It is now very obvious that the multiple impact warhead that retired Admiral William McRaven fired off against the president* the other day after El Caudillo Del Mar-A-Lago had taken away John Brennan's security clearance has hit everything at which McRaven aimed it. It has driven the president* to dig himself even deeper into the hole; on Friday, he waved his mighty sword at the other people on his new enemies list, particularly Bruce Ohr. It certainly helped embolden other dissenters among former intelligence officials and military officers. It appears that the entire military-intelligence alumni association is in open revolt.

As McRaven wrote in The Washington Post:

Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency. Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs. A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself. Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

McRaven is a different breed of cat. After retiring from the Navy, wherein he led the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, McRaven did not become a defense lobbyist or a think-tank commando. Instead, he spent three years as chancellor of the University of Texas system and, by all accounts, and with a few conspicuous bumps in the road, he did a splendid job. And he did so despite suffering from a non-life-threatening form of chronic leukemia.

Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc Getty Images

The Texas Tribune did a fascinating exit interview when McRaven left the chancellor's job last May.

But there are always competing interests, so our job in higher ed is to make sure that we make a case for why what we are trying to do is important for the state of Texas. But you know as we go through this, everybody understands that there are competing interests and there is pre-K through 12, which I have said all along: If you have one dollar, put it towards pre-K through 12. That is important to be able to teach our young men and women and teach them well and educate them well so they're ready to go into the workforce or they're ready to come to a great university. So there are always competing interests.

Pre-K through 12. I'm often asked when I am sitting in various forums, and we start to turn to national defense and national security issues and somebody in the audience will invariably ask me what I think the biggest national security issue is, and my answer's the same every time: It's pre-K through 12. Which surprises them, they think I'm going to say North Korea or they think I'm going to say Iran. But the fact of the matter is, my biggest concern is: Are we educating the youth of America well enough so that in 10 years, 20 years that these young men and women will be great citizens of the United States, that they will be ready to come to college? That they will be ready to serve in industry and in technology? And I don't know that I think we have found the right answer to that yet. So the thing that keeps me up at night is making sure that the state of Texas – or hoping that the state of Texas – and the nation is investing in our pre-K through 12 in a way that will put our young men and women in a position to be successful.

This, then, is a retired military commander with impeccable credentials and a very interesting mind. (Pre-K through 12 as a national security issue? The admiral sounds like Diane Ravitch, and he's absolutely right.) Small wonder, then, that McRaven's scathing evaluation of the current president* and his administration* has had the power it apparently has.

And even though the idea of intelligence officials and military officers, retired or otherwise, combining to condemn the civilian political leaders of the country gives me the willies, that doesn't mean they aren't worth listening to, or that, out in the open, they can't present a formidable political force. The president* may have picked a fight this time the dimensions of which we don't yet know.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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