I was distressed by the title of an "Opinion" piece by Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, as their column appeared in the hard copy edition of the Thursday, August 14, 2025, edition of The New York Times. Here's the title I didn't like: "It's Trump's Military Now." Online, the title is different. If you click that link I just provided, you'll find a column titled, "We Used To Think the Military Would Stand Up To Trump. We Were Wrong."
The online title accurately portrays what Simon and Stevenson have to say. The hard copy version of the title, though, seems to say something beyond the fact that these experienced national security advisors have been unpleasantly surprised by the apparent acquiesence of military leaders to our current president's decision to mobilize the military against citizens and others, with respect to domestic law enforcement functions.
To say that our military "belongs" to our current president (now) helps condition Americans to think that the profoundly disturbing questions raised by Simon and Stevenson have been "resolved." It is dangerous when people start believing that bad things have happened - and that there isn't anything that can be done in the future to change them.
That's not true, but to the degree that people believe that we now have a military that will do whatever our current president says, we are emasculating ourselves as citizens.
The United States Military does not "belong" to the president - including our current president. The president is, under the Constitution, our "Commander in Chief," but our armed forces work for the nation, not personally for the president. The armed forces are constrained by the Constitution, as the president is, himself.
It is sort of amazing how successful our current president has been in getting people to accept conduct that is, in fact, unsupportable. But what has happened in the past, what just happened, is NOT - emphatically NOT - a statement of what "must" or "will" happen in the future.
Please, let's not fool ourselves, as citizens, into accepting our own, supposed irrelevance.
And may I make a special point of suggesting that Members of Congress ought to be particularly attuned to this admonition. The military does not "belong" to the current president, and Congress doesn't either.
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