White House Chief of Staff John Kelly speaks to the media during the
daily briefing, Oct. 19, 2017. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
On
a chill November day in 2010, a crowd of mourners gathered in Section
60 at Arlington National Cemetery, America’s Valhalla. The
highest-ranking U.S. military officer to lose a child in combat in the
post-9/11 wars was there to bury his youngest son, 1st Lt. Robert
Michael Kelly, killed in action in Afghanistan. Sitting at gravesite
9480 next to his son’s wife, watching her accept the folded flag with
the thanks of a grateful nation, hearing the retort of the rifle salute
and the sound of the bugler playing “Taps,” Gen. John Kelly was
confronted with the same question that haunted the families of the more
than 5,500 Americans killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Was such
unbearable sacrifice worth it?
At
some point Kelly realized it was not for him to say. His son had
already answered the question. “In his mind — and in his heart — he had
decided somewhere between the day he was born at 2130, 5 September 1981 —
and 0719, 9 November 2010 — that it was worth it to him to risk
everything – even his own life — in the service of his country,” Kelly
would later tell other Gold Star families. “So, in spite of the terrible
emptiness that is in a corner of my heart and I now know will be there
until I see him again, and the corners of the hearts of everyone who
ever knew him, we are proud. So very proud.”
Ever
since that day, John Kelly has striven to keep from politicizing his
son’s death or making too much of it based on his own stature. Just days
later, he insisted that the loss of his son not be mentioned when he
gave a moving speech commemorating two other Marines killed in combat.
He has discouraged questions about his loss even as he rose from
commander of U.S. Southern Command to the head of the Department of
Homeland Security for the Trump administration and to White House chief
of staff. When approached by the Washington Post for a profile
in 2011, he revealed a source of his reticence in an email: “We are only
one of the 5,500 American families who have suffered the loss of a
child in this war. The death of my boy simply cannot be made to seem any
more tragic than the others.”
Just
as he has so often trampled the traditional boundaries of
civil-military relations designed to cordon the U.S. military from
Washington’s hyperpartisan politics, President Trump this week thrust Kelly and his loss into the bright glare of controversy.
Trump was asked by a reporter why he had been uncharacteristically
silent for 12 days about the death of four U.S. Special Forces soldiers
in Niger. During that time, Trump had tweeted incessantly about NFL
players failing to stand during the national anthem. He had engaged in
public feuds with the mayor of hurricane ravaged San Juan, Puerto Rico,
and with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker. In that
stretch, Trump threatened the media for spreading “fake news,” and
taunted the leader of North Korea. But no mention of the loss of four
U.S. troops killed in a firefight with terrorists in Africa.
Replying
to the reporter in typical counterpuncher mode, Trump attempted to
elevate his own stature by denigrating others, falsely accusing his
presidential predecessors of never or only rarely calling Gold Star
families who lost loved ones. “If you look at President Obama and other
presidents, most of them didn’t make calls — a lot of them didn’t make
calls,” Trump said. “I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think
I’m able to do it.”
When
the predictable backlash erupted against those false claims, Trump
characteristically doubled down. In an interview with Fox News radio on
the controversy, Trump offered up his chief of staff as evidence that
Obama didn’t call families of fallen U.S. service members. “I think I’ve
called every family of someone who died,” Trump said in a comment that
was later disputed by a number of Gold Star families. “As for other
representatives, I don’t know. You could ask Gen. Kelly, did he get a
call from Obama?”
In
an extraordinary press conference on Thursday, Kelly confirmed that
President Obama did not call after the death of his son. That was not a
criticism, Kelly said, and indeed he initially advised Trump against
calling the families of the four soldiers killed in Niger because there
was little he could say to ease their pain. When Trump called the widow
of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the troops killed in Niger, he
reportedly told the grieving Myeshia Johnson that her husband “knew what
he signed up for … but when it happens, it hurts anyway.” That was the
account given by Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., a family friend who was
with Johnson during the call and called Trump’s words insensitive.
Trump
called Rep. Wilson a liar. Kelly said he was “stunned” and
“broken-hearted” when he heard that a member of Congress had listened in
on the call and made it public.
The
bitter back and forth between Team Trump and its critics is already in
danger of trampling one of the last plots of sacred ground in America’s
increasingly charred political landscape. In truth, the need to console
the families of fallen warriors is one of a commander in chief’s most
difficult and emotionally draining duties. No two presidents approach
the task in exactly the same way and each brings to it their own unique
interpersonal skills. Because the president is ultimately responsible
for sending troops into harm’s way, there is inevitably an underlying
tension in the exchanges, and the politics and policies of war always
hover nearby.
“Because
presidents sign off on the order putting troops in danger, they feel
personally responsible for every death or injury that results, which
makes calling on Gold Star families one of the most difficult things a
commander in chief is asked to do,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno,
who commanded U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. The willingness of
partisans to exploit casualties for political gain, he noted, only adds
to the pain of families who have lost love ones in combat. “It would
seem Americans cannot even come together over our fallen troops
anymore.”
Peter
Feaver is a professor in security studies at Duke University who served
on George W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. “I don’t think
Trump helped himself with this controversy because you can never really
win an argument with a grieving Gold Star family, but this is a fraught
issue that every post-Cold War president has struggled with: How do you
acknowledge the toll of war respectfully, and do so in a way that
doesn’t overwhelm or even debilitate a commander in chief?” he said.
“Because even when they go well these are emotionally overwhelming
interactions.”
Bush
met with a Gold Star family in 2004 on the same day as a presidential
debate, Feaver notes, and fell flat in the debate because he was so
emotionally drained. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote
about the toll of writing the family of each service member killed in
combat, and how it affected his willingness to stay in the job. Feaver
believes that Barack Obama spent so much time with wounded veterans that
it reinforced a tendency toward “hypercaution” about military
deployments that persisted through his second term.
Nor
do all the exchanges between commanders in chief and grieving families
go well. Bill Clinton was criticized by some of the families who lost
loved ones in the Black Hawk Down debacle in Somalia in 1993. After her
son Casey Sheehan was killed in the Iraq War, Cindy Sheehan gained
national media attention for an extended antiwar protest at a makeshift
camp outside President Bush’s Texas ranch. The parents of two of the
four Americans killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012
criticized Obama and later sued former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton over her role in the tragedy.
Investigations
into the Benghazi attack marked the low-water mark in partisan efforts
to turn tragedy into political gain. After spending more than two years
and $7 million, the Republican-led House Benghazi Committee reached the
same general conclusion as the seven previous U.S. government probes
into the incident: No response to the attack would have enabled U.S.
troops to reach the scene in time to save the four Americans. House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy alluded to the true target of the
investigation in a 2015 interview with Fox News. “Everybody thought
Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi
special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her
numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable.”
Trump
himself insisted that Benghazi was “bigger than Watergate,” and he
tweeted about it scores of times. This week the lefty outlet Salon wrote
that “Niger could be Trump’s Benghazi.” As Washington partisans
unsheathe the long knives in their endless grapple, some may not even
realize or care anymore that they are trampling over hallowed ground.
After
having his personal pain exposed in the current controversy, John Kelly
said he visited Arlington National Cemetery to clear his head and “walk
among the finest men and women on earth,” some of whom were following
his orders at the time of their deaths. “I still hope as you write your
stories, and I appeal to America, let’s not lose this maybe last thing
held sacred in our society — a young man or woman going out and giving
his or her life for our country,” Kelly said at the end of yesterday’s
press conference. “Let’s try and somehow keep that sacred.”
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