"Support the troops"

As a retired career officer in the United States Navy, I have strong opinions about what's going on in our nation's military today. In the past, I have often shared them here. Today, it's harder to do so. Not because I worry about retribution or anything like that. It's because those opinions are accompanied by powerful emotions, and it's often difficult to write when there is a storm going on. It is impossible to quantify the damage, physical, mental and moral, that this administration is doing to the men and women who serve our country in uniform. Not all of them, to be sure. I'm certain that there are more than a few of them who delight in what's taking place. These souls were lost long before Trump took office. The problem is that the same moral rot that infects them will spread. And it's difficult to arrest once it's taken hold. Good people will leave the service rather than continue to serve with people like that. New members will be shaped and guided by the twisted, immoral,…