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By now you’ve seen Trump giving his rally style speech replete with lies and insults to red beret wearing troops at Fort Bragg yesterday. You have seen almost all of them in the background cheering. If you missed the speech you can see a clip of it here.
Pete Hegseth was also there strutting his stuff although he didn’t get the TV coverage Trump did:
As the AP article (read it here) showed, not all soldiers were as enthusiastic:
I doubt many of these soldiers read articles like “Fact-check: Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg contained lies and conspiracy theories about LA” in The Guardian after the speech.
Tom Nichol’s wrote in the Atlantic “The Silence of the Generals.” The Demoractic Underground forum has the following excerpt:
The president cares nothing for the military, for its history, or for the men and women who serve the United States. They are, like everything else around him, only raw material: They either feed his narcissism, or they are useless. Those who love him, he claims as “his” military. But those who have laid down their life for their country are, as he so repugnantly put it, just suckers and losers, anonymous saps lying under cold headstones in places such as Arlington National Cemetery that clearly make Trump uncomfortable. Today, he showed that he has no compunction about turning every American soldier into a hooting partisan.
Trump’s supporters and his party will excuse his behavior at Fort Bragg the way they always have, the same way that indulgent parents shrug helplessly at their delinquent children. But senior officers of the United States military have an obligation to speak up and be leaders. Where is the Army chief of staff, General Randy George? Will he speak truth to the commander in chief and put a stop to the assault on the integrity of his troops? Where is the commander of the airborne troops, Lieutenant General Gregory Anderson, or even Colonel Chad Mixon, the base commander?
And if these men cannot muster the courage to defend American traditions—by speaking out or even resigning—where are the other senior officers who must uphold the values that have made America’s armed forces among the most effective and politically stable militaries in the world? Where is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine? He was personally selected by Trump to be America’s most senior military officer. Will he tell the man who promoted him that what he did today was obscene?
Will any of these men say one word? Will any of them defend the Army and the other services from a would-be caudillo, a man who would probably be strutting around in a giant hat and a golden shoulder braid if he could get away with it? The top officers of the U.S. military wear eagles or stars on their shoulders that give them great privilege, as befits people who assume responsibility for the defense of the nation and the welfare of their troops. They command the power of life and death itself on the field of battle. But those ranks also carry immense responsibility. If they are truly Washington’s heirs, they should speak up—now—and stand with the first commander in chief against the rogue 47th.
Trump doesn’t care if the Fort Bragg base commander, Colonel K. Chad Mixon (see link), orders his men, or any other general above him, not to defy the Constitution and orders them not to carry out illegal orders by attacking civilians.
All Trump would do in that case is remove them and replace them with someone eager to do his bidding.
Trump has already demonstrated that in his view he doesn’t need generals, especially those who adhere to the values of the military academies they graduate from.
Case in point, those two words in my title: Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth himself has no use for generals with their highfalutin attitudes who, as he sees it, conflate their own combat experience to look like heroes. I expect he sees their ascension up the ranks to be the result of ass kissing and a woke military.
In an unguarded moment talking among fierce loyalists I can see Trump saying to Hegseth “we don’t need those fucken generals.” Hegseth of course would heartedly agree.
As far as Hegseth is concerned generals who you and I would consider patriotic are a superfluous annoyance best dealt with by firing them, not by ordering a court martial and having them sent to prison at Leavenworth.
Why does he need generals when he has Commander in Chief Trump to tell him what he wants the armed forces to do? He’s number two and when his number one says jump he will say “how high?” Trump will ask “how high can you jump?” From what we’ve seen of Hegseth, I think he’d want to curry favor with Trump by telling him just how high his great military is capable of jumping.
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