Rep. Maggie Goodlander: Seditious or just shameful?
State. Rep Mike Moffett, Governor Kelly Ayotte, and Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander at 250th Marine Corps Birthday Ceremony at N.H. State House on Nov. 10, 2025
There are many angles
from which to view the “Scandalous Saga of the Seditious Six,” the recent
Video-Gate story of six Democrat congresspeople who went public to admonish
serving military personnel that they don’t need to follow orders they deem
illegal.
Such sagas have value in
that they necessarily raise awareness about history, law, civics, precedents,
military service doctrines, and motives.
As a Marine Corps veteran
and the current Chair of the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and
Veterans Affairs, I was unsurprisingly contacted by a reporter when the story
broke. He sent me a link to the video and asked for a comment, which I provided
as follows:
“A very disturbing
video,” added State Rep. Michael Moffett (R-Loudon), a Marine veteran who
served in the Middle East. “At Marine Corps Mess Nights, we always faithfully
toasted our commander-in-chief, whether we liked them or not, be it Clinton,
Bush, or Obama. This (attitude) is a huge threat to military discipline and the
good order required. Very dangerous and disappointing to see partisanship
introduced to our military culture in this way.”
The “Scandalous Saga of
the Seditious Six” is of particular interest to Granite Staters in that one of
the six is our CD2 Congressperson, Maggie Goodlander. Ironically, I had just
spent some quality time with her on the Marine Corps Birthday, November 10th.
We Marines appreciated her getting up early that day to be at the State House
flag-raising to offer comments. Later that day Beth and I shared a table with
the Congresswoman and others at the Marine Corps Ball in Franklin, where she
again offered very nice comments to the large crowd while I read Governor
Ayotte’s proclamation. I later sent the Congresswoman a copy of my Afghanistan
book.
It’s hard not to like
Representative Goodlander. So, the “Scandalous Saga of the Seditious Six” was
both a surprise and a disappointment.
The other five video
participants were Senators Mark Kelly and Ellissa Slotkin as well as
Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan. All are
Democrats, which made their action appear to be nakedly partisan. Surely, they
could have found at least one Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger type to provide a
patina of bipartisanship to their stunt.
An early reaction was to
wonder whose idea this was. Apparently, it emanated from Slotkin, who is not
even a veteran. Indeed, only 26 Democrats in all of Congress are veterans.
(In 1971, 78 out of 100
U.S. Senators were veterans along with 313 out of 435 U.S. Representatives.)
Goodlander threw gasoline
on the subsequent political fire by doubling down and providing
a second video which attempted to rationalize and justify the first.
The initial video
unfortunately didn’t point to any specific issue or incident, which would have
been instructive. Speaking in broad, ambiguous terms was perhaps an attempt to
“poke the bear” to get a reaction. If that was the intent, it succeeded, as President
Trump responded that he saw the behavior as seditious, which could involve a
death penalty. Dems happily replied by (inaccurately) claiming that the
President called for the murder of the Seditious Six.
The President is familiar
with this “bear poking” dynamic. He often utters provocative comments likely
designed to cause apoplexy amongst his many political opponents who suffer from
Trump Derangement Syndrome who take the bait and end up looking foolish with
their hysterical responses. Then Trumpsters effectively shine lights on their
unhinged behavior.
"Touché, mes
amis!”
Yes, specific examples
concerning relevant orders would have been helpful. Short of that, speculation
subsequently centered on administration policies related to domestic National
Guard deployments or international interdictions of suspected nautical Venezuelan
drug runners.
Goodlander is standing on
especially shaky ground here, as she’s married to Jake Sullivan, President
Biden’s National Security Advisor. Recall that the Biden Administration ordered
bombing missions in Iraq, Syria, or Yemen—without Congressional sanction. Those
actions likely resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians and could certainly
be construed by some as “illegal orders” worthy of being disobeyed, if we
follow the logic from Video-Gate.
But the Seditious Six
were silent on these bombings, thus confirming that Video-Gate was prompted by
partisanship, not patriotism.
Stone, meet Glass House!
An example of an illegal
order would be a senior telling a subordinate to kill an unarmed civilian
detainee. But most military orders result from leaders seeking to accomplish
missions assigned by elected officials. Members of any effective military unit
do not have the luxury of discussing or debating the morality or probity of
most missions or orders.
To be sure, that approach
has been tried before—with disastrous consequences.
For example, during World
War I, Russia’s Imperial Army was infiltrated by Bolsheviks and other
disruptors who succeeded in implementing Order #1, which called for the
election of soldier “committees” to review policies and orders. Discipline and
morale collapsed. That army disintegrated. Communists took over the country and
sued for a separate peace with Germany in 1918 and then established a Soviet
Union which would inflict almost a century of horrors all over the world.
Truth.
So, if a result of the
Dems’ Video-Gate is a new appreciation of important history, then that’s good.
And if another result is an enhanced awareness of craven partisan political
motives that undermine the good order and discipline in our military, then that
is also good.
So, are the Scandalous
Six actually seditious?
I want to think not.
Are they shameful?
Yes.
