The Lions Deserve Better

By Keegan Evans

The Lions Deserve Better

Yesterday the Army opened a formal AR 15-6 investigation into Apache crews from the 101st who flew a low pass and hovered around Kid Rock's estate during a training mission, broadcast on the celebrity’s social media. The crew was suspended from flying pending an investigation, a standard process to understand the facts. Hours later, Secretary of Defense Hegseth killed the investigation from his personal X account. "No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots." Even the president said the pilots probably shouldn't have been doing it. Hegseth overrode the Army's own standard process for a headline.

Before he became the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth sought to excuse service members who had been convicted of war crimes. He lobbied to pardon Clint Lorance, a former Army officer convicted of ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Afghan civilians. He lobbied for Mathew Golsteyn, another Army officer who admitted killing an unarmed Afghan man. He has consistently sided against the people who upheld the standards.

The United States military is among the most effective organizations in the history of the world. Those who have chosen to serve are indeed patriots who willingly make personal sacrifices that more than 90% of Americans can’t fully understand. We do so to provide a critical defense of our nation and ideals, and we swear an oath to the Constitution. Those sent in harm's way will accomplish the missions set before them. Those who lead our military, especially the civilian political leadership, carry a heavy and serious responsibility to honor, respect, and steward the sacrifices of those in uniform. This includes a responsibility to understand and uphold the standards which enable our military to earn its place among the elite organizations. Among the most basic of these standards is following the law of war as established by the Geneva Convention. 

We are engaged in war in Iran, and the Secretary of Defense has declared "no quarter, no mercy, for our enemies." Quarter means accepting the surrender of combatants who are out of the fight. Denying it is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, the president is threatening to destroy Iran's power plants, oil wells, and desalination plants (water for ninety million people) as a negotiating tactic. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. 

I was a Marine Corps helicopter pilot who deployed to Iraq three times. I was also an Aviation Safety Officer: the person in a squadron responsible for understanding how culture, standards, and human factors either prevent catastrophic failures or cause them. We studied the work of Tony Kern, author of Flight Discipline, who describes the threat posed by the ‘normalization of deviance’: when unacceptable practice becomes acceptable one small concession at a time, until the standard is gone and nobody can point to the moment it disappeared. The United States military is the most capable fighting force in the world because of the standards, accountability, and discipline which are so deeply embedded. Normalization of deviance is the pattern we all were trained to recognize, because maintaining the standards is what keeps people alive. 

Eliot Cohen’s piece in The Atlantic this week evoked the phrase “lions led by donkeys”, meaning a brilliant military under catastrophic strategic leadership. Through this lens, even those who recognize Iran's real menace find it near impossible to support what may be a just war, because the President and his cabinet have not earned that trust. Those lions who are accomplishing military objectives with extraordinary skill and discipline deserve leaders who can explain what they are trying to achieve, maintain the alliances that win the peace, and honor the standards that make this force what it is.