Hertling on Trust: ‘If I Don’t Return’

Review by Bill Doughty––

Hertling

Hertling’s book “If I Don’t Return” is much more than its meaningful subtitle: “A Father’s Wartime Journal.” The war journal is a vital part, but this book is also about history, philosophy,  self-reflection, self-help, and –– most especially –– leadership. It’s also about building character based on trust.

His book for everyone, because nearly everyone understands and values the importance of trust. Hertling shares many personal lessons and beliefs, including this gem:

“…Over the years, I've come to believe one thing. That life and leadership are forged by one's character. And character is molded by experiences but defined by integrity, shared trust, enumerated values, honest humility, and different kinds of love.” Shared trust!

“Trust,” along with the other qualities he lists, is a foundation of core values and good leadership. Hertling saw the value of trust in 1990/1991 during the First Gulf War, when he helped kick Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

Trust in Unity

George H. W. Bush

“Looking back now at Desert Storm, I see how trust was the thread running through it all. At the unit level, trust was instinctive and immediate. We built it in our squadron, and President George H.W. Bush [Navy World War II Veteran, left*] generated it in our citizens. Chairman Powell and Secretary of Defense Cheney reinforced it in their conversations with politicians and the American people. We often didn't have the same in our later conflicts.

In combat, you cannot hedge or calculate trust—it must be whole. 

On a Bradley or Abrams tank crew, drivers trust commanders to navigate through the night; gunners trust leaders to identify targets; wingmen trust each other to cover their flanks. Once proven, that trust became indestructible. That was what carried us through exhaustion, confusion, and chaos. Desert Storm also enjoyed broad trust at home: 

Its objectives were clear, the coalition strong, the war short. That was due, at least in part, to the fact that Desert Storm was a quick war, and Americans like quick wars, with a lot of explosions shown on TV. 

By contrast, trust would not be as stable during our later counterinsurgency and counterterrorism wars. Soldiers in combat zones continued to trust what they could see: their buddies beside them, their leaders in the field, their sense of mission, and their practiced competency. But they couldn’t personally affect the shifting political calculations in Washington, the support of the citizenry of the country, or the intelligence that shaped actions. The disadvantages of long wars — counterinsurgencies and counterterrorism fights that took much longer to generate success-and the fleeting attention span of our citizenry caused a loss of interest in what the professional military force (less than 1 percent of our nation) was accomplishing. And the results of Operation Iraqi Freedom (and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan) stretched that trust thin, often to the breaking point. The false intelligence about chemical weapons, the changing conditions and mission creep, and the president's advice to citizens to keep going to the malls contributed to that deterioration of interest and trust.”

Trust in Your Eyes and Ears

When a reporter told President Trump (left) the other day that Navy families are concerned about their Sailors because of deteriorating conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), he replied, “No they’re not.” When the reporter asked if the carrier was deployed too long, he replied, “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed gratitude to the Sailors aboard the carrier, but claimed news reports detailing poor living conditions and mental health struggles on the carrier were false or distorted and “completely misrepresented.”

But after a visit to USS Abraham Lincoln, Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander, U.S. Central Command, who is the top U.S. commander in the war with Iran, said, “I applaud Lincoln’s leadership –– the senior enlisted leaders in the Chief Petty Officers Mess in particular –– for stepping up and making mental health and crew resilience a leadership priority.”

In the face of rising prices and Americans’ concerns about the economy, Trump –– who along with his family is making billions of dollars while in office –– said several weeks ago, “I don't think about Americans' financial situation, I don't think about anybody.”

Opinion polls show most Americans hear that lack of care and so have a lack of trust.

Trust in ‘Johari’

In “If I Don’t Return,” Hertling refers to more than a dozen other thinkers and authors. One of those authors is emergency medicine physician Dr. Omayra Mansfield, who wrote "The Trust Transformation."

"In her book, Dr. Mansfield relayed a core message that is simple but profound: Before you can build trust in others  –– your patients, their families, your colleagues and leaders — you must first trust yourself. Leadership requires clarity of individual values, consistency of action, and authenticity of presence. She knows this is true in an emergency room, and I know it is true in a combat zone. It is something that must also remain true for citizens and policymakers. When trust is absent –– when leaders are inconsistent, opaque, or self-deceiving, and when employees or citizens don't feel a part of the team — trust quickly collapses. 

Many of those who study trust often revert to a model called the ‘Johari Window.’ It's a rhetorical tool used to explain self-awareness and trust between individuals. In combat, soldiers operate almost entirely in the ‘open quadrant’ of that theoretical window — we depend on what we know about each other, gained from close connection, shared hardship, and repetitive experiences that all lead toward trust. There are no illusions about fear, courage, or capabilities. But in other groups— larger teams in different situations — the Johari Window posits that participants often exist in the ‘hidden’ or ‘blind’ quadrants. Some individuals often withhold their full motives (hidden), fail to see their own limitations (blind), or are misled by information that is just not true. 

The result is a breakdown in trust … I’m convinced that trust is the building block of relationships, leadership ... and life. Trust is gained in myriad ways, and, as I once heard someone say, trust is earned in drops but lost in buckets. Trust is relatively easy to build in small teams, if one knows what it takes to build it. But it is much harder to sustain when hidden motives, blind spots, egos, and personal agendas that are often present in larger teams enter the equation. 

Interestingly, military theoretician Carl Von Clausewitz described something similar in broader terms for warfare. He wrote of war as a paradoxical ‘trinity’ — a  balance of passion, chance, and reason — that found its practical expression in the relationship between the government, its army, and its people. Each had to trust the other. Citizens had to believe their government's cause was just. Armies had to believe their political leaders would use their sacrifices wisely. And governments had to trust their soldiers to execute with discipline and competence. If one leg of that triangle fails or is even oft kilter, if confidence collapses, the nation that goes to war will suffer significant consequences. Ukraine's resistance to Russias invasion in 2022 illustrated this perfectly: Ukraine's people trusted their government, its army trusted both the people and their leaders, and the government trusted the army enough to unleash it with broad support. That synergy sustained Ukraine when the odds seemed impossible. Trust, in that sense, is not just personal — it is strategic. 

As a nation — as a government, as citizens, and as an army — we were successful in building the trust needed to execute Desert Storm inside our units, between the government and the people, and between the people and the army. But during later wars, we found ourselves in a place where no military leader, and certainly no government, wants to be. Despite tough fighting by courageous soldiers, competent diplomacy of the State Department, and the desire of governmental officials to achieve stated goals, three of the other wars — Vietnam, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom — were failures. In my view, a big part of the reason boiled down to an unbalanced Clausewitzian triangle. A lack of trust. 

To me, the lesson is simple. Trust is critical between people, between the citizenry of a nation and its government, and between governmental officials and their army. Find ways to build trust — improve communication, eliminate misinformation, define the mission, maintain humility, ensure competency and integrity, create understanding — and it will bring you closer to success. All seemingly easy, but to paraphrase Clausewitz, the simplest things are often the most difficult.”

Trust in Truth

Hertling writes, “What I learned from both Iraq and Ukraine is that opportunism thrives in the vacuum left by failed institutions. People who have no faith that their government will provide food, water, fuel, or security will take matters into their own hands.”

In the United States, great social change has been brought about both violently (the Civil War) and nonviolently (FDR’s New Deal after the Great Depression). MLK’s Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s achieved integration and LBJ’s Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act through a non-violent strategy but with violent repercussions

Hertling warns:

“In America, we've seen moments when institutions faltered and riots turned cities into places of fear and lawlessness. In those moments, ordinary people are swept up in mob behavior that tears at the fabric of community and civility.

The lesson is stark: Without trusted institutions, the human condition bends toward chaos. Leaders — whether military or civilian — must not only prepare to confront that chaos but also work tirelessly to prevent it by ensuring their people are cared for, protected, and respected. A government that cares for its people will always be more resilient than one that leaves them desperate.”

On a hopeful note, he writes, “… Chaos, if left unchecked, will consume everything. But with strong leadership, institutions built on trust, and the kind of professionalism modeled by leaders like Henadii Vorobiov in Ukraine, and later Barham Salih in Iraq, societies can resist the pull of opportunism and corruption and instead move toward stability and hope for the future.”

Trust in Communication

Hertling’s life’s path has led him into public affairs and journalism as a national security analyst. Again, “trust” is at the ore of communication with the public.

While serving in Iraq again in 2003 as an assistant division commander in the 1st Armored Division, his commanding general, Marty Dempsey, directed him to communicate with three distinct audiences in three very different ways. Above all, to do so with honesty and integrity, especially when communicating with the American people. Hertling received this directive: “Expand information operations, public affairs, and command information.”

“At the time, those three terms had distinct doctrinal meanings. Information operations referred to the full spectrum of activities designed to influence our enemies and protect our own decision-making. IO consisted of psychological operations, electronic warfare, deception, and information security. Public affairs was the communication of facts to the public, usually through the media, and it focused on telling the army's story truthfully and effectively. We were not allowed to use information operations against journalists. Finally, command information referred to internal communication within the force: that is, messaging that kept soldiers, families, and the army community informed so rumors didn't fill gaps.

Dempsey understood something few others did: In modern conflict, these three were interconnected. If we wanted to stabilize Iraq, we couldn't just fight insurgents; we had to protect information from the enemy, but we also had to win narratives, build trust, and tell the truth.”

Telling the truth is the foundation of building trust. And trust is, again, “earned in drops but lost in buckets.” The three pillars of communication may be interconnected, but they must be distinct to their audience. That’s why public affairs interaction to the public or internal communication with troops must never include lies or disinformation of “information operations,” strictly used against bonafide enemies. And the media are not "enemies of the people."

In 2026, we are right to demand leaders of good character who tell the truth and build trust.

[This is the second in a three-part series of reviews of this important book.]

*Former President George H.W. Bush departs the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Jan. 8, 2009.  (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Joel S. Kolodziejczak)

Tank photo: BAGHDAD, Iraq An M1 Abrams Tank from B Company 1st Battalion 37th Infantry, attached to 1st Battalion,, 36th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division as part of Task Force 1/36 maintains perimeter security inside a traffic circle in the Rusafa district of Baghdad, April 2004. (Cpl. Benjamin Cossel)

Rise and Fall and Rise of John Birchers

Review by Bill Doughty––

Welch with portrait of Birch

Robert W. Welch Jr. attended both the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Law School, but finished neither. He abandoned careers in the Navy and in law and became a wealthy candy manufacturer. He also started one of the most divisive groups in American history, the John Birch Society. Welch named JBS for Christian missionary and U.S. Army Air Forces Capt. John Birch, who was killed by Chinese communists in 1945 –– what the society considered the start of a “Holy War.”

Emerging from the ashes of a long history of racist, nationalist, and populist movements, including 1950s McCarthyism, the John Birch Society dedicated itself to defeating global communism, propagating Christianity, countering civil and women’s rights, and promoting an America First agenda. The JBS latched onto the GOP like a sea lamprey and did not let go.

“By the early 60s Birchers had settled on the course they would follow in the decades to come. They would operate on the fringe of the conservative movement and, episodically and erratically, within the Republican Party,” according to Matthew Dallek, author of “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right” (Hachette, 2022)

“Ideologically, the society flaunted its antiestablishment sensibility and pumped hot-button cultural issues –– patriotic eduction, moral library books, an end to teaching sex education in schools –– into local debates over their communities’ most valued and non-partisan institutions.” Past is prologue, as the saying goes.

After President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court, the Warren Court ruled progressively in favor of integration in Brown v. Board of Education. SCOTUS also upheld the wall of separation between state and church in banning prayer in public schools. So the Birchers targeted and smeared Earl Warren and called for his impeachment.

At the 1964 GOP Convention, Michigan Governor George Romney warned his colleagues and electors about the rise of populism and radicalism within the Republican Party, calling for more tolerance, inclusion, and respect for diversity in the Republican platform under Goldwater. "The strongest personality on earth cannot deal with the problems of this nation except upon the basis of correct principles. Our party was founded at a time of grave national crisis," Romney said, noting Abraham Lincoln's role in saving the Union. "The nation and its destinies were in peril, not only by the irreconcilable conflict between slavery and freedom, but also by the extremism of that time. And the extremism and lily-white Protestantism destroyed the Whig Party and brought the Republican Party into being."

Senator George Romney at the GOP Convention, 1968

But for most of the past six decades, according to Dallek, “Birch ideas were hardly dominant in the Republican Party.” Those ideas –– anti immigration, anti world alliances, anti feminism, anti abortion, anti gun safety, and anti integration –– were on the rise with Barry Goldwater and in reaction to the civil rights movement.

“In some communities, the society was very much in the ascendant. Its influence in the GOP in 1963 was also greater than at any time since its inception. But most Birchers had lost their elections, they failed to stop candidates such as (George) Romney from winning their races, and numerous Republicans from the Northeast to the Midwest to the West Coast remained vigorously opposed to their ideology and political style. Unbeknownst to the society, in the summer of 1963 the White House was preparing to launch an all-out assault that had the potential to knock the Birch movement to the ground. The society’s prospect remained uncertain and contingent. The struggle for power in the Republican Party –– and in the United States –– was heating up. Birchers warned of Armageddon, cast critics as traitors and degenerates, disrupted civic meetings, harassed teachers and principals, and hinted at physical violence. More than any other movement of the 1960s, the Birch Society ignited what they described as an end-times contest for the very soul of the United States.”

“The ideas, activism, and style that Birchers helped pioneer has continued to drive well into the twenty-first century.” George Romney’s speech in 1964 –– really a warning –– is chillingly relevant today.

The JBS wanted to ban alcohol, according to Dallek. They were also against Hollywood, the media, school integration, fluoridation of water, and teaching of evolution instead of creationism. “They sought to use the power of government to enforce Christian identity in American culture while repudiating allegedly alien values like pluralism and tolerance.” Dallek contends they “helped launch a culture war that reverberates today.”

Maddox and Wallace

One of the stars of intolerance and the culture war in the 1960s and 70s was Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, who became popular by wielding axe handles to chase black people out of his restaurant. Maddox was befriended and supported by JBS founder Robert Welch.

Welch endorsed Alabama Governor George Wallace’s run for president in 1968. Wallace was an avowed segregationist and racist. He chose as his running mate retired Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who Dallek describes as “the real-life inspiration for the cigar-smoking General Jack D. Ripper” of Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove.

“An architect of firebombing in World War II, LeMay had a fascination with nuclear weapons and drew howls of outrage when he endorsed their use while on the campaign trail. Although LeMay had a record of innovative military leadership, Wallace’s choosing him was a running mate was perceived as empowering Birchers and the far-right fringe.”

Dallek writes:

“Haltingly, over decades, this fringe usurped the party’s center. The trajectory was alterable, not inevitable, contingent rather than certain. Many Republican leaders worked to stop it, until they didn’t. The society fostered apocalyptic thinking about the country’s direction, mistrusted elites as traitors, and raised the specter that only drastic remedies, including violence, could save the country. Its brand of mass politics fed money, energy, and ideas to conservative Republicans. And by offering a home for conspiracy theorists, racists, and antisemites, some Republican leaders emboldened the rights most noxious and violent bigots. The GOP establishment’s effort to court this fringe and keep it in the coalition allowed it to gain a foothold and eventually cannibalize the entire party, Over time, this uneasy alliance came to seem commonplace, part of the zeitgeist –– more and more alarming yet no longer shocking.”

On the other hand…

Clinton and Carter

A goal of liberals and other anti-Birchers was “to build the world they wanted –– a world where pluralism trumped hate, science trounced unreason, and democracy conquered fascism.” Progressives witnessed how an “America First” fascist-friendly and non-interventionist approach, including appeasement, led to the Second World War.

Those on the Left also saw how the Birchers’ fervent and feverish anti-Communism and white Christian nationalism led the nation into the war in Vietnam, invasion of Iraq, and a culture war at home. By the early 1990s, the us-and-them influence of the Birchers, personified by politicians Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich, was rejected with the election of Navy Veteran Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in 1992.

“Clinton used his bully pulpit to tie the GOP to far-right militants like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City mass murderer, and Randy Weaver, the white separatist who triggered a bloody confrontation with the FBI at Ruby Ridge. After McVeigh’s powerful homemade bomb tore through the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, Clinton attended a memorial service in Oklahoma City and urged Americans ‘to purge ourselves of the dark forces which gave rise to this evil. They are forces that threaten our common peace, our freedom, our way of life,’ and, he vowed, ‘we will stand against the forces of fear.’ Some right-wing talk show hosts and politicians, he added, had to realized that their ‘incendiary talk’ moved fanatics to action. Their ‘constant bashing of government, and relentless assumption that forces beyond our control run our government’ had spread dark views of federal employees and could trigger more bloodshed.”

That warning was nearly 30 years ago!

In the yin-yang of the American republic’s elections under the constraints of the Electoral College, George W. Bush was elected president. Bush’s presidency was the “most consequential chapter yet in the Birchification of the American right and the GOP.” Bush, whose father appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, chose John Ashcroft as his first attorney general. Ashcroft expressed his belief, shared by many on the far-right, that “Jesus is king,” reigning above the Constitution and civil authority.

During Bush’s presidency, another politician, far more conservative than Bush, made a name for himself. Ron Paul (father or currently serving Senator Rand Paul) marked the time when, Dallek says, the fringe became mainstream. “Paul’s influence was substantial, opening the Republican Party to previously unthinkable views.”

The senior Paul as countered, however, by statesman and Republican standard-bearer John McCain, a Navy veteran and former POW, who said those who engage “in the politics of division and slander” are “corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.” Although McCain called out Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance,” he would later backtrack and reconcile with Falwell, hoping to woo Christian fundamentalists.

Ultimately, according to Dalleck, “McCain saw that it was no longer possible to navigate the tension between the far right and the mainstream because by 2008, in the Republican Party, the fringe had begun to gain the upper hand. If he wanted to win, McCain had little choice but to violate his own principles.” He selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.

With Obama’s election, gun sales rose dramatically, militia membership increased, and “the far right was now entering the mainstream of the Republican Party, bringing with it the legacy of the John Birch Society.” Along with Pat Buchanan and Rand Paul, politicians supporting or condoning extremism in the GOP included Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson as well as “fringe” Representatives Jim Jordan and Michelle Bachman, according to Dallek.

Alex Jones

“Unlike in the mid-1960s, the Republican Party of the early 2010s failed to check the extreme right,” Dallek says. Instead, “social media and the ubiquitous, sophisticated right-wing amplified the far right’s most inflammatory claims.”

Media stars arose to spread the authoritarian populism of the far right: The Drudge Report, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and “breakout media star of the far right” Alex Jones, who as a young teen was influenced by John Birch Society PR director Gary Allen’s book “None Dare Call It Conspiracy.” Jones aligned with Roger Stone, a massive influencer of the extremist fringe right, even as Jones capitalized on conspiracies. Jones spread falsehoods related to the the 9/11 attacks, the Sandy Hook massacre, and supposed cannibalization of children by Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

Conspiracies became part of the right’s bloodstream as it had been in the 1960s.

Just as the Birchers feared communists were in control of the civil rights movement, MAGA followers believed America’s first black president was born overseas and was not eligible to serve. While JBS followers feared adding fluoride in water as a government conspiracy, sixty years later many far right extremists feared COVID vaccinations and believed various pandemic-related conspiracies.

“Trump drew energy, as Birchers had, from white supremacists, militias, and nativists and brought them into his coalition. His alliances with the white nationalists who rioted in Charlottesville (‘fine people’), with the far-right, all-male Proud Boys (‘stand back and stand by’), and with the deep-state-obsessed, conspiratorial QAnon (‘people that love our country’) blended racism and conspiracy theories in ways that harked back to the mix of racism, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories that drew many Birchers to their movement.”

And Dallek contends, “Just as Birchers took a dim view of democracy, Trump questioned the integrity of elections in which millions of people of color voted.” The conspiracy theory of a stolen election, though disproven in dozens of court cases and denied by sane Republicans in many states, led to the tragedy of the insurrection of January 6.

Dallek may be right in his overall thesis, that the United States is still under the influence of the John Birch Society. He believes the Bircher years/epoch/era started in 1958 and continues through today. On the other hand, it may have been with us for for far longer –– perhaps for centuries under different names: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, Know Nothings, Lost Cause, America First, and White Christian Nationalism.

Three events in the news coalesced over the past week or so as I finished this important book, bringing some of the book's points home:

First, President Joe Biden visited a memorial in Vietnam that honors a great American, late Senator John S. McCain III; when all is said and done McCain stood up for the Constitution.  McCain also stood up for democracy and against autocracy and theocracy. He conceded his election loss to President Obama in 2008. McCain even asked Obama to offer a eulogy at his funeral.

Second, last week I watched another Republican – American statesman Mitt Romney – announce he would not seek reelection. Romney is a former Republican nominee for the Presidency who won 47 percent of the popular vote but lost – and conceded gracefully – to President Obama in 2012. Romney acknowledges in a forthcoming biography by McKay Coppins, “Romney: A Reckoning,” that he does not recognize today’s GOP, where many of his Republican colleagues, he says, no longer support the Constitution.

Finally, I read with sadness that President Biden has called to offer his final good-bye to a dying former president with gold standard ethics and integrity: Navy veteran Jimmy Carter, despite being a victim of Birchers and their ilk more than four decades ago, conceded to President Ronald Reagan in 1980. During his naval career and presidency, Carter, a Navy submariner and commander in chief, literally protected and defended the U.S. Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.