SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
At Davos this week, President Trump took any possible military action against Greenland off the table. He said there is a framework of a deal with respect to both Greenland and the entire Arctic region, but details were sparse. And on the way home, the president told reporters he had just sent a, quote, "armada" of U.S. Naval forces headed towards Iran in case he had to take action. And there are, of course, also active-duty military on standby for possible deployment to Minneapolis. In Donald Trump's second term, the military, both at home and abroad, is at the center of many of his most controversial actions. We're joined now by NPR's Tom Bowman and Quil Lawrence. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being with us.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Good to be here.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Yes. Thank you.
SIMON: Tom, let's begin domestically. How have we seen the military deployed here at home?
BOWMAN: Well, Scott, if you left the studio and walked to the window and looked down North Capitol Street here in Washington, you would likely see National Guard troops walking up and down the street. There are more than 2,000 National guard troops here in D.C. right now, and they've been extended all through 2026. And also guard troops have gone to Memphis, New Orleans. Trump tried to send out-of-state guard troops to Oregon and Illinois. Federal judges said that's not a good idea. There's no need for that. Now we have active-duty forces, Scott, on standby from Colorado, from Alaska and from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. More than 2,000 of them in total on pre-deployment orders to go to Minneapolis, if need be.
SIMON: And let's turn to you both because given the president's comments, military action against Iran remains possible. U.S. is still boarding oil tankers off of Venezuela, where, of course, just three weeks ago, U.S. forces seized President Maduro. What do you see as being different in terms of the U.S. military being deployed in the second term from the Trump first term, Tom?
BOWMAN: Well, you're right, Scott. Venezuela, they seized President Maduro. That was Delta Force. It was a raid. It was a targeted mission to grab Maduro, get him out, and send him to New York for prosecution. There were no, outside of that, boots on the ground. You're not looking at a large-scale military operation like we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think Trump wants to have that kind of open-ended military mission.
SIMON: Quil?
LAWRENCE: Yeah. It can seem like a contradiction because at the same time as the Pentagon is pushing out this message of, let's say, mess around and find out and lethality, Trump and many of the people in his administration have talked about kind of an America First isolationism. But what's consistent is what Tom's saying, is there's this aversion to any boots on the ground or any responsibility, sense of owning it just 'cause you broke it, to turn around the old Pottery Barn rule.
BOWMAN: And certainly no nation-building like we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.
LAWRENCE: And, yeah, to talk about Iraq, I mean, the U.S. this week just left its last base in central Iraq. And in Syria, it's announced pretty bluntly that it's abandoning any support for the Kurdish forces that did most of the fighting against ISIS there. But already, you see this result is that, you know, these Kurdish forces on the ground in northeast Syria, they were guarding thousands of ISIS prisoners. And in the fighting with the Syrian government the Kurds have now pulled back from, hundreds of those ISIS fighters escaped. So no boots on the ground, but also, you know, fewer allies on the ground, which means there can be consequences for that.
SIMON: Let me ask you both about the question of legality. I'm thinking less about Maduro or boarding the tankers and the boat strikes near Venezuela. Does this put the U.S. into unknown territory?
BOWMAN: No. There are definitely questions about that. Now, the Justice Department has said these boat strikes are legal, and their argument is that these boats are carrying drugs to the United States that are killing tens of thousands of Americans. Therefore, we can attack these boats because they're killing Americans. There are many people in Congress and defense analysts who question that, and we do know that the former head of Southern Command, Admiral Holsey, he actually resigned over this issue. He had, I'm told by Capitol Hill sources, reservations about these boat strikes, and he decided to resign rather than continue.
SIMON: Quil?
LAWRENCE: I spoke with Sarah Yager about this. She used to work at the Department of Defense advising the Joint Chiefs on humanitarian law. She's now at Human Rights Watch. She said the Pentagon has specifically fired the staff that used to advise the targeters and the operators.
SARAH YAGER: So there was a large staff that was dealing with civilian harm mitigation, meaning making sure that civilians were not harmed in U.S. operations. That has been gutted. The guardrails that kept rules of engagement from being unlawful, those have been dismantled.
LAWRENCE: And this is playing out with military leadership, too, in a recent Senate confirmation hearing for two generals to replace the heads of Southern Command, who Tom just mentioned, and the head of Cyber Command. I mean, one is replacing an admiral that quite possibly left because he had objections to what he thought were illegal orders killing the people in these fast boats. The other was replacing a general that got the sack because he ran afoul of a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Laura Loomer. So you have a Republican senator, chairman of this committee, assuring them that they should speak their minds and tell the senators how they really feel, but there is uncertainty as to sort of what is grounds for dismissal and what they can say and still keep their careers.
BOWMAN: Yeah. Along those lines, Scott, I just had breakfast with a retired four-star officer who said, listen, his friends who are still on active duty are afraid to say anything, afraid to stand up to Secretary Hegseth or go afoul of President Trump. They're afraid of getting fired because, as you know, many admirals and generals have been fired over the past year by this administration. And the consequence of that, Scott, is we used to get background briefings from military officials - senior military officials about, let's say, Venezuela, what's going on there, what's the possibilities for Iran. Those have all dried up. Last year, there were only two Pentagon briefings by Secretary Hegseth. So as a result of all that, the American people aren't getting a sense of what the military's doing in their name.
SIMON: NPR's Tom Bowman and Quil Lawrence. Thanks so much.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
LAWRENCE: Thank you.
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