At least the replacement of Rear Admiral John Kirby as the Pentagon's spokesman by a civilian, Peter Cook, has had this continuing benefit: when Cook shimmies and prevaricates and generally makes a mockery of plain speaking, we can console ourselves that it's no longer a man in uniform so debasing himself.
Consider last Thursday's press briefing, during which Cook faced the difficult task of explaining how the death of an American Special Forces soldier in Marjah (and the crash of an American helicopter during the same battle) didn't change the fact that U.S. forces are not in a "combat role" there. They are in a "support role," providing assistance to the forces of the Afghan government, just as American forces in Iraq are assisting local counterparts—and once in a while getting shot on the battlefield there, too. This past week, they found themselves in a "combat situation," Cook conceded, but, he hastened to add, they were "not in the lead."
As the fall of Fallujah and Ramadi to the Islamic State in 2014 stung veterans of the fights to secure those cities, so the collapse of order in Marjah and elsewhere in Helmand stings those veterans (including me) who fought there. But the dangers posed by Cook's habitual evasions run deeper than any particular legacy. Cook, of course, is prevented by political reality from speaking aloud what we can all guess: President Obama and his top advisers would prefer troops to remain out of contact with insurgents, full stop, but have grudgingly allowed commanders to fight alongside Afghans in places like Kunduz and now Helmand because, without such direct assistance, the Afghan Army would be routed. The fig leaf of asserting that troops are not in a "combat role" or that there are no "boots on the ground" (a laughable distinction that seems to be fading, at last) continues to be employed so that the White House isn't embarrassed by having to explain why it has sent American troops back to war.
But among the dangers for the military establishment itself (aside from the fact that deceptive talk at the top doesn't make for very clear orders for the troops) is that those who habitually manipulate the truth when speaking to others very often can't help but deceive themselves. This is not a new problem for the armed forces, and in fairness it transcends this administration, or any administration. You need only to read Karl Marlantes' fine account of the self-deception involved in the tabulation of body counts in Vietnam to see evidence of the problem's endurance. For my own part, I remember seeing PowerPoint slides tracking the progress of the original campaign in Marjah that bore extraordinarily little connection to the reality facing platoons and companies.
So this is not new, but the apparent lack of shame in the Pentagon's relentless, boosterish language regarding the progress of the various campaigns against our enemies is nevertheless concerning. The military has broadcast its enthusiasm that Iraqi special operations troops took Ramadi in recent weeks, despite the fact that the town originally fell months after the beginning of our own campaign, despite the fact that in other recent victories (as at the Baiji refinery complex) elite units of the Iraqi military bore the hardest fighting only to cede holding operations (and prestige) to Shi'a militias backed by Iran, despite the fact that, even if ISIS is destroyed sometime within the decade, the damage to American power and the stability of the EU has already been devastating. Only a powerful act of self-deception could lead them to expect that anyone sees the situations in the Middle East or Afghanistan as developing in a positive direction.
The Pentagon's problems with language are not only restricted to overseas operations. Consider the ridiculous Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy, who on New Year's Day issued a flurry of memos directing the Marine Corps to accelerate its efforts toward gender equality, including one asking the commandant to "Please review the position titles throughout the Marine Corps and ensure that they are gender-integrated ... removing 'man' from the titles and provide a report to me as soon as is practicable and no later than April 1, 2016."
There remains some confusion about what this directive means in practice. An anonymous "Navy official" hastened to tell the Marine Corps Times that this dictate does not apply "when 'man' is incorporated as part of the term." This background quote indicates one of two things: backtracking (as the original memo apparently makes no such distinction) or some truly illiterate hairsplitting, wherein "reconnaissance man" is sexist and has to go, but "mortarman" makes the cut. Moreover, some outlets continue to report the news without reference to this evidently orally-stipulated exception, so only time will tell whether Mabus has gone the full-Comintern here in his approach to language, or only a half-Amherst. Either way, this is a move toward self-deception: implying falsely that the success of the Marine Corps in past wars had nothing to do with what we are now meant to consider a socially-constructed, often toxic pattern of masculinity.
That there is so little pushback to any of this from the Republican-controlled House or Senate gives me some insight into what drives the popularity of Donald Trump. For any reasonably intelligent person to support a man like that, they have to be so disgusted by the ceaselessly self-dealing and dishonest mainstream Republican establishment that "burn it all down" becomes an attractive option. Considering the damage Mabus is doing and the total absence of serious political opposition he faces (despite the deep unpopularity of his actions among Marines) I get where Trump supporters are coming from.
These are bad years for the American military, and there is a danger that their legacy will be lasting. Those accustomed to lying will not find it easy to stop, even or especially when they are deceiving themselves. And those who are accustomed to losing will lose.