By my count now, 15 people have been fired amid the bureaucratic and press knife-fighting among supporters of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Among the latest group to be let go, there was no notice of the investigation into leaks having been concluded and no cause given. I know good men with great reputations on both sides of this turf war who have been cashiered. Some of what’s going on now is personal. Some of it is the ongoing fight between hawks and restrainers. Given what we currently know, none of those fired seem to have done anything as bad as the principals: Waltz, in adding a journalist to a private chat among government officials, and Hegseth, in sharing details of the attack with a compromised chat.

The administration should not disgrace people so easily or so trivially. This is unsustainable. Ideally, if there was no breach of ethics, a lot of these people should be brought back and made to work with each other.