CSotD: The Experts Explain It All
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This being a “where do we start?” moment, we’ll start before yesterday’s gathering of the brass with Marty Two Bulls’ reaction to the Secretary of Defense War’s restoration of medals of honor to soldiers who participated in the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Granted, Two Bulls is Lakota and so has a particular reason to feel that shooting down surrendering Lakota men, women, children and old people is reprehensible, not heroic. However, proclaiming the heroism of their killers is fully in line not only with Hegseth’s speech about the “military ethos” but is also consistent with his record of having intervened to obtain pardons for three men convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Anderson illustrates disdain for Hegseth’s lecturing of senior officers, though he did spend about seven years in the service and earned a Bronze Star in Iraq. However, he likely had the least military experience in the room except for the draft-dodger who accompanied him.
Which is to say that it takes a lot of damn nerve to lecture men with decades of military experience on how they and their troops should behave, and a barely hidden message to announce that men with ingrown facial hair and razor bumps must still shave daily.
Speaking with contempt of fat men in the presence of the President is a whole other matter. Even so, there’s a difference between declaring that recruits should be in better shape and suggesting that the military’s overall fitness rules have to be tightened.
Hegseth did have the advantage of having his speech followed by an over-long, disjointed, vainglorious speech by Dear Leader in which he asked them to applaud, which is often seen in such gatherings in North Korea but is not permitted at meetings of American senior officers.
But don’t take my word for it. Read what West Point grad and multi-generational military brat Lucian Truscott IV had to say. (Put down your coffee before you read it.)
“Unhinged” is one word I heard on the news shows describing Trump’s speech this morning. So is “bonkers.” One report called Trump “meandering” and “exhausted.” But no description could capture what took place in Quantico, Virginia this morning.
Beyond Trump’s boasting, campaigning and personal discursions, what Truscott objected to is what Dr. MacLeod notes: The transformation of Hegseth’s lecture on military discipline into Trump’s call for the military to practice for warfare by invading American cities with Democratic mayors.
This is something that, as Horsey says, has no place in America.
That’s not solely a liberal position; the Cato Institute, a bastion of libertarian thought, has defended the Posse Comitatus Act for years.
The issue, however, may go beyond whether it is legal to use the military as police. The Trump administration has established a pattern of ignoring the courts when they conflict with its policies, or of seeking fast, friendly, unexplained decisions by the dependably 6-3 Supreme Court.
To bring a note of some optimism into an otherwise bleak discussion, Joyce Vance wrote last night of a stunning slap-down delivered by a senior judge in Boston in a case about the First Amendment rights of foreign students, to which he attached the above note and in conclusion of which he wrote
Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor — and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.
Trump’s portion of the day was, as Wuerker suggests, a blatant attempt to recruit the military for his own political goals, not just in hopes they would vote in his favor but insisting that they allow their troops to be deployed to enforce his personal political goals.
He not only repeatedly belittled the previous Commander in Chief but spoke of “the enemy within,” clearly meaning not only immigrants but Democrats, and not by implication but in direct words. Can an All-American version of the Nuremberg Laws be far away?
Which sounds hysterical, but military in the streets would have sounded hysterical a year ago. Being legally permitted to pick people out for arrest based on their skin color would have sounded hysterical a year ago.
It’s necessary these days to constantly adjust to the present moment, though becoming too comfortable with things amounts to collaboration.
You need to maintain a level of outrage that keeps you alert and active and unafraid.
The day may come when you need to explain the role you played in all this, and with luck it won’t look like the scene in Bagley’s cartoon.
But history tells us that truth will out. Some 40 years after the war, the arrest and trial of Klaus Barbie shattered the notion that, throughout the German occupation, all of France was active in the Resistance.
It turned out that not only was “the Butcher of Lyon” guilty of sending 7,500 French Jews and Resistance fighters to concentration camps and executing 4,000 more, but it became apparent that he did so openly and that plenty of French citizens did not oppose him.
Silence implies consent, and collaboration is neither easily explained, nor readily excused.
There is some grim humor in the notion of a man bombing Iran without warning, calling for the occupation of Gaza so he can build a resort there, and ordering troops to suppress his own people, and still thinking he deserves to stand alongside Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai and Doctors Without Borders.
But we must deal with it now, and laugh about it later.
There is this: While gathering generals and admirals together was an expensive and unnecessary security risk, the real security risk to Dear Leader’s plans is how readily these senior officers could see each other’s reactions throughout the event and what they may have been able to discreetly discuss amongst themselves after the gathering was over.
Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First, His Cromwell,
and George the Third … may profit by their example.
If this be treason, make the most of it. – Patrick Henry
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