Waltz is an honorable man with a fierce loyalty to his country, his friends, and his subordinates.
When you graduate the Virginia Military Institute, you are handed a diploma and a Bible. Or a Quran. Or Torah. Or a Constitution. Something that reminds graduates of a higher purpose that lasts longer that our short little stints on this ball of dirt we call home. Being of the wafer-eating sect of Christendom, I opted for the Catholic Bible. Our very Protestant chaplain at the time, a good man of decent humor, gave me a St. James Bible instead. A mistake maybe. Or perhaps his merry way of steering me away from the dour trappings of papism.
I have a passage highlighted in that graduation gift. “For all have sinned,” wrote the Apostle Paul, “and come short of God’s glory.”
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz graduated from the same institution. For all I know, he was handed the same Bible. Many in the city have reveled in a mistake that he made today, claiming he should be fired for the offense. Mark Antonio Wright believes that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be fired for Signalgate, writing:
When Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose his cancer diagnosis and hospitalization to Biden and his White House, Austin returned to run the Pentagon. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a complete and utter debacle. But no senior national security official lost his job for it, ever.
Firing a top official doesn’t always fix an organization’s underlying problems, of course. But when a president cashiers one of his own appointees, it’s an unmistakable acknowledgement that someone has failed, and it’s a hard-boiled message that there will be accountability.
Perhaps. But if I may crib another passage from scripture, let he among us who has never fat fingered a text, or an email, or tweet cast the first stone. Secretary Austin spent several weeks AWOL. You do not spend decades in the Army without knowing what AWOL is. That was premeditated and deliberate. And it is difficult for me to envision how, in the midst of staffing up a new National Security Council, dealing with a military campaign off the coast of Yemen, and brokering a peaceful conclusion to the largest land war in Europe since World War II, that mistakenly adding the wrong person or oversharing some sensitive-but-not-catastrophic details on an encrypted text chain is on par with the disgraceful fall of Kabul.
It is right to note that accountability is an indispensable virtue. Especially in the running of complex and important places like the Defense Department or the National Security Council. But some mistakes are hanging offenses. Others are not.
When I was an Air Force captain, running through the monotony of a nuclear alert, I accidentally failed to log the destruction of the prior day’s crypto. I had burned the paper key tapes by the book, but forgot to log their termination. We had that day a “penned site,” a missileer term for an open launch facility with the warhead exposed. Vulnerable weapons drove a fairly involved set of procedures. I was distracted by those procedures and made a dumb, but innocent, mistake.
My unit, the 90th Missile Operations Group, once belonged to the legendary Strategic Air Command (SAC). They had a saying during the Cold War: To err is human, to forgive is not SAC policy. That policy was later learned to be a colossal cultural mistake that led to several high-profile scandals involving nuclear weapons. Forgiveness remains an exponent of divinity, a teaching the Air Force forgot at great cost.
In that antiquated spirit, an overzealous security manager wanted to throw the book at me. I believe the word “stockade” was invoked. My squadron commander, a good and forgiving man, explained to the security manager the difference between malicious neglect and an innocent oversight. I was let off with a stern warning and a stiff order to not “be a dumbass” again. He knew, as I did, that we all slip up from time to time. And for those in positions of immense responsibility, whether it is custody of nuclear weapons or running the national security apparatus of the United States, it is important to extend the courtesy of proper context, prudence, and forbearance when mistakes are made.
I tell that story to tell you this story.
Three years ago someone in my immediate family was diagnosed with something awful. As I was staring into that abyss, looking at the ugly cost of travel to specialized hospitals in far-off states and a heavy toll of medical expenses, one of the first people on the phone was Mike Waltz. I will never forget what he said to me.
“Noonan, I did fairly well in business over the years. I want you to listen to what I’m saying. If you need help, if you find yourself underwater, you swallow your f***ing pride and you call me. I’m here for you and whatever you need.”
The Noonan men are famous for their lack of tear ducts, one of the many quirks of the Irish. But that night, the dust in my room was unusually high. There is nothing scarier than the floor falling out from beneath your feet. But there is nothing more inspired than a good friend offering his hand, in selfless generosity, to help you back up.
I am fiercely protective of family privacy and of that story, which I have never shared. But it struck me today, reading a story in Politico in which several White House officials gleefully ran to the mainstream press to anonymously slide a knife into Waltz’s back, that we are far too callous with the fates of good men. Especially when good men unintentionally reveal their humanity. Waltz is an honorable man with a fierce loyalty to his country, his friends, and his subordinates. I have experienced that goodness and that honor in ways few others have. The people anonymously kicking him in the teeth are not honorable men.
America needs good men. We need good men in public service. And whether they accidentally hand a Catholic a Protestant Bible, forget to log an important record, or make an innocent slip on a text thread, America should not be in the business of callously tossing good men aside.