On September 22, 2024, 740 anti-Trump “experts” endorsed Kamala Harris in an unguent letter to the media.  But anti-Trump military retirees William McRaven, Stanley McChrystal, Barry McCaffrey, John Kelly, and David Petraeus, who helped pave the way to the Biden-Harris disaster, are not among the signers.  Perhaps they’re ashamed of their work.

“GOFO” is a Pentagon acronym for active or retired general officers and admirals, also known in the Navy as flag officers.  Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley, who apparently slandered former President Donald Trump as a fascist to Bob Woodard, earned a Radio Havana headline on October 14th.   But prominent GOFOs who shouted their contempt for Trump from the rooftops after 2016 are silent today about the catastrophic Biden-Harris term.

For instance, on September 14, 2019, Barry McCaffrey, retired U.S. Army four-star and former Drug Czar, attacked Trump on MSNBC for reprogramming military construction funding to the border wall.  Reprogramming funds after congressional notification is daily fare in Washington, but McCaffery cried “unconstitutional.”  Thereafter, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris opened the border and pulled out all the stops to block Texas efforts to defend itself.  A ton of fentanyl, 10 million border violators, and five years later, McCaffrey is silent.

In 2018, William McRaven, SEAL, retired Admiral and former Special Operations Command chief, used the Washington Post to add his name “to the list of men and women who have spoken up against [Donald Trump’s] presidency.”  The catalyst for McRaven’s attack on our lawfully elected Commander in Chief was Trump’s decision to revoke a security clearance conferred by a Trump predecessor upon mediocre former CIA Director John Brennan.  But McRaven has not “spoken up” about the cratering Biden-Harris administration he helped elect.

No federal employee, and certainly no former federal employee like Brennan or McRaven, has a legal right to classified information.  But many senior officials and GOFOs cling to clearances after leaving government to monetize them with defense contractors, fawning think tanks, and the media.  In his 2018 Washington Post op-ed, McRaven openly dared Trump to pull his clearance.  Trump should have obliged him and taken a star too.

In 2018, elites swooned over another GOFO retiree, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for attacking “immoral and dishonest” Trump.  In 2010 McChrystal retired after President Obama fired him for unflattering Rolling Stone magazine quotes from McChrystal aides about the Obama-Biden White House.  But after January 2021, it appears McChrystal lost his voice:  he is not on record about the morality or honesty of the Biden-Harris border disaster, Iran appeasement, inflation, or Big Guy payoffs.

In a 2023 statement to CNN, John Kelly, retired Marine four-star and Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, blasted Trump, with Kelly crying “God help us!” against the former President.  Today, our nation cries “God help us!” to survive Biden-Harris destruction of the secure border Trump left behind and incompetent hurricane relief.  Kelly is silent about both.

Presidents willing to face down recalcitrant, incompetent, or partisan generals like these are a blessing, not a curse.  During the Civil War, Lincoln fired several before he got to Grant.  Truman fired MacArthur over Korean War strategy differences.  Obama fired McChrystal, and also pushed out his CIA Director, retired Army four-star David Petraeus, over an extra-marital affair.  In 2015, Obama’s Justice Department prosecuted Petraeus for passing classified information to his paramour.  In 2018, Petraeus unironically joined McRaven’s attack on Trump for revoking Brennan’s clearance.  Now Petraeus is silent, too.

Many GOFOs, together with civilian diplomatic, defense, and intelligence counterparts, attacked Trump relentlessly during his term.  Many are on the attack again.  Nearly all are silent on the Biden-Harris catastrophe.  Compared with his predecessors, Trump showed enormous restraint with his self-righteous GOFO attackers.  In fact, during the Trump presidency, only one retired GOFO was disciplined:  Mike Flynn.

On March 1, 2024, the Military Times reported that unnamed National Guard Bureau officials in Washington, D.C. are “reviewing” Major General Thomas Suelzer’s February 29, 2024, border event with Governor Greg Abbott and former President Trump.  An Air National Guard veteran of the Gulf War, Suelzer is Texas Adjutant General and reports to Abbott.  Suelzer has the distinction of being the only serving GOFO to publicly deplore the Biden-Harris border disaster.

In fact, no active or retired GOFO appears to have laid his or her stars on the table with President Biden, Vice President Harris, Secretary Austin, or Secretary Mayorkas, publicly or privately, over the national emergency at our southern border or any other crisis. (Looking at you, CENTCOM, NORTHCOM, and SOUTHCOM.)

Instead, vocal anti-Trump GOFOs like McRaven, McCaffrey, McChrystal, Kelly, and Petraeus, whose favored 2020 presidential ticket erased the border, weakened the armed forces, crippled the economy, empowered our adversaries, and caused historic inflation, are silent today on Kamala Harris’s part in these disasters.  And silence is assent.

The author, a Texas lawyer born at the U.S. Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, served as a Navy enlisted submariner during the Cold War and a mobilized Navy officer in Iraq.  He was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics from 2006-2009.

Image: Public domain.