any of our political parties. It runs on debt. It owns a great deal of the media. It has made money off nearly every major war of the last two hundred years, and where it could, it funded both sides. It builds up a regime and then sells the weapons used to fight that regime. Anybody who reads the last two centuries with his eyes open runs into it.
Moroni didn't call it a system. He called it a combination, and he told us exactly what it wants.
"For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies." (Ether 8:25)
He wasn't writing history for his own people. He wrote it down for us, and he said why.
"And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold, they shall be destroyed." (Ether 8:22)
Abraham Lincoln moved against the money power and didn't finish his term. John Kennedy moved the same direction and didn't finish his. I'm not going to tell you I know everything about either case, because I don't. I know both men touched the same nerve.
This president is touching it again, and he's still standing.
"And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast." (Revelation 13:3)
A wound to the head of that beast is what John saw. I believe that's what we're watching. And I believe that's the real reason for the volume and the timing of the attacks on this man. Nobody spends this much money and this much reputation fighting somebody who isn't threatening something.
Where I Land
They hate this man so much they're willing to put everything at risk. That's what I keep coming back to. Not the politics. The willingness.
A man who will risk his own country's soldiers to score a point against a president he can't stand has told you what he values, and it isn't the country. He's made a trade. He gets the applause and somebody else's son carries the cost.
I'm not asking anybody to love this president. I'm asking them to look at what their hatred of him is being handed over for, and to whom.
The people saying these things should be held accountable. The papers eager to amplify them should be held accountable too. Not because they criticized a president. Because of who was listening.
Kelly Smith is the author of The First Horseman, Donald Trump and Biblical Prophecy. Read the free chapter and learn more at FirstHorseman.World.
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