A senior Army officer has been dismissed from his position inside the Joint Chiefs of Staff office tasked with developing policy and strategy for the Middle East over inflammatory comments he made about Israel and its relationship with the U.S. on social media. Colonel Nathan McCormack, an Army infantry officer who served as a branch chief of the office focusing on Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel in the Joint Staff's Strategy, Plans and Policy Directorate (J5), was removed from a job he's held since June 2024, after media pointed out he'd referred to Israel as a "death cult" and railed against “Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies.”

This is not a case of mistaken identity. Though McCormack ran a pseudonymous X account, he routinely provided information that allowed anyone with curiosity to identify him. For instance, in one online argument, he writes, “How so? What data? This is literally what I do at work every day,” he wrote to someone in May. “I’m the Joint Staff J5 Israel branch chief.” On one occasion, he displayed a Meritorious Service Medal certificate in his name.

He also discussed what should not be public details of his job, like scheduled trips. Along the way, he highlighted the blinding stupidity of the groupthink that brought us a 50-year Middle East Peace Process. 

It is a useful diversion for the media, but I think that if Israel escalates this into an offensive against Lebanon they are fuxked. And we have already told them that. Repeatedly. 

I was going to email you on SIPR last week, but I didn’t want to email the wrong person.

This tweet is dated August 12, 2024. On September 17, explosive pagers gutted the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon; see BOOM! New Wave of Exploding Devices in Lebanon – RedState. And on September 27, Lebanon's godfather of terror, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in a targeted airstrike; see Israel Confirms Death of the Terrorist Nasrallah; Does This Open a Door for Peace in the Region? – RedState. Israel took apart Hezbollah in a lightning campaign, and though the jury is still out, it is starting to look like Hezbollah is no longer calling the shots for the Lebanese government.

I know how I'd view future advice if I were an Israeli staff officer.

He also claimed that the Department of Defense considered civilian casualty totals released by the Gaza Health Ministry to be reliable, which explains a lot of other things."Along with the World Health Organization and United Nations, we (Department of Defense, Department of State and the U.S. Intelligence Community) consider the Gaza Health Ministry figures to be generally reliable (though not precise),” he wrote, “but probably less so now than they were originally due to the general destruction and chaos in Gaza.”

Along the way, he managed to flirt with violating Article 88 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice: Contempt Toward Officials. In response to a tweet by Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin in support of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth:

I will lead the breach. I will lay down cover fire. I will take the high ground. I’ll expose myself to enemy fire to communicate. We must bring back integrity, focus, and put the Warfighter first inside DOD. I stand with @SecDef @PeteHegseth. 🇺🇸

— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) April 21, 2025

McCormack responded in a now-deleted tweet: “Grok, create an image of a plumber leading the breach, laying down cover fire, taking the high ground, exposing himself to enemy fire to communicate and bringing back integrity, focus and putting the warfighter first inside DoD.”

All of this raises a couple of questions, one philosophical and one practical.

During Desert Storm, I worked in the War Plans cell in the Army Operations Center. It wasn't my usual gig, but the call went out early for volunteers to work 12- to 18-hour shifts in the Pentagon sub-basement, and having come from an infantry division, I jumped at the chance to do something that approached real soldiering. My colleagues in the group were mostly senior colonels who weren't going any further. They had all been military attachés to various countries in the Middle East. The first thing that struck me was that they were vehemently pro-Arab and, when the subject came up, anti-Israel. They fervently believed, I think right up until the night of January 16, 1991, that there would be an "Arab solution" that allowed Saddam Hussein to save face and the Arab world to avoid war. I tried to push a bit to understand this romance for the Arab world and antipathy toward Israel, and my best guess is that it came down to hospitality. Colonels stationed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States hung out with royalty. They went hunting with falcons. They were treated as though they were royalty, and all of those officers considered various Arabian gentry to be close friends. The relationship with the Israeli military was much more prickly. The Israelis weren't terribly soft and cuddly; they didn't care about your feelings, and the relationships were strictly transactional of the "what can you do for me right now" type. Again, this isn't data, but perception built over several weeks of close contact. My thesis is that much of America's Middle East policy is not driven by AIPAC or a Jewish conspiracy, but I believe it is heavily colored by State and Defense Department officials who love the Arabs and loathe the Israelis. This is why the nonsensical "two-state solution" keeps coming back to life, and the Biden White House did everything it could to scuttle the Abraham Accords.

The practical question is more basic. In what universe did Colonel McCormack think it was okay to denigrate a key U.S. regional ally on social media in an account that was easily matched to his name when his job was leading U.S. Defense strategy and policy for the area occupied by that ally? To me, that demonstrates that a) McCormack's views were well within acceptable parameters within the Joint Staff Plans, Policy, and Strategy office. It is impossible to believe that McCormack's subordinates were not guided by their boss's views. It is equally impossible not to believe that McCormack's superiors either held the same views or tolerated McCormack's. Either way, the Secretary of Defense was not getting unbiased advice and that puts the nation at risk., The lack of discipline apparent in announcing official travel on X and talking smack about a U.S. Senator supporting your boss (several levels up) and sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee is breathtaking. 

This is the kind of cultural rot that Pete Hegseth has to contend with. The bad part is that it took a media leak to bring the matter under control, and it is nearly guaranteed that McCormack is the tiny, least intelligent tip of the iceberg. 

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