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Ex-Navy SEAL Higbie: Obama Disliked, Distrusted by Military
Monday, January 19, 2015 07:59 PM
By: Sean Piccoli
President Barack Obama has damaged the U.S. armed forces and earned their lasting contempt by tampering with their traditions and letting the security gains they fought for in Iraq and Afghanistan unravel, a former Navy SEAL who fought in Iraq told Newsmax TV on Monday.
By imposing new social policies on a force governed by customs, and by turning his back on Middle Eastern countries that thousands of Americans died trying to secure, Obama "has greatly destabilized the fighting force," Carl Higbie, author of "Battle on the Home Front: a Navy SEAL's Mission to Save the American Dream," told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
Higbie sounded unsurprised by the president's poor approval rating — 15 percent — in a poll published in December by Military Times.
He said the widespread dislike for this commander in chief arises not just from his decision to arbitrarily send women into combat and repeal the "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy on sexual orientation, but from a strong sense that Obama doesn't have the military's back.
He said this president is to blame for declines in readiness and morale that were well documented in a 2011 Atlantic magazine article, "Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving."
"It's solely because of people like President Obama who have failed to institute a meritocracy in the military, and what that does is it leaves a lot of discomfort on the battlefield, a lot of troops questioning their commanders," said Higbie. "It just trickles down from the president."
He pointed to his own experience: courts-martial on prisoner abuse charges for himself and the other special forces operatives who captured the "Butcher of Fallujah," Ahmad Hashim Abd Al-Isawi, in 2009.
"The higher generals and the president had the chance to stop this nonsense and they didn't," said Higbie. "They let us fry through a court marshal, and even though we were all acquitted, our careers were destroyed.
"So this is a classic example of what's going on," he said. "There was a marine recently discharged for some comments he had on Facebook that weren't derogatory, that just said that he would not obey an unlawful order from the president.
"There is no top cover. They're more interested in the politics and the way something looks on paper than they are actually the troops fighting the war — just like Clint Lorance, who's in jail serving two counts of murder for defending his troops in Afghanistan."
Higbie also blasted liberal filmmaker Michael Moore for ridiculing the Oscar-nominated hit movie "American Sniper" by tweeting that military snipers are "cowards."
"This makes me sick," said Higbie, who also defended the movie's real-life subject, the late Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL credited with the most kills in U.S. military history.
"He's not a murderer," said Higbie. "As a soldier, I can fully say that what we did is a job. We did it for our country and our families and our friends. This is not something we enjoyed doing. Sure, we enjoyed defending freedom. We did it because we volunteered to do it.
"But at the end of the day, to degrade him for any type of sniper activity he did or especially to call him a coward, what has Michael Moore done for anybody other than himself?"
