From that link. This really made my blood run cold.
[Hegseth] further suggested that the military under his leadership would begin to ignore the Geneva Conventions to which the U.S. is a signatory:
“We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.”
Totally missing the point. The complaint is that Trump and Hegseth are unilaterally reorganizing the military and lecturing 4 star generals on how to win wars, despite having very limited knowledge of military matters. If Trump was Eisenhower and Hegseth was Georege C. Marshall then they might be qualified to make such recommendations. It was like a little league coach telling Randy Johnson that he was pitching wrong.
If Obama had done the same thing with his limited experience he also would have been out of line. But he didn’t so he wasn’t.
I wonder if Trump could be pranked into thinking that the Cobra Pogo Ballistic Battle Ball was a real military technology that was scrapped because of wokeness.
A military that fields a vehicle like this isn’t scared of anyone!
The prospect of a military-led coup in the US — where uniformed leadership decide they’ve had enough of Trump’s anti-democratic bullshit and remove him — gets floated on these boards from time to time. It’s always in the context of Trump violating his inaugural oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, or the prospect of him being a Russian asset, or whatever. And every single time, we have to remind ourselves that it is ingrained deeply into the US military, and especially the officer class, that civilian control is sacrosanct, that orders will be followed except in the most extreme and inarguable circumstances, and that mutiny is utterly unthinkable. Those who understand military culture explain to the political speculators, over and over, that we would need to be in a completely different universe for an American military coup to be even remotely plausible.
I have to wonder whether this whole “get ready for us to order you to commit war crimes on a wide scale” thing might not be that universe.
I’ll never understand the rosy view many people here have of military coups.
“The current president is being authoritarian! Let’s replace him with an unelected authoritarian backed with guns instead of votes!”
Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way advocating it. It would be a terrible course of events, just terrible in different ways from the current situation.
My only point is to wonder whether the calculus that makes such a thing unimaginable in the US should be revisited in light of the fact that the civilian leadership is now openly telling the officers that they will be expected to participate in war crimes in the near future.
Unless I’m missing context, loosening the rules of engagement doesn’t mean ignore the Geneva Conventions or commit war crimes.
The rules of engagement are much tighter than the Geneva conventions. It’s a specific internal military policy each country uses differently. As an analogy, telling someone to speed up (loosen roe) doesn’t mean break the law / go over the speed limit. You can speed up and it can still be legal.
Having said that, def Sec heg Seth has no business telling the military what the roe should or shouldn’t be. He’s a joke. I also appreciate the quoted text is somewhat unclear. I don’t read it as removing roe altogether, but just loosen the roe because they are currently to woke/politically correct blah blah blah.
If America still had a fully functioning democracy, Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday to the assembled generals would have ended his presidency. Trump treated the event like a political rally and was clearly taken aback by the refusal of the audience to applaud or laugh at his jokes. Delivering a nakedly partisan speech to a mandated assembly of military officers was a gross violation of the Hatch Act. The content —telling the officers to be ready to use force against U.S. citizens — was clearly an impeachable offense. In an earlier era, Trump’s incoherent ranting would have paved the way for his immediate removal from office under the 25th Amendment.
But how did this happen?
It’s clear that the decision to summon top officers from around the world to receive a lecture about “warrior ethos” from a man who installed a makeup studio at the Pentagon was made by Pete Hegseth. It confirmed publicly what is being whispered within the military, and presumably among our allies and enemies: that Hegseth is an abject incompetent who isn’t remotely up to the job. And this toe-curling performance is a reflection of his underlying panic.
…
Don’t know where you’re getting the idea that Dopers have a “rosy view” of military coups. <scratches head>
We’re looking at a situation here where civilian leaders (president and secretary of defense) are telling active duty military leaders to be prepared to use force against American citizens. A coup, in this case, would be the rational, level-headed military wresting control of the gummint from insane, misguided, dangerous civilian leaders.
There ain’t nuttin’ about this that is even a little bit rosy!
The very idea that a military coup can be “the rational, level-headed military wresting control of the gummint from insane, misguided, dangerous civilian leaders.” is the rosy view.
You are giving the military the right to decide when the government is “insane, misguided and dangerous”, you may agree with them this time, what will happen when they decide that a liberal government is “insane, misguided and dangerous”?
That way lies disaster.
ETA: What should the military do, you may ask, when asked to use force against their own citizens? answer: simply refuse. No need for a coup, refuse to obey illegal orders.
And that then POTUS in turn decided this could not happen w/o him showing up with no clear plan but to just ramble. Because of course he has to headline.
The military is still making a decision. Are these orders illegal? Should we obey them anyway? If we’re not obeying that asshole, then who is in charge?
I’m not saying that generals wake up every morning and decide if this is the day they’ll coup, but rather that things in the US are moving to a place where the military will be presented with these decisions. Do nothing is definitely a decision. Bomb Sacramento and Springfield are also decisions.
It’s not that a military coup is the third act rescue we’ve all been waiting for, but that the decision on how far this goes may ultimately rest with the military. The Supreme Court’s ability to enforce decisions depends on norms and the rule of law; the military’s enforcement does not.
Maybe because I’m a military brat and a military widow, I have more faith in the military’s dedication to uphold their oath to preserve and protect American democracy than I do in our so-called commander-in-chief’s.
For any here that had that “rosy view” … what you just wrote is exactly what I thought said view was. Someone may have said differently, but if so I missed it.
