Trump Is a Threat, and the Military Is Ignoring It

Mr. Kendall was the secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration.

I attended a military retirement ceremony last month at which Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the presiding officer and featured speaker. It was eerily, even alarmingly normal. In a large room full of current and retired senior military officers, everyone was playing the same game of “Let’s pretend everything is fine.”

Denial is one of the two approaches the nation’s senior military leaders seem to have taken to cope with Donald Trump’s presidency. When they aren’t ignoring how abnormal things have become, they turn to the other........

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