When the Pentagon fired The Stars and Stripes’ editor-in-chief and top staff for the “insubordination” of simply being independent journalists1, which is what they were hired to do, the Trump administration crossed several red lines simultaneously. Freedom of the press, free speech, accountability of the Pentagon to the public and the morale of the troops were all compromised in one fell swoop. It was an astonishing act of authoritarianism worthy of a banana republic and not the vaunted US military.
Those who voted for Trump because they wanted a candidate who could “break things” can be mighty proud of this record-breaking destruction of patriotic norms. Those viral vids of Trump “hugging” the flag can now best be seen for what they really depict: the strangulation of Old Glory.
Let’s call this latest desecration of a military tradition what it is - a shot across the bow of democracy, normalizing the politicization of the military, something Trump has been doing routinely in his second term. Normalizing something does not make it right. In the first term he wondered whether he could turn the military into his private police force, but saner heads in the White House and Pentagon stopped him from doing things like shooting at protesters in Lafayette Park. This time around, there are apparently no sane heads, so now he wants to fence off Lafayette Park entirely to prevent protests where Americans have traditionally raised their voices in free speech.
It was a preview of the main attraction, coming soon to a theater near you (some say within days), the final blow to democracy, the cancellation of our midterm elections. He’s already gagged the military. He’s gagged distinguished universities, law firms, venerated newspapers and broadcasters and the whistleblowers created to protect them. And now he strangles The Stars and Stripes, spitting on the very flag the military was designed to protect. The next step is to gag us all entirely. And if you don’t believe it and would rather cast a vote to maintain Trump’s control over Congress, all I can say is, if you are right and this is all a “trumped up” rumor, mazal tov.
But why in the world would you risk being wrong? On the “off chance” that I’m right and Trump does want to destroy democracy, why the hell would you take that risk? Nothing else matters; everything else is a distraction. There is no other choice this fall than to defeat him.
While the circulation of The Stars and Stripes is minuscule compared to other threatened news outlets like CNN, PBS, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, this one is heavily symbolic. Born in the trenches of World War One, Stars and Stripes was revived a few months after Pearl Harbor and wherever US troops served, it was just one step behind the front lines, escorting the troops through Anzio and Burma, Marseilles and the Bulge and then later in Korea, Vietnam and Kuwait. Published in 30 editions, in places as disparate as London, Rome, Honolulu, Sicily and Shanghai, it was there to cover the bombing of Tokyo and the liberation of Paris. It brought exhausted troops news of the Cardinals beating the Yanks in the 1942 World Series and shared word from home about hurricanes and heat waves, and yes, the occasional pin-up model on the front page. It was a lifeline. and it reminded them what they were fighting for.
And although wartime censorship demanded discretion, the journalistic standards remained amazingly high. Reports from the front often cited Nazi news sources, figuring that information already known to the enemy was fair game to share, as long as it could be verified. The staff included Pulitzer-winning reporters and cartoonists, like Andy Rooney and Bill Mauldin, plus superb maps and photography. It was anything but a propaganda rag.
And that is precisely what the White House and Pentagon want to turn it into now.
They accused these journalists of….insubordination?
OK, read what was said about the mission of Stars and Stripes by no less than Generals Marshall, Pershing and Eisenhower, when the paper was reinstated in 1942. And this was at a time when things looked bleak across the theaters of battle.
Pershing wrote, “No official control was ever exercised into what went into The Stars and Stripes. It was entirely for and by the soldier… A soldier’s newspaper in these grave times is more than a morale venture…. The morale (of the soldiers) will be directly affected by the character of The Stars and Stripes.”
A few months later, Eisenhower wrote a special note welcoming the initial publication of the newspaper on the North African front. He wrote, “Only people who have experienced the isolation of extended military operations can fully appreciate the value to the soldier of news from home and friends.” He called the paper’s coverage “a service of immediate and inestimable value to our Armed Forces…”
What Eisenhower saw as being of “inestimable value” has been stomped upon by Trump like a Burger King wrapper stuck to his shoe.
It is noteworthy that the “insubordination” that got the current editor sacked coincided with reports of the abusive, inhuman conditions for troops aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln after a grueling, record-breaking deployment.
The Stars and Stripes’ independent reporting of this crisis might well have saved lives.
Compare the Generals’ comments to the sniveling idiocy of our current leaders. As Yahoo News reports, this purge was in the works long before the Lincoln fiasco. In April, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for the newspaper, whose job had been to safeguard editorial independence. The report adds that Hegseth’s Pentagon has moved to exert editorial control and eliminate what it asserts are “woke distractions.”
“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Sean Parnell, Hegseth’s spokesman, wrote in January on X. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”
Those news and gossip sources were precisely what the WW2 generals - and their troops - loved most about the paper, along with its independence.
I’ve no doubt that Marshall, Pershing and Eisenhower would be rolling over in their graves at what the Pentagon has become, and the lack of character shown by its leaders and President Trump - not to mention the ineptitude of its war planning. Ironically, it is that very ineptitude that we are counting on as plans unfold to militarize our upcoming elections.
But as we step back and contemplate the scorched earth dystopia that Trump has made of our democracy, we need to place a special emphasis on how he has besmirched ALL THINGS MILITARY.
We can’t let that abomination slip to the back pages. It belongs on page one, above the fold.
While other acts of this sad, sorry administration have caused more destruction, like say, the bombing of a school killing 120 innocent children, few have been a greater threat to democracy than this, what we might call “Operation Symbolic Fury.”
I close with one of Bill Maudin’s classics from the paper, featuring his Everyman soldiers Willie and Joe, followed by an assortment of WW2 front pages from Stars and Stripes
Click below to download a collection of WW2 front pages from Stars and Stripes
Here’s coverage from the paper itself:
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