One day after President Trump told an audience of military members that the election results showed "you like me, and I like you," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein underlined the importance of the military's political independence.
When asked about Trump's Monday remarks at U.S. Central Command's headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, Goldfein declined to comment specifically on what the commander in chief said.
But, Goldfein told defense reporters at a breakfast discussion in Washington: "This is a great opportunity to step back and remind ourselves and the American people of the oath we take as members of the military."
"The oath we take, and we retake every time we are promoted, is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Goldfein said. "By design, we don't pledge support to any particular party or any particular leader. We're an apolitical military."
Trump opened his remarks at CENTCOM by saying, to applause, "We had a wonderful election, didn't we?" He then drew laughter when he said, "And I saw those numbers, and you like me, and I like you. That's the way it worked."
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, issued a statement objecting to Trump's comments.
"Once again, Donald Trump has made political comments in an address to a military audience that is duty-bound to be apolitical," Smith said. "The president's efforts to politicize the military, starting with his remarks at the CIA memorial, are becoming a troubling pattern. Attempts to politicize the military like this are never appropriate, and they put our men and women in uniform in an untenable position. This cannot continue."
The Navy is also investigating the apparent display of a Trump flag on the lead vehicle in a convoy belonging to a special warfare unit in Virginia Beach. A photograph of the vehicle flying the flag spread through social media throughout the last week.
A Military Times poll of 2,790 active-duty troops taken after the election found that 51 percent of those who voted supported Trump.
During Tuesday morning's breakfast, Goldfein also addressed the pace of the Air Force's war against the Islamic State and whether it would make sense to accelerate the service's bombing campaign, which has dropped at least 65,000 munitions since the war against ISIS began in August 2014.
The Air Force is capable of dropping more bombs, Goldfein said, and he did not rule out doing so. But steeply ramping up the pace of strikes, without ensuring that it fits with the broader campaign, runs the risk of throwing the air campaign "out of sync" with other elements of the government, he said.
It's important for the air campaign to work in coordination with the State Department's diplomatic efforts and with the U.S. Agency for International Development to ensure it's ready to help bring governance to territory quickly after ISIS is ousted, Goldfein said, to make sure what follows ISIS is an improvement for the people who live there.
"This is nothing new, with the new administration," Goldfein said. "We've been consistently saying [that] you've got to keep all the lines of effort aligned going forward. That is as much of a pacing element of the campaign as what's going on with our allies and partners. This needs to be a coordinated, whole-of-government campaign as we go forward. ... What's going on with USAID is as important, if not more important, than what we have coming from the air."
Goldfein also reiterated the importance of maintaining the Air Force's values — such as taking great effort to prevent civilian casualties — as it conducts the air war.
"One of the things I'm very proud of is that we've never lost sight of the fact that we go to war with our values," Goldfein said. "Short-term gains that may be accomplished by rapid increases in numbers of weapons or numbers of sorties will pale in comparison to the long-term costs if we were to step away from how we fight, which is as a nation of values. Those that are critical of the extraordinary efforts we go to every day to prevent civilian casualties perhaps forget that that's who we are. And we take very seriously that if we don't create something better on the ground for those that live there, after we're done, then I'm not sure we've accomplished our long-term objectives."
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
