Fred Wellman: "The Apolitical Military is the Cornerstone of our Democracy"

Pushing Back against Extremism in the Armed Forces

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I am pleased to bring you this interview with Fred Wellman, the Lincoln Project’s Executive Director. Wellman is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School. He served in the U.S. Army for 22 years as an aviator and public affairs officer, including four combat tours. He flew Scout and Blackhawk helicopters and was spokesman for Generals David Petraeus and Martin Dempsey in Iraq. He retired out of the Pentagon in 2010 and embarked on a civilian career as an entrepreneur and veterans' advocate. Early in the pandemic crisis he served as Administrative Chief of Staff of a COVID Field Hospital in New York City staffed by military special operations veterans. Our conversation took place on July 29 and has been edited for clarity and flow.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (RBG):  I'm concerned about the spread of political extremism in the armed forces. After the Jan. 6 coup attempt, the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III, ordered a stand down to assess the scope of the problem. 

Fred Wellman (FW): Well, there's no question that the apolitical military is the cornerstone of our democracy. And let's be honest, this problem didn't start under Trump. We saw it under Obama. There's a famous case of a doctor [Terry Lakin] who refused to deploy because he felt that Obama wasn't a legitimate president. We've seen a creeping extremism, a political ideology within the military and most probably even in the officer ranks over the years, and it became really prevalent under the Trump administration.

I do believe we have to have an honest conversation about the extent of this. Even the Jan. 6 investigation is being politicized by the Republican party as "it's the woke military trying to control thought."

The military does not want to control thought. It is the ultimate organization of carrot and stick. We promote those who are living by our values and doing the right things and we lead soldiers. The stick is the Uniform Code of Military Justice, our disciplinary system. The only thing the military could do is control behaviors and actions.

As long as they stick to our values and behave in a manner appropriate for the military, then it's okay. But we have to come up with a better system of training and clarifying modern rules. The Marine Corps recently kicked out a guy who lied about his enlistment. He had said that he was not involved with any extremist organizations. It turns out he was a member of one of the major anti-Semitic and White power organizations. We can control those behaviors and clean those guys out.

The disciplinary system has to be updated to address these behaviors because we're seeing a rise in open racism, anti-Semitism and White supremacy. We know that [extremists] are recruiting people to join the military, to get that military training and come back out. So we do have a problem, and there's no way to deny that a disproportionate number of those arrests at the Capitol were military.

Most horrifying was an active duty Marine major who fought a policeman to open the door and let people into the Capitol Rotunda. There are very few things that really shock me at this point, after four years of Trump, but I was shocked to see an active duty major in the United States Marine Corps, field grade officer, someone who's dedicated his adult life to serving the country, actively pushing a policeman out of the way.

RBG: Yes, the symbolism of him being the one to open the door.

FW: Exactly. So, we have a problem. And the first thing you do is recognize you have a problem. I applaud General Milley [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and the Secretary of Defense for taking this head on. It's a very brave thing to do, believe it or not.

RBG: The disciplinary system is for infractions within the ranks. But what we have today is also a kind of contagion. If you look at who participated in the Jan. 6 coup attempt, it was a mix of active and retired military together with rogue law enforcement, Proud Boys, and radicalized individuals unaffiliated with any group or institution. As an event, Jan. 6 furthered the contagion and energized all of these networks.

FW: I remember when the Oath Keepers came out under Obama. I was horrified. We had people who said, we're law enforcement, we're former military or active military, but we're here for the Constitution. It was obvious what their goals were. I can't tell you how often someone sends me a picture of a vehicle with an active duty service member driving onto a military base with a Three Percenters sticker on it. We've got to stop burying our heads in the sand.

RBG: A politicized military is an integral part of an authoritarian political culture, and I see many attempts to move us in that direction and gain acceptance for the idea of using the military in repressive ways at home, like firing on protesters. Trump experimented with this domestic use for the armed forces during the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020.  

FW: I do believe that's the case. Lafayette Square is burned into my mind. And it's not just the clearing of the square. I'm an aviator. I was a helicopter pilot. And seeing those helicopters hovering over peaceful protesters, that was horrifying. Like the coups you study. I don't believe that's been truly punished. Pilots hovering powerful aircraft over American civilians is a very strange situation, and I don't believe they have been disciplined. And that's how we allow these kinds of ideas to fester. In the end there has to be a stick.  

RBG: The military is such a huge institution and it has always reflected, in its composition, American society.  How can military families and relatives support the commitment to maintaining a democratic culture in the military?

FW: You just said something key. The military is multi-generational, including my family. My son is a veteran. My dad was a World War Two veteran. And way back beyond that. So yes, the military is a multi-generational thing. We have to look at the larger question of who we bring in and how we are engaging in the civic education of those who serve and their families.

We don't want to propagandize, obviously, but we have to seek out those who believe in our democracy and our ways of life and communicate that the military is not a place for politics. We have to teach what's a legal order. What's an unlawful order. They need to give these guys the argument to say, well, that's an illegal, unlawful order. I will not follow it. And then we have to celebrate when people do the right thing.

Because if the Republican Party takes the White House again, the next guy won't be as incompetent as Trump. This time, the system did hold, but it was close.