The Impact of Trump's Rhetoric Toward Former Prisoners of War

Steve Adubato goes one-on-one with MSNBC and NBC News Military Analyst, U.S. Army Colonel Jack Jacobs (Ret.), to discuss U.S. military foreign affairs and the impact of President Trump’s rhetoric towards Gold Star families and former prisoners-of-war.

1/17/18 #2103

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Hi, I'm Steve Adubato. It is our honor and pleasure here in the public broadcasting family to welcome United States Army Colonel Jack Jacobs, Military Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Good to see you my friend. Good to see you too. What are you doing? You were just telling me, you run every morning? I try. I'm not always successful, but I try to get out and run as often as I can. Well I will just say this. For a lot of years now, you have been providing perspective and analysis for a lot of folks, regardless of their political ideology. It helps us understand the world of the military and the world we are in. Right out of the box, how would you describe the relationship, as we do this program during the holidays of 2017, the relationship between the President/the White House and the military? Tenuous and maybe even tortured, depending upon how you look at it. There is a link between the White House and the military, and the military officers who are serving the President very closely, the Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and so on. But the real problem lies in the inability of the White House to have a really clear strategic vision that is able to be executed by the military establishment. That's a problem. Hmm, because? Well why do you think... what do you think the disconnect is? A, is it at the strategy itself? B, is it the communication of whatever strategy may exist in the first place? Well in this regard, this White House is not a whole lot different from other White Houses. There is no real strategy, as one would define it, but the previous White Houses haven't had strategies either. We're in a very difficult situation at the moment. We have fragmented threats, there are lots of 'em, they're all over the place, and we don't have the ability to deal with them in any kind of coherent way. And as a result... and by the way, we're doing it with far fewer resources than we have in the past. Because? Well the... well we don't have the political will to have a large military establishment to take care of our enemies. I know we're spending a lot of money, but the Army is about as small as it's been since 1940. I remember some years ago when I was still in the service, we we're talking about having a 600 ship Navy, and we got pretty close. We have fewer than 300 now. I know that our capability is much better now, the technological capabilities are much better now than they used to be, but..."