There I was, loitering in the amicable atmosphere of the green room for Fox and Friends early one morning this past December, preparing to join a panel of veterans to discuss the previous night’s Republican debate. Of the panelists, two of us weren’t backing a candidate, but a third—a strapping former Navy SEAL named Carl—said that he was for Trump. To each their own, I thought at the time, though it occurred to me that this could be an awkward morning for Carl, given that during the debate Trump had defended his “plan”—to the extent that Trump has plans—to kill the families of terrorists by way of deterring future attacks. The man who was soon to become the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination argued that, after all, the families of the San Bernardino and 9/11 attackers “knew what was going on.”
And awkward it proved to be when the host led off our discussion with “Carl, kill the families?” But my fellow panelist, clearly a pro, deftly maneuvered away from the danger zone, answering the question by insisting that we need to loosen restraints on our forces, pointing out that “war is hell,” and saying that if families are co-located “with the ISIS soldiers, then yes, kill the families.”
Tough talk though it was, it of course was not a full-throated defense of what his candidate had actually proposed. And indeed Trump, after repeatedly proposing war crimes as a formal part of his national security policy, in March sulkily walked the position back in a written statement provided to the Wall Street Journal.
It’s nevertheless worth reflecting on what the profoundly disgusting nature of this now-erstwhile plank in the Trump platform tells us about the man, his appeal, and his complete unsuitability for public office.
The position had many of the typical hallmarks of a Trump stance—its anti-p.c. outrageousness, its ability to capture the news cycle, and even its ultimate retraction. There is also the compulsive dishonesty with which Trump often defended it, arguing as recently as the March 3 GOP presidential debate:
Not all right. In fact, all wrong, almost to the word. In this case Trump seems to be suggesting it was a single 9/11 hijacker’s family that was evacuated back to “you know where”; on other occasions, he has suggested there were multiple wives involved. No matter: Either way it’s simply false. The 9/11 Commission report establishes that, most likely, only two of the hijackers were married, and none of them had wives or any other family members traveling with them in the United States.
Liars lie, of course; Trump is a liar, and here he is, doing what he does. But it’s important not to let the sheer frequency of his dishonesty numb us to the point where we no longer call it out, especially on a matter as important as this one. Trump is essentially suggesting with justifications like these that the families of terrorists are certain to be materially complicit in terrorism themselves, and thus deserve to die.
This is unlikely to be true in many, if not most cases. But a lot of the proposal’s appeal derives from the emotional correction it seems to provide to what many of Trump’s supporters believe (as do I, for that matter) to be the overly restrictive rules of engagement imposed by the Obama administration. Moreover, it’s easy for Trump supporters to blur the lines regarding what their candidate is actually proposing. War is hell, after all, and families do get killed. But calling for the specific targeting of the families—women and children, after all—of combatants by way of retribution or deterrence is to destroy the ethical line that separates the American military from the terrorists.
The fact that the call came from a man who did everything he could to avoid military service himself during Vietnam only heightens its outrageousness. If Trump had served, maybe he would have understood that troops not only can refuse to follow illegal orders—they must refuse to follow illegal orders, or they will very likely be headed to prison themselves. Trump didn’t walk back his position because he decided he was in the wrong, but because the leaders of the U.S. military were likely going to publicly embarrass him by making this fact clear.
I have the unhappy distinction, as do many other veterans, of having looked upon the bodies of women and children who were inadvertently killed in exchanges between my Marines and insurgents. There is little that is worse. The notion that a presidential candidate would publicly advocate dispatching troops specifically to murder noncombatant family members, on the pretext that “they must have known,” is repulsive, un-American, disqualifying—and shouldn’t be forgotten just because the candidate was grudgingly forced to walk it back.
Aaron MacLean is managing editor of the Washington Free Beacon.
