President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are vowing to end "woke" culture in the U.S. Armed Forces, and Hegseth continues saying that a "warrior ethos" needs to prevail at the Pentagon. But not all veterans appreciate their rhetoric.
During an interview with The Guardian published on January 5, retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul D. Eaton argued that Trump and Hegseth are doing the military a major disservice by politicizing it.
Eaton told The Guardian, "There is an active effort to politicize the (U.S.) Armed Forces. Once you infect the body, the cure may be very difficult and painful for presidents downstream…. As the phrase goes, reputation is built a drop at a time and emptied in buckets."
Eaton, who is now 75 and spent 37 years in active-duty service, even compares Trump's politicization of the military to dictator Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Eaton told The Guardian, "Stalin killed a lot of the best and brightest of the military leadership, and then inserted political commissars into the units. The doubt that swept the armed forces of the Soviet Union is reminiscent of today — they are not killing these men and women, but they are removing them from positions of authority with similar impact."
Eaton is highly critical of Trump's use of the military and federalized National Guard troops in major U.S. cities, and he fears some type of confrontation between National Guard troops and local police.
The retired U.S. Army general told The Guardian, "What could go wrong? You can very easily see an escalation in which both sides think they are right, obeying orders that they believe were given legally…. There are going to be people getting hurt who really don't need to get hurt."
Read retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul D. Eaton's interview with The Guardian at this link.