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.