President Donald Trump’s decision to fire several high-ranking military leaders is a first step in helping the president achieve his goal of a military more focused on lethality.
“It’s a bold move… you could even say it’s fairly aggressive,” William Ruger, the President of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) and a former Trump nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan, told Fox News Digital. “There’s a sense that I get that this isn’t merely a challenge to one or two individuals, but that there needed to be a greater push to change the direction the Pentagon has been going… in terms of lethality, warrior ethos.”
Ruger, who serves as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, was “a prominent advocate for ending America’s participation in the Afghanistan War,” according to his AIER profile page.
The comments come after Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, as well as several other top military officers over the weekend, a list that also included the U.S. Navy’s top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead one of the military branches.
Perhaps more importantly, Ruger stressed that Trump’s ability to shake up military leadership as he sees fit is critical to the U.S.’s time-tested tradition of civilian leadership over the military.
“It’s important that for good civil military relations purposes, that it’s clear who is the decision maker, and that should be the civilians, and that what they say will be faithfully implemented,” Ruger said. “That’s the hallmark of good civil military relations.”
Michael Lee is a writer for Fox News. Prior to joining Fox News, Michael worked for the Washington Examiner, Bongino.com, and Unbiased America. He has covered politics for more than eight years.
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