President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for top advisors to oversee the military show that the generation of veterans who took part in the Global War on Terrorism are now reaching some of the most senior positions in the U.S. government.
Trump has selected Marine veteran J.D. Vance for his vice president and nominated former Army National Guard Maj. Pete Hegseth to be his secretary of defense, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Tulsi Gabbard has been tapped to be director of national intelligence, and Air Force veteran Doug Collins as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. He has also appointed Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a retired National Guard colonel and Green Beret, as National Security Advisor.
The worldview of these veterans has largely been shaped by more than two decades of war. Hegseth, Gabbard, and Vance in particular have shown a deep distrust for the foreign interventionalist ideology that underpinned the start of the Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT. Hegseth recently described himself on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast as “a recovering NeoCon for six years.” Gabbard often accused the Biden administration of getting the United States entangled in multiple foreign conflicts. And Vance has opposed U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.
The ascendance of the GWOT generation comes at a time when Trump may be considering punishing military leaders for any role in the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. A Republican senator has already placed a hold on the promotion of Army Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who led paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division in Kabul during the evacuation.
Military veterans and national security experts interviewed by Task & Purpose suggested that the viewpoints of these prospective appointees may be indicative of distrust and bitterness within the larger Global War on Terrorism veteran community, stemming from two decades of war that spanned the Middle East and largely lacked a clear end state or strategic goal. However, whether the current line-up of post-9/11 veteran appointees are the best picks to address that sentiment and seek accountability is unclear.
Time for a reckoning
The desire for accountability comes from a “deep wellspring of dissatisfaction” that many of the veterans who spent a generation fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have about how the wars were conducted, said Marine veteran Peter Lucier.
Lucier remembers a briefing he received in 2011 in Afghanistan as a moment that captures the disillusionment of the GWOT generation. At the time, he was a junior Marine who had served in the Corps for two years. The mission made sense: America had been attacked from Afghanistan 10 years earlier, and he felt it was worth risking his life and the lives of others to continue deploying there.
But when he arrived in-country and got his first briefing from his regimental combat team commander, everything changed, he said.
“He said: ‘I want you to be safe out there. There’s not a single thing you do here that is worth the life of a single Marine.’ And I said: What the f—k? What do you mean, it’s ‘not worth the life of a single Marine’? If it’s not worth the life of a Marine, why are we here? If we’re going to go fight and die and kill, what do you mean it’s not worth the life of a Marine? It better be f—king worth the life of a Marine, right?”
That was the start of Lucier’s belief that there was a vast gulf between the slow defeat he thought he was seeing unfold on the ground and the story senior military leaders were telling Congress of America winning the war in Afghanistan.
Even at the time of Lucier’s first deployment, the sentiment among veterans of the wars had begun to shift. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center report, only half of post-9/11 vets interviewed felt the War in Afghanistan, which was in the midst of an ongoing troop surge, was worth it, and just over half of veterans interviewed felt the Iraq War had not been worth the cost.
By 2019, disfavor with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had grown among veterans, according to another Pew Research Study, which found that nearly two-thirds of veterans said the Iraq War wasn’t worth fighting, with 58% saying the same about the Afghanistan War.
For Lucier, the disparity between the perspectives of junior troops and what generals were saying publicly about the war undermined GWOT veterans’ belief that their chain of command and other leaders — whom they wanted to trust — cared about telling the truth.
Lucier said he believes a reckoning for 20 years of military mistakes is long overdue, but so far does not believe that most of Trump’s cabinet picks are the right people to do it. He fears that, rather than investigate the fundamental issues that led to failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump’s team is more focused on finding scapegoats, such as political ideas like “wokeism,” that run the risk of hurting the wrong people rather than prepare the military for future wars.
Correcting foreign policy
Marine veteran Cullen Tiernan, on the other hand, was encouraged by Trump’s GWOT veteran picks, especially Vance. Tiernan has personal ties to both Vance and Gabbard. He served side-by-side with Vance as a fellow public affairs Marine in Iraq, and has remained friends with him since. In 2020, he was the spokesperson for Gabbard’s presidential campaign.
“It’s definitely time to challenge the people in Washington who have been putting the interests of the military-industrial complex over that of the American people,” Tiernan said. “I’m thankful that veterans who served in these conflicts are now getting the opportunity to course correct our foreign policy and are getting more and more seats at the table.”
In Vance, Tiernan said, he sees a politician who knows what it is like to be deployed away from friends and family members, one who does not want to put others through that experience for wars that do not make the United States any safer, Tiernan told Task & Purpose.
“That is absolutely the right perspective we need a heartbeat away from the White House and frankly something we have been missing since President Eisenhower and JFK’s eras,” Tiernan said.
Tiernan also voiced support over the Republican party’s decision to embrace Gabbard, who is a sharp contrast from Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the key Republican architects of the Iraq war more than 20 years ago. Gabbard’s understanding of the cost of war has shaped her worldview, he said.
He also took issue with Democratic lawmakers who have been skeptical of Gabbard’s anti-war stance, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Tiernan believes that Gabbard has raised an alarm, while others have remained silent, that the U.S.’s involvement in Ukraine is moving the country closer to a war with Russia.
Gabbard has her share of critics for past statements in support of regimes in Syria and for accusations of basing her views of Ukraine aid on Russian disinformation. But Tiernan says the origin of Gabbard’s views are from her time in service and her experience in U.S. conflicts.
“When you’re focused on the cost of war, and you’re trying to prevent the next war, these political attacks will happen,” Tiernan said in response to the criticisms leveled at Gabbard.
Tiernan said that he hopes Trump and his team finally hold people accountable for mistakes during the GWOT. He argued that the same advocates for war in Afghanistan and Iraq are now pushing “for our forever involvement with war in Syria and Ukraine.”
Reform vs. retribution
While veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may feel that it is long past due to hold people responsible for strategic mistakes since 9/11, there’s always the risk that the search for accountability may devolve into a political witch hunt.
Army veteran Alex Plitsas describes himself as among a particular group of vets in their early to mid-40s who have never seen a peacetime military. Plitsas deployed to Iraq as a soldier and to Afghanistan as both a contractor and a DOD civilian.
His generation, he says, bore the brunt of the intelligence failures and erroneous claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The same errors and failures led subsequent administrations to claim that the United States was winning in Afghanistan, Plitsas told Task & Purpose.
While holding leaders accountable for GWOT mistakes is important, he said, the effort would be wasted without focus on policy changes to prevent future generations from fighting another forever war.
“It is something that, if left unaddressed, could cause additional policies that result in additional wars and U.S. casualties,” Plitsas said.
So far, the U.S. government has yet to rectify underlying problems with intelligence analysis that led it to overestimate the strength and capabilities of the Iraq and Afghan security forces while underestimating the Islamic State group and Taliban, Plitsas said. More recently, the United States initially overestimated the Russians and did not appreciate the Ukrainians’ willingness to fight, he said.
While the U.S. government’s entire analytic methodology and sources of information need to be reviewed to determine where the points of failure are, Plitsas said he does not believe it is fair to look for people to blame.
Plitsas said he believes the hold on Donahue’s promotion is “unfair and unjustified.” Donahue, he said, was a ground commander sent to “clean up the mess at the end” in Afghanistan.
“There is a significant difference between retribution and reform,” Plitsas said. “If people failed at their responsibilities or did things that resulted in the deaths or harm of individuals, whether they be civilians or service members, then folks should be accountable. But seeking retribution for anything less than that is wildly inappropriate. If we don’t ensure that there is reform to go along with accountability, then history is likely to repeat itself.”
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