The temper of the commander and the character of the Republic

The Washington Examiner reports that U.S. Central Command carried out what it called 'a heavy wave of strikes against Iran,' following remarks by President Trump to Fox News that I am told were profane and unambiguous in their anger. I have no recollection of the events that produced this confrontation — that is beyond my knowing — but I can speak to what such a moment reveals about the character of the office and the dangers of conducting foreign policy through passion rather than design.

I will not second-guess the military judgment of the commanders in the field. I know better than most that war, once joined, must be prosecuted with resolve, and that commanders cannot always wait for the careful language of the diplomat. If Iran's missile capabilities posed a genuine and immediate threat to American lives and interests, as the Examiner's report suggests, then a response may well have been warranted. On that question — the technical and strategic one — I speak with appropriate humility. I am told; I do not remember.

What I can speak to is this: the tone in which a republic wages its wars tells the world — and its own citizens — something essential about itself. When a president announces his intentions to a television audience with words I would not have spoken in a private letter, let alone in public counsel, he conflates his own anger with the nation's purpose. Anger is a legitimate human condition. It is not a foreign policy. The great danger of permanent hostility toward any power — and I argued this plainly in my Farewell Address — is that passion displaces interest as the guide of conduct, and a republic led by passion rather than interest loses the ability to know when it has won enough, when to stop, and when to make peace without humiliation on either side.

I am also drawn to the precedent this sets for the office. The executive commands the armed forces — that is proper, and it must remain so. But the executive also represents the nation to the world in every syllable he utters. Foreign chancelleries are listening. Allies are calculating. Adversaries are studying. When the commander-in-chief announces his intentions in the language of a tavern brawl, he hands those adversaries a gift: they may present themselves as the measured party, whatever their actual conduct, while the Republic appears to act from temper rather than from law and deliberate policy. That is a strategic cost, not a moral complaint.

A two-week campaign to degrade an adversary's arsenal may or may not succeed — I am told this is the reported aim, and I will not speculate on the operational outcome. But I counsel those who govern and those who watch: measure your words as carefully as your munitions. The Republic's credibility is a form of power, and it is spent as surely by careless speech as by careless action. Restraint in language is not weakness. It is the discipline that distinguishes a republic from a regime of one man's moods.

My counsel, offered in the spirit of one who has stood in the position of commanding men in mortal contest: let the objective be clear, let the authority be lawful, let the Congress be kept in its proper counsel, and let the president speak as one who holds an office larger than himself. The office was built to outlast all of us who have occupied it. It should be returned to the next steward in better condition than we found it — in reputation as in fact.