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Uncommon Knowledge: Tom Cotton on Whether He Still Thinks the Editors of the New York Times Should be Behind Bars
The first time that most Americans heard of now-Senator Tom Cotton was in 2006, when, while serving as a lieutenant in Iraq, he wrote a famous letter to the New York Times upbraiding them for publishing the secret details of the federal government’s anti-terrorist financing program. The conclusion of that letter: “By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.” In this final clip from our recent conversation on Uncommon Knowledge, I ask him, at the remove of nearly a decade, if he still stands by those words:
Published in Foreign Policy
As a thought experiment, would it have been acceptable for a left-wing officer in 2006 to have written a scathing public letter to the National Review editorial board calling them Chickenhawks and unpatriotic for supporting a war for blood and oil? All the while beating his audience over the head with the fact that he was currently serving in Iraq?
That’s so vague as to be meaningless. When it’s merely a matter of public speaking, what exactly is the point?
Nobody ever disputes the first. Do you have any reason to fear anyone on Ricochet has or will dispute it? As to the second, ‘engaging in politics’ is again deeply misleading. I am ashamed to see you write this way. He was not running for office or even offering policy advice, nor was there any kind of partisan bent that by implication is engaging in political action.
Nothing to do with formality here. Nobody said anything about the political forms here. This is nothing like Gen. MacArthur talking with the Congressional GOP. Give me a break or give me evidence.
Give me the comparable example. Whatever famous one serves your purpose, I’m not asking for an entire history here. Who are these conservatives that changed their minds, as ‘used to be’ implies?
You’re very reasonable here, but the man wants a gag order. He offers absolutely no evidence that this has anything to do with the oath sworn. He does not care what it sounds like when he offers brief, vague statements which he seems to take for absolute or recognized principles, not to say lessons to the benighted who are inviting, against his better judgment, the end of the republic. This man is apparently completely incapable of realizing he is putting himself in a situation where he’s desperately saying: Who do you trust to defend the republic, Sen. Cotton or me? Why in the world he thinks to invite an answer to that question I cannot say. But I preferred it when Groucho said, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?
I cannot believe that you think this is really comparable–you are talking about a man who is practicing disloyalty to the gov’t! But of course there may be something comparable. Find it, I’ll subscribe. Well, find it anyway, others, people whose opinion matters more, might like to know to what they are asked to subscribe-
Thank you. The Cotton letter seems clear-cut to me as not violating any laws or ethics. In fact, it is supportive of the military’s stated mission to protect the United States, including the commander in chief. The NYT was the threat here, not Cotton.
I am puzzled over the libertarian view of this.
Well, think of it as anti-federalists whose republican faith simply required that they dishonor Washington. It must have been the case with some, simply because of the difficulty of their position. I do not doubt that Mr. Cole & like-minded folk are reasonable & decent. I think this position is neither, however. I do not even find it impossible to think that they are right & we are wrong–but I am convinced the certainty, the provocative tone–that’s wrong, that’s not able to do justice to honorable men who have done for America far more than he…
Full disclosure; I have taken the exact same oath that then Lt. Cotton did. So I know of which I speak. I have never said he violated any laws. Without having delved into the regulations, I suspect that he did not.
But I can speak with some authority when I say that writing editorials that invoke your current rank and position to make a statement is a big faux pas in the military.
It’s a small thing to people outside of the military, but the apolitical and areligious nature of the officer corps is something dear to me. We swore oaths to support defend the constitution, not to be commentators and PR men.
I was just as unsuccessful arguing last year that I don’t believe currently serving reserve officers should run for office either, even though it is perfectly legal and there are now several in the Senate.
I appreciate and respect the code of honor you have lived by. I don’t think Cotton violated it.
I think Cotton was correct to speak up to the NYT in that their actions would amount to warning the enemy of our plans to thwart their terrorist activities.
But I completely respect the intent behind the law and the faithfulness of our military personnel to staying true to it.
That may be. But he may yet be right, as some of us have contended, in a rather less precise way than maybe we should have. & the people who frown upon his actions may yet be wrong.
This, I think, asks too much of men who may be willing to die for their country, & serve, but should not be in a position where the kind of patriotism implied in what Sen. Cotton did is unacceptable. I’d say, some exception must be made, or, better to say, some form of politics is required for patriotism & apolitical is the wrong way to think about it. But then again, I would not know–I’m not ‘people inside the military’. I just hope the warrior class will do what reasonably can be done to be less separate from ‘people outside the military’.
But there is something unfortunate about this. When last was the legislature as bereft of veterans as it was before the emergence of the Iraq & Afghanistan veterans?
We just have different views on the subject. I don’t consider advocating throwing journalists in prison to be “patriotism”.
Maybe you do not know the meaning of the word or maybe you’re using it in a loose sense. But if there is any kind of patria, common defense is the central object of gov’t & treason is the worst political crime. Under the American laws, what is at stake here is not said to be treason, & treason is rarely prosecuted, anyway, but this may be an acceptable legal translation of a basic political fact.
But all that aside, when you call it ‘advocating throwing journalists in prison,’ you might call Mr. W. Bush’s Iraq policy ‘killing Iraqi men, women, & children.’ You’re a peach-