Doing it on orders in an organized fashion is, however. And this thread isn’t about violence by random people.
They didn’t get any water to Los Angeles, that’s for sure. Following your metaphor, if Trump ordered the military to invade Canada, they’d wind up bombing Nebraska.
Of course, that was the point; to waste water to punish California. Just as the main point of invading Canada would be to punish Canada.
Your continued insistence that the US military are all bloodthirsty murderers whose moral compass lies somewhere between Imperial stormtroorpers and the Uruk-Hai is not based in any observable reality. The military actively weeds out people who are just there because they want to be violent bullies. That’s why those people end up working in the West Bumblefuck Sheriff’s Department where they can play Billy Badass and be accountable to noone as much as they want.
Ha! Boring from within!
History says otherwise; they are an organization of violent bullies. Rapists, torturers, murderers with government backing and approval.
Right, and the US is a fundamentally corrupt nation that can never be good. I get your perspective. It’s not totally wrong. But it is not committed to any kind of subtlety or nuance.
(Points at recent election)
Pretty much, yes. And that’s where the US military is drawn from, a nation dominated by violent misogynistic racist authoritarians. So of course it’s an army of thugs.
Yes, that does follow the metaphor. But predicting the outcome the war — or a friendly fire incident in Nebraska — is beyond my scope here. I was predicting how long it would take for non-economic war to start after Trump ordered firing on Canadian troops because his economic war failed. My prediction is — at most, a couple days. Because that’s how long it took the Army Corp of Engineers to follow Trump California water order.
Well, they might just allocate funds considering they have direct access to the treasury.
Is anyone going to stop them?
As to the point of the thread, the majority probably would, but there’s also likely a significant minority that wouldn’t. I don’t know how much of the military by percentage, but I’ll wager there’s a non-negligible amount that would refuse.
Enough to stop the invasion if it came to it? Probably not I’d guess. There might be enough to make jailing or even executing them for mutiny or whatever the term would be impractical, but Trump and his people might try anyway. If they do try, then that would probably cause more of the troops to turn on him, and then we might see conflict between sections of the armed forces. But if they don’t try, and just let those who refuse to participate go, kick them out of the military and be done with it? Probably what’s left is still enough to invade successfully.
Which would be an unforced error on par with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and would end up about as well for the US as that did for Japan. You can fire some missiles and drop some bombs on a few days notice. It’s going to take months afterward to muster a ground invasion - and meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of American nationals living in Canada are being thrown into prison camps, irregulars are launching raids into Alaska and across the northern border, NORAD goes down leaving us completely blind to a Russian attack, sympathetic Americans are sabotaging the military at every opportunity, AWOLs and desertions reach an all-time high, and pretty much EVERY consumer commodity becomes unavailable or prohibitively expensive once international trade grinds to a halt, rationing sets in, and entire industries have to be nationalized.
Five years ago we had people in this country ready for civil war because they couldn’t go to Olive Garden. Just wait and see how they react when they find out their SUV is only entitled to five gallons a week and they need to submit proof of where and when they’re driving to the Ration Board in order to get a tire changed and McDonald’s is closed indefinitely because 90% of the beef supply has been alloted for the Army.
Any attempt at invading Canada would mean the end of Trump’s presidency, the Republican party, and possibly the United States itself.
The President can start a war anytime he pleases, there’s a period of about a month before Congress can do anything at all IIIRC. And once the bombing has started and the troops have arrived Congress will almost certainly as usual pay for it. “Support the troops” and all that. The Republicans won’t care if Trump kills the entire Canadian population, and the Democrats are cowards who constantly roll over for them.
Iraq was on the other side of the world.
Canada is just over yonder a bit. The majority of the population is just on the other side of a river and a few lakes.
And as regards Congressional funding the GOP will likely give DJT whatever he wants.
And? It still takes time, money, and legislation to get things done. You can’t just order everyone in the Army to grab their sidearms and start marching north. Don’t you suppose people are going notice there are suddenly several hundred thousand extra people in upstate New York and they’ve got an awful lot of tanks with them?
Did the GOP pick up seven more Senate seats while I was looking the other way?
This whole conversation is silly. Not even Trump has suggested invading Canada, the entire idea is manifestly unpopular, and it’s just plain not feasible.
In spite of selective editing it still stands - this would not be like mobilizing for the Iraq war.
And the money would be approved by Elon and DOGE in seconds. That’s really all that’s needed. Congress hasn’t had to approve a declaration of war in decades.
Generals Michael and Charles Flynn would likely be happy to go back on active duty to lead the invasion.
The only thing that is silly here is how any of these serious issues are brushed aside as IMPOSSIBLE. Until SCOTUS smacks any of this bullshit down AND finds a way to enforce their orders, MuskTrump will not be stopped.
I think what has been unsaid so far is that there are a lot of cross-border ties. Not trade, not diplomacy, not treaties, but people-to-people ties. Friends and relatives, thanks to over a hundred, hell, over two hundred years of cross-border relationships. I’d guess that there were few-to-no such relationships in Afghanistan or Iraq, which may make “firing on Canadian civilians” a lot more difficult for an American soldier.
Correct. It would take much longer, be much more expensive, and face much more resistance internationally AND domestically. I doubt the US even has any kind of plan drawn up for war with Canada that isn’t so old it assumes we’ll be fighting the British. We don’t have enough men for an operation of this size, or enough guns, or enough vehicles, and we can’t send JD down to the Tesla dealership to pick them up. There’d need to be a draft. We’d need to nationalize factories. We’d need to build factories. We’d need to figure out how to secure 5500 miles of border and how to defend against counterattacks. The entire national economy would have to go onto a war footing. That’s not something “Elon can approve in seconds”. Do you suppose that the rest of the world is just going to sit there and watch all of this buildup and do nothing about it?
That’s two generals. There are currently 809 flag officers in the US military. How many of them do you suppose are gonna be onboard with this? How many tens of thousands of dead soldiers are the American people going to accept? When Canada starts shelling the US, how many civilian casualties are acceptable? What happens to the 1+ million US citizens living in Canada? What about the 800,000 Canadians living in America? These are questions that cannot be answered with “Trump will just say to do it and they’ll do it”.
In reality, here’s how this scenario would play out:
Trump: “General. Invade Canada. Right now. I don’t care what you have to do. Do it.”
General: “Yes, sir. Let’s get you down to the bunker. Follow this man.”
(They leave and the general pulls out his phone)
General: “Hello, President Vance? Yes, he’s locked in the basement. You can let Congress know you’re invoking the 25th now. Godspeed.”
I don’t, and I’d hope that Canada’s NATO partners wouldn’t.
I’d hope that, if things look to be headed in that direction, the UK would dispatch two nuclear (and nuclear-armed) submarines. One to protect CFB Halifax, and the other to protect CFB Esquimault, on Vancouver Island. Military exercises, of course, nothing to see here, but hey, if NATO member Canada is attacked while the exercises are happening, they’ll have little choice but to uphold Article 5 of the NATO agreement, as long as they’re in the neighbourhood.
I hope that wouldn’t happen. It would be WWIII, with nukes flying everywhere. But I think it would make the Yanks think twice about attempting an invasion of Canada, if Canada had some backup already present.
Please. People keep trying to pretend the military is this paragon of integrity that will save us, but that isn’t true and doesn’t really happen. Trump could order them to nuke Canada and they’d just ask which city and how many.
Another reality:
General: Commander of Fort Drum? Roll out in battle order a dozen APCs. Your mission is The House of Commons, Queen St Ottawa. It’s about 125 miles, dammed good freeway conditions. Should take you about 3 hours. Computed best route via Waze follows. If you need to refuel, can do at any roadhouse. Pay cash. Ignore anybody speaking French. Secure the building. Do not fire unless fired on by uniformed members of the military. Air and tactical support will follow within 4 hours if required. US intelligence does not expect any co-ordinated resistance. It’s probable they will all be inside anyway watching the Stanley Cup.
Now from the US perspective it’s six to five and pick 'em.
From the perspective of our frozen cousins? I wouldn’t put my house on it.
We’ve thrilled to your Westerns for decades. Uncanny how close it resembles US foreign policy. Always the good guys and the cavalry coming over the hill to thwart the bad guys with prejudice. We just aren’t sure who are the ones wearing the white hats ATM.