This is what I’m finding particularly disturbing today:
The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.
Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said.
It’s not clear to me how solid the sourcing is on this story. No one on Trump’s team will go on the record to confirm it. But it wouldn’t surprise me.
The transition team is looking at the possibility of recalling several commanders to active duty for possible charges, the U.S. official said.
It’s not clear the Trump administration would pursue treason charges, and instead could focus on lesser charges that highlight the officer’s involvement. “They want to set an example,” said the person with knowledge of the plan….
… Speaking to NBC News days before the election, Howard Lutnick, one of the two advisers leading the transition, said Trump learned after his first administration that he had hired Democratic generals, and he would not make that mistake again.
Former officials who worked in Trump’s first administration have said they advised Trump against policies they thought would weaken U.S. national security, such as withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria. And they advised against actions that they thought might violate the Constitution or inflame tensions domestically, such as deploying active-duty U.S. troops to quell protests after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
I take it “Democratic” generals balked at following Trump’s orders when they were stupid or unconstitutional. A “Republican” general is one who will just follow orders. Okay.
This is about Trump punishing genrals who didn’t defer to him with sufficient servility and obsequiousness. He wants generals who will jump when he says jump. Like the guys who were tried at Nuremberg who were just following orders.
Just the use of the word “treason” tells me the people pursuing this are extremists and fanatics who want to punish someone, not people who are serious about improving the military. There are very high bars for a treason charge. It’s my understanding that treason requires siding with an enemy in a declared war. That doesn’t describe anything that happened in the Afghanistan withdrawal. Note that the feds didn’t try to bring treason charges against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, just espionage charges, because they didn’t think the legal definition of treason could be applied to their case (noting that Ethel probably was innocent).
I hate to think what Trump is going to do to the Defense Department.
At the same time Russia is throwing waves of drones and missiles at civilian power supplies in the Ukraine and Biden approves the use of US supplied long range missiles against targets inside Russia. This is while Trump is causing chaos at the Pentagon.
Again, Trump knows what he is doing, he has been president before. We are weakest at times of leadership transition. All parties know that. The stock market opens tomorrow here and before then in Europe and the East. Action to restrain Trump needs to happen ASAP. We need a smooth transition or no transition. Fast.
The issue here is whether or not Trump will be able to use the US military on US soil to suppress Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly. Trump wants the military to use lethal force on unarmed civilians. The military is not gung-ho on shooting their own people. With very few exceptions, the US military does not want the moral and legal nightmare of inflicting casualties within the US. I think this is what Trump wants to settle early in his term.
The DoD is a large, complex bureaucracy full of people who are invested in the system. tRump has the attention span of a gnat. The innate American ability to slow-walk paperwork could derail him.
tRump did not suddenly become a focused force of nature. Acting as though his every utterance is destined to come to pass is a recipe for misery, plus it lets Hair Fuhrer live rent-free in our heads.
Many decades ago, I was in Restricted Men's Barracks at Treasure Island, San Francisco. Long story. But it was the equivalent of the brig except we got farmed out as slave labor around the base. The guys in the brig were in strict lock-up. We were marched in formation, something none of us had seen since boot camp.
The barracks were run by a clown with stripes. First Class Petty Officer Wynot. Emphasis on the "petty." There was a running gag that started before I checked in and probably continued long after I left. Whenever you were in earshot of Wynot, the answer to any question that started with "Why", was "Why not?"
One late afternoon after chow, (and after a long day of work), we were being marched back to the open-bay barracks by Wynot when he decided to take his ass-holiness out for a walk. Instead of marching us back, he started marching us around. We looked at each other and put up with it for a while, but he had us going in a direction to the other end of the island. I don't recall there was much discussion in the ranks but in near-unison we did an about-face and marched back to the building, ignoring barked orders to halt, go left, go right, with threats of what would happen to us if we continued. We stopped in front and did not break ranks, waiting to be dismissed. We got a few minutes of threats, and when Wynot could not get anyone to do anything except ignore him, he dismissed us and we went back in.
Trump will get action for any legal order he issues. It's entirely possible if Trump gives any illegal, unconstitutional, or immoral order, he will get the Wynot treatment. "Command" is an illusion – the troops do not have to consent. When/if they balk (and your command is invalid), your authority is shot. I'm not predicting this will happen, but it might. The spontaneous civil disobedience left a lasting impression.
"Your Body My Choice". I think that might backfire horribly! I'm going with the smart kids here.
Chappell Roan — Hot To Go (Live at The Basement East 02.23.23)
Take that NBC article with several grains of salt. The sourcing is thin, as the article admits:
"“The sources apparently pushing this story appear to be your typical selfish Washington, D.C., insiders seeking to gain better positioning for their own administration jobs,” said a person with knowledge of the campaign. "
The agreement for US to (finally!) withdraw from Afghanistan started under Trump, and Biden got stuck with the job of actually make it happen. Withdrawing from a failed occupation is always messy (see: Saigon), but getting out was the right thing to do ("shoulda been done long ago…").
I suspect that this story is another example of Neocons "leaking" something to force a President's hand. The Neocons' have always focused on stacking the bureaucracy with handpicked ideologues, but the insular nature of the US Military has made it harder for them to gain influence there. It was easy to parachute hacks from their think-tanks into State and Treasury, pushing out experienced people; but the rigid hierarchy of Military advancement makes that impossible.
This is an example of the kind of story that I am ignoring going forward, in the interest of not getting caught up in the drama and theater around Trump. Thinly-sourced, it describes a far-fetched scenario, namely that Trump's minions would be able to stack a court-martial to produce convictions where all the officers were clearly following clearly legal orders.
Things will be bad enough without borrowing trouble and paying attention to this one is borrowing trouble. Sufficient unto the day etc.