Trump has unconstitutional conception of U.S. military

Monday, Oct. 23, 2017 | 2 a.m.

When the framers of the Constitution accepted the need for a standing army, they made Congress responsible for funding it.

Why? They wanted to establish a check on the president’s power. So the framers handed the military’s purse strings to Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, to help prevent the president from assembling his own military to overthrow the government and establish a dictatorship.

That bit of U.S. history matters today perhaps more than ever, as evidenced by President Donald Trump’s repeated comments suggesting he believes the nation’s armed forces belong to him.

The latest came Monday when Trump doubled down on his bogus claim that former President Barack Obama hadn’t called families of fallen soldiers to express the nation’s condolences.

“President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t, that’s what I was told,” Trump said. “All I can do is ask my generals.”

My generals.

That could have been written off as a slip of the tongue, except that:

Trump tweeted in June that he was banning transgender people from military service “after consultation with my generals and military experts.”

When asked in April if he had personally OK’d the dropping of a bomb on an ISIS tunnel, Trump, said, “What I do is I authorize my military.”

No, Mr. President, they aren’t your generals, they are our generals because this remains America. And by the way Mr. President, you work for all of us. Try to remember that.

For Trump to contend otherwise is maybe the most glaring sign yet of his disdain for American democracy or his ignorance of the structure of U.S. government. Either way, it’s yet another indication that he’s unfit for the office he occupies.

To their credit, several military officers and personnel spoke out against Trump’s remarks.

He deserved the criticism, and not just for claiming ownership of the military. Trump also has displayed the polar opposite of good leadership by taking credit for military successes while deflecting blame for failures.

The latest example came with his comments after the victory by U.S.-allied forces in Raqqa, Syria, when he took credit for ISIS “giving up.”

“I totally changed the rules of engagement, I totally changed our military, I totally changed the attitudes of the military, and they have done a fantastic job,” he said.

Notice Trump didn’t say “my administration.” Notice he didn’t offer praise to military officials for helping bring about the supposed turnaround. Nope, a president who eats and breathes self-adoration saw an opportunity to tout himself, and he took it.

Yet in February, when an intelligence-gathering mission that Trump authorized in Yemen went awry and resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL, Trump threw the military under the bus.

“This was a mission that was started before I got here,” he said. “This was something they wanted to do.”

Win, and it’s “me” and “I.” Lose, and it’s “they.”

That’s disrespectful to America’s military forces.

Not Trump’s. America’s.