Trump thinks codes of honor are for suckers and sissies

Iran’s Qassem Soleimani was an engine of mayhem in the Middle East. His business model was to go to Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq and recruit Arab Shiites to kill Arab Sunnis (and Americans and Israelis) and to create pro-Iranian statelets inside Iran’s Arab neighbors to weaken them from the inside. No one should mourn his passing.

But his assassination was done without a clear strategic or moral framework. In covering U.S. interventions in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, I learned that when administrations are not constantly forced to answer hard questions from the outside about what they’re thinking strategically and morally — when questioners are dismissed as unpatriotic — the administrations’ inside thinking gets sloppy, their intelligence gets manipulated and trouble follows.

Never assume that people who are in charge know what they are doing just because they are in charge.

What is President Donald Trump’s strategic framework? One day, without any consultation with allies or our commanders, he ordered U.S. troops out of Syria, where they were serving as a critical block on Iran’s ability to build a land bridge to Lebanon and were a key source of intelligence. In the process, he abandoned our most important allies in fighting ISIS: the Syrian Kurds, who were also creating an island of decency in their region.

And then, a few weeks later, Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani. This prompted Iran to restart its nuclear weapons program, which could well necessitate U.S. military action.

But it also may have sparked popular discontent in Iran that will further delegitimize the regime — a good thing. So what’s our priority: take advantage of Iran’s weakened regime to secure a better nuclear deal or urge its people to topple it? And how will we react if the regime mows down Iranians we’ve encouraged to rise? Very unclear.

But Trump also has no moral framework. He ordered the killing of Soleimani — a depraved Iranian warrior — not long after he gave a moral pass to a depraved U.S. warrior.

How so? Guess who the Trumps had over to Mar-aLago during the Christmas holidays? They welcomed Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher and his wife. During the summer, Gallagher was tried in a military court on war crimes. A member of his platoon told investigators, “You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving.”

That assessment was published by The New York Times a few days after the Trumps warmly received the Gallaghers. It was part of a trove of leaked combat video, text messages and confidential interviews with members of SEAL Team 7 that revealed in chilling detail why Gallagher, their platoon commander, had been tried for his actions in Iraq.

The Times said this of Gallagher’s military exploits in 2017: His unit had captured and wounded a young ISIS fighter — “a scraggly teenager … so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.” They sedated him to perform a procedure to help him breathe.

“Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.” Gallagher later posed for a photograph with the dead captive, which he shared with others.

Gallagher was eventually turned in for this and other incidents by his fellow SEALs. He was charged with 10 offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The Navy demoted Gallagher. That is until Fox News got Trump to reverse the punishment, restore his rank — and block the Navy from upholding its moral code by stripping Gallagher of his status as a Navy SEAL.

For Trump, the idea that in war or diplomacy there’d be an ethical code that we’d impose on ourselves is an utterly alien concept.

Codes are for suckers and sissies in Trump’s view. He thinks that what makes American soldiers great is that they’re killers. And his view is let killers be killers.

But Gallagher’s SEAL teammates, by calling him out, said that our military is unique and respected because we operate by a code and that code is our moral framework under pressure.

Why does it all matter, you ask? Ask the family of the next American soldier captured by terrorists after his captors declare, “We’re going to do to your soldier just what Trump excused Gallagher for doing to one of ours.”