People join the military for a variety of reasons. Some are enticed with promises of free college with the G.I. Bill, others are looking for healthcare for a new family, some just want a job and a chance to escape their town.
Most of us, though, enlist because we really do feel a call to be a part of something bigger. It’s not just a recruiting trick and no, people don’t join the military because they’re “too stupid for college.”
However, since the election two weeks ago I’ve been racking my brain on a few what-ifs, one of them being, “What if I was serving in Donald Trump’s military?”
I enlisted in 2009, several years after we had learned that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I didn’t let the thought of the country being embroiled in a war for nothing stop me from signing the dotted line, so President Trump would not have been enough to keep me out of my beloved Marine Corps.
Today I did what I often do in times like these, I started texting friends from the military for their thoughts. My buddy Moyses Ramirez, a former Marine himself, seems less worried than I do.
“Trump’s military will be like everyone else's,” Ramirez said. “Doesn’t matter who the president is. Maybe it matters to higher-ups, but any decisions are going to be forced fed to the bottom regardless.”
There are other concerns, though. I served under a president who ended waterboarding, not one who promised to bring it back. The United States I want to defend doesn’t stand for things like torturing human beings.
It gets hard to sign your life to something when your boss doesn’t seem concerned with keeping the moral high ground. That’s kind of what you get when you elect someone with no government or military experience to be the government official in charge of the military.
Trump, like many other civilians, seems to think that the military and veterans are things he can just throw money at and forget about. Never mind the fact that Dwight Eisenhower, former general and Republican president, warned us about the dangers of relying on the military industrial complex to prop up the economy.
What about the Veteran’s Administration? President’s have been promising to “fix” the way veterans are treated in this country for years. If you need some context, just remember that the first time veteran’s demonstrated for better treatment and pay was way back in 1783. They were upset because they hadn’t been payed what the promised to liberate the country from English rule.
America has a lot of proud traditions, and if the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783 tells us anything, it’s that failing veterans fits right between “baseball” and “apple pie.” Through the Revolutionary War and Vietnam, presidents have been promising to do whatever it takes to fix the VA. They had big plans, plans bigger than “"We're going to get you fantastic service. It's going to happen, believe me," and still the system is broken.
If there is a hope in a Trump military, it lies in who he appoints to manage it.
Maybe there is some hope there, as this week it seems like Trump became the latest mortal to become infatuated with former Marine Corps general James Mattis. It’s being reported that he’s the top pick for Secretary of Defense.
I can’t lie, that makes me a little excited. I’ve never bumped into a Marine that didn’t worship Mattis like he was a 21st century combat-oriented Jesus. Sure, he’s a little controversial, but all good Marines are controversial.
It’s something that gives people like me and Ramirez a little breathing room. “Trump is an idiot, but if he wants to appoint Mattis he probably knows Mattis’s history of doing what’s best for his own,” Ramirez said.
There’s also talk of Mitt Romney being considered for Secretary of State, a pick that gives someone with actual government and diplomatic experience a chance to do the job and heal any Trump-induced headaches.
So, there’s hope it won’t be totally awful. Trump would not be enough to destroy 270-plus years of the world’s greatest military. If I had to make the choice again, I’d still enlist no matter who is president, because serving is bigger than that.
It’s bigger than you, me, and as much as he’d probably hate to admit it, bigger than Trump as well.
Reach the columnist at cjwood3@asu.edu or follow @chriswood_311 on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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