U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were furious when Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) and Elissa Plotkin (D-Michigan) and other Democrats, in a video, advised members of the U.S. military that they could defy orders that are illegal. But Kelly and the others didn't back down, maintaining that while members of the military must follow legal orders, they are obligated to defy orders they know to be illegal. And when Trump, in a Tuesday, April 7 post on his Truth Social platform, threatened to destroy "a whole civilization" with Iran, Kelly — himself a former naval officer — doubled down on his position.
Hegseth, with the United States at war with Iran, continues to fire top Pentagon leaders. And Never Trump conservative David French, in a New York Times opinion column published on Thursday, April 9, warns that the military is in a dangerous state of turmoil under Trump and Hegseth's leadership.
"On Tuesday, President Trump attacked the soul of the American military," French laments. "At 7:06 a.m., he posted, 'A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again' if Iran did not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz. The principal target of that message was the Iranian regime and the innocent men, women and children who would suffer if Trump acted on his unconscionable, reprehensible threat. But there was another more subtle target for his words: the men and women of the United States military."
French continues, "The president was placing a choice before them. Do you serve Trump, or do you serve the Constitution? Do you serve Trump, or do you serve an even deeper law than the Constitution — the universal moral imperative to protect the innocent and the vulnerable?"
After threatening to annihilate Iran, Trump agreed to a two-week ceasefire with the country's far-right theocracy. French argues that while Americans should feel "a degree of relief" that "the worst has not happened yet," they should "feel anger even more."
"Trump's post was a declaration by an American president that he intended to commit war crimes so grave that they could, if fully carried out, constitute a crime against humanity," French warns. "As terrible as that is, Trump's putative orders also threatened to break the moral backbone of the American military and trigger one of the most serious constitutional crises in American history. His threats, which apparently included the destruction of every bridge, power plant and possibly every desalination plant in Iran if it didn't agree to his terms, would have plunged the country into nearly medieval conditions, creating human suffering on a staggering scale…. If you want the best of America to join the military, you have to create a moral culture that the best people want to join."