Inside the 160-year military tradition under attack from Trump's Pentagon

Editor's Note: AlterNet Editor and Publisher Roxanne Cooper also worked at Stars & Stripes from 2000-2003.

While America is bogged down in this senseless war in Iran, Donald Trump and his reprehensible Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are once again attacking the welfare and morale of our troops.

For the past few months, this destructive duo have been taking aim at the iconic Stars and Stripes newspaper and its congressionally mandated editorial independence, by quite literally trying to kill the messenger.

It is unseemly, unnecessary and has been answered by journalists like myself and recently the newspaper’s ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, who was fired earlier this week for her stellar efforts defending the daily paper that has been covering and defending our troops since the Civil War.

I want to commend Smith for her good, important work, and command of her subject matter. She follows a rich tradition of notable ombudsmen at the paper through the years who have been charged with protecting the readers and ensuring the editorial staff delivers a comprehensive news and sports report to the troops free from command interference.

Any journalist worth his or her salt understands that Stars and Stripes might be the most important newspaper in the United States, and is certainly its most unique.

As I have explained before, Stars and Stripes is mandated by Congress to be an editorially independent newspaper that reports on and for the troops and their families overseas. It has endured through parts of three centuries, and through countless wars and administrations.

As I said in that piece:

Most important: Stripes delivers news they can trust and free from interference from paranoid, self-serving, unscrupulous pirates like Hegseth and his small-minded, insecure toadies in the Pentagon.

People like Hegseth are exactly why this paper’s editorial independence is protected.

Many of you will know I was the managing editor of the newspaper between 1998 to 2009. You will know this because I am so proud of my editorial service to the newspaper that I use it in my tagline after every column I write. I worked at many other newspapers in many other capacities, but my time at Stars and Stripes was by far the highlight.

It was beyond my imagination as a sailor who read the paper in the 1970s, that I would go onto work at the iconic place 20 years later. These are things a troublemaking kid growing up in New Jersey never dreamed of.

Now Stars and Stripes is facing its most brutal attack in its long history from a group of known liars, who have always been terrified by the truth. Trump and Hegseth lie as they speak, so of course they feel a newspaper that prints the truth must be stopped.

It is not the first time this newspaper has been attacked by self-serving, ignorant politicians, or even Trump himself, who made an ill-advised run at shutting the paper down during his first disastrous term.

The paper has always enjoyed bipartisan congressional favor as a necessary resource for the troops and their families, who are painfully learning how little Trump thinks of them.

It’s time for Congress — Republicans and Democrats — to stand up for our troops by protecting this important paper that advocates for them.

I’ll never forget sitting down with the leaders of a visiting public affairs contingent from Macedonia (now North Macedonia) at Stars and Stripes’ then overseas headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany, in 2005.

When I was finished with a windy explanation of the paper’s mission, the leader of the delegation was clearly blown away. “I can’t believe something like this can work,” he said. “We would never be allowed to do this in my country.”

I smiled at him and said three words: “Only in America.”

Just not Trump’s perverted notion of America apparently …

D. Earl Stephens is a United States Navy Veteran and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

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