War is too important...

Look at who wasn't on Michael Waltz's Signal chat

“War is too important to be left to the generals” – Georges Clemenceau, French Prime Minister during World War I

Clemenceau’s maxim is a touchstone for the American military. Our laws and customs require that the armed forces answer to civilian authority. Over the years, the policy has served us well.

Lately however, Donald Trump and what we should call his national insecurity team have been laying down a corollary to Clemenceau: War is also too important to be left to civilians.

Each day seems to bring a new embarrassment for National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and the rest of the President’s defense and intelligence braintrust.

Last week, thanks to Atlantic Magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg, we learned about the Waltz-organized online chat – using the less-than-secure Signal app – to review plans for a mid-March air attack on Houthi terrorists in Yemen. The chat was rich with detail about attack plans, including targets and timing; its participants included a who’s who of the administration’s civilian defense and intelligence leadership. Unfortunately, the session was so carelessly organized that Goldberg was invited to sit in.

Then this Tuesday, came the disclosure by The Washington Post that Waltz and one of his senior aides have repeatedly used their personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business. A day later, Politico reported that Waltz’s staff used Signal for at least 20 group chats for sensitive discussions involving Ukraine, China and Gaza.

Things have gotten so bad that on Thursday, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog agency notified Hegseth that it’s investigating his involvement in the Yemen chat.

While Hegseth denies that he shared any classified information, a transcript helpfully published by The Atlantic suggests that if what he said wasn’t classified, it should have been. Among the operational details Hegseth shared – again in advance of the attack – were the timing and nature of specific strikes by Navy fighter aircraft and Tomahawk land attack missiles. Had that information reached the Houthis, a real possibility given the slipshod security, the results could have been disastrous for the American pilots flying the mission.

The Pentagon probe seeks “to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other [DoD] personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” acting Inspector General Stephen Stebbins wrote in a memo to Hegseth.

All this has been well-detailed by print and broadcast reporters, as well as members of Congress charged with overseeing the Pentagon and the intelligence community. But largely unnoticed has been who was missing from the Yemen chat; namely, people in uniform.

Isn’t it kind of weird, and alarming, to find that the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the directors of national intelligence and the CIA, the president’s chief of staff, and other senior officials are chatting online about detailed plans for military action without having anyone from the uniformed military, the people responsible for preparing and executing the plans, in the conversation?

With the possible exception of CIA chief John Ratcliffe, who was director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, it looks like no one on the Yemen chat had previously been on the inside of such a sensitive, dangerous military mission. That they would carry on such a chat without input from professional military leaders, with rich experience and intimate knowledge of the plan and everything that could go wrong, is worse than irresponsible – in a sane world it would be a firing offense.

Military professionals aren’t infallible, of course, but it’s a good bet that had a senior officer involved in planning and carrying out the strike been invited into the chat, he/she would have double-checked the identity of every other participant and insisted that the discussion be properly secured.

A President serious about protecting the nation and looking after those who defend it would insist on nothing less.

###