Trust in US Military Is Falling Among Democrats and Republicans – Bloomberg

Illustration: Jonathan Djob Nkondo for Bloomberg Businessweek

Illustration: Jonathan Djob Nkondo for Bloomberg Businessweek

Super Bowl flyovers, TV commercials celebrating veterans, yellow-ribbon bumper stickers: Its long been reflexive for Americans of all political persuasions to support our troops. Following Sept. 11 and the deployment of troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, pride in the U.S. military and gratitude for troops service ran high, even among people opposed to those conflicts. In the years since 2000, multiple surveys have shown the public trusts the U.S. military more than any other public institutionmore than organized religion and the Supreme Court, and vastly more than Congress.

But the increasing politicization of the military, a string of sexual assault scandals, the role of dozens of enlisted troops and veterans in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, and other factors have shaken that trust. According to a Reagan Institute survey conducted in February, confidence in the military has fallen by 14 percentage points since 2018from 70% to 56%. The drop was significant regardless of age, gender, or party affiliation, and is in line with trends other researchers have observed.

Share with a great deal of trust and confidence in U.S. institutions

Data: Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute

Criticism of the military on Capitol Hill has intensified. Democrats say the Pentagon must do more to stamp out extremist ideology in the ranks following Jan. 6. The news is full of examples of service members who have extremist beliefs, Representative Adam Smith, the Washington Democrat who leads the House Armed Services Committee, said at a March 24 hearing on the issue. It is also obvious that our military leaders are untrained in the symbols and language of these hate groups.

Conservatives are lambasting military policies they regard as woke. Fox News host Tucker Carlson last month called maternity flight suits for women troops a mockery and a distraction from combating China and other threats. When military leaders rebuked Carlson, Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, took his side, claiming that the officers were stifling public dissent. He asked for a meeting with the commandant of the Marine Corps over the issue.

Jim Golby, who studies civil-military relations at the Center for a New American Security, says he cant remember a time when perceptions of the military have been so polarized. Different parts of the public are looking at the military and creating narratives that they dont like, he says.

Share with a great deal of trust and confidence in U.S. institutions

Data: Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute

Former President Donald Trump had a large role in driving this politicization. At the beginning of his presidency, Trump with great fanfare named retired generals to leading positions, including former Marines Jim Mattis as defense secretary and John Kelly as White House chief of staff. Almost as quickly as he claimed them as my generals, he turned on them. Trump also drew the military deeper into the culture wars, banning transgender people from serving (a policy undone by President Joe Biden) and opposing the Pentagon when it began a process to remove the names of Confederate leaders from military bases.

Last June, during a summer of nationwide protests against police violence, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, marched across Washington, D.C.s Lafayette Square with Trump for a photo op outside St. Johns Church. Law enforcement officers used chemical irritants to clear the park of peaceful protesters just prior to the event. Critics including prominent Democrats and former high-ranking officers said Milleys presence lent the militarys imprimatur to a political event that undercut freedom of speech and assembly. Milley, who wore battle fatigues that day, later apologized for his role.

President Trumps rhetoric, particularly against senior officers toward the end of his term, probably helped open some of the gates to distrust of the military among Republicans, says Golby. The response to Lafayette Square helped open the floodgates on the Democratic side.

Criticism over Lafayette Square may have contributed to the National Guards slow mobilization to help the U.S. Capitol Police on Jan. 6. The commanding officer of the D.C. National Guard said a senior Army officer expressed concern about the optics of sending troops.

Meanwhile, reports of sexual assault in the ranks have been rising. The killing of 20-year-old Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood in Texas last year sparked outrage. Guillens family said she was harassed before being murdered (a soldier suspected in her death killed himself). The Army went on to fire or suspend 14 base leaders over a culture that it said fostered harassment and sexual assault.

With the racial issues, with the sex assault issues, with the misogyny issues, the average American is saying, Maybe the military isnt the leader in all these areas, says Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, a group that works to end sexual violence in the military.

The Pentagons inability to curb rape in the ranks has led lawmakers to push for legislation that would move handling of sexual assault cases outside the chain of command, something the department has resisted. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered a review of all the actions that have been taken on the issue to date. And on April 9, after a mandated period for all units to discuss the problem of extremism, the Pentagon announced plans to crack down on it with new regulations, screening, and training.

The military is still the most trusted institution in America, and we take that trust and confidence very seriously, Pentagon spokesman JohnKirby said in a statement. While hyper-partisanship today is certainly a concern, the men and women of the Department of Defense are focused on doing their job of protecting and defending the United States, and always earning and deserving the trust of the American people.

The military still enjoys more support than most institutions in American life. In polls, clear majorities of respondents consistently say they have confidence in the military, a rarity for any public institution, according to Jeff Jones at Gallup. But opinion has been so high for so long that even a slight change is cause for concern among people who follow the issue closely. Its possible, Golby worries, that the military could become like the Supreme Court, with Republicans and Democrats alike viewing some high-ranking officers as theirs and others as political opponents.

If the military becomes politicized, it becomes more and more likely that the military could intervene in politics, says Elliot Ackerman, an author and former Marine who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. And a military intervention in politics concerns me the most, whatever shape it would take. With Travis Tritten

(Updated with a statement from the Pentagon in 13th paragraph. )

BOTTOM LINE - Rising politicization of the military, a sexual assault crisis on bases, and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack have lowered public trust in the institution, a trend that worries experts.

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Trust in US Military Is Falling Among Democrats and Republicans - Bloomberg