Veteran here. If it’s any consolation, basic training included a fairly lengthy course (well… relative to the other shit they teach there at least) about how to identify and what to do when given unlawful orders. Lots of emphasis on DO NOT FUCKING FOLLOW THEM. Lots of emphasis on the Nuremberg trials / if your defense is “just followed orders…” then you’re fucked. They talked about people like Hugh Thompson Jr. and the severe back pain he sustained from lugging around those massive balls.
The military does NOT want to become Nazis or stormtroopers. If Trump plays the whole ‘execute order 66’ card, military leadership will tell him to suck a dick.
It’s the cops I’m worried about. And the neonazi civilians responding to Trump’s stochastic terrorism.
They can force people to take the classes, but they can’t force them to agree with them. I’m glad they go over this, but they should probably test people on this stuff without warning them it’s a drill and see how they actually respond.
The thing is, they do…at least when I went through basic, they’d be PTing me, screaming at me, asking all sorts of questions to see if I know and understand and can perform under pressure.
They talked about people like Hugh Thompson Jr. and the severe back pain he sustained from lugging around those massive balls.
Did they talk about that absolutely nobody from the My Lai massacre - the example you brought up - saw any real consequences, with only one guy - who killed 22 - serving 3.5 years before Nixon got him out?
Or that the highest ranking surviving Nazi, who had a real say in German leadership during the war, was Hitler’s trusted advisor and unrepentant, unwavering follower, even after the war, got off with 10 years since the US and the UK committed similar war crimes as he did, so they didn’t sentence him for that?
Or the Hague invasion act and US war crimes that precipitated it? Or the US war crimes since?
I think those guys will be just fine saying “I was just following the orders of the magnificent Cheeto”.
Nope! This is basic training we’re talking about. They teach only the details that accomplish the lesson. And the lesson was don’t follow illegal orders. If there’s more to the story that contradicts the lesson, you bet your ass it was omitted.
I guess my point was just because they tell you that you are going to get your ass kicked for committing war crimes does not mean they are not blatantly lying about it and that the US armed forcers would disobey illegal orders in a real, live situation.
That’s true - I guess we’ll see if and when it happens. But the training on that topic is pretty clear and heavily emphasized relative to other training. It’s also both a politically charged order and one that will elicit defensiveness even if it was made legal.
It’ll also cause a lot of infighting and heavily weaken our military, which would invite attacks from one (or more) of the nations we’ve pissed off with our shitty foreign policy… So there may well be troops taking to our streets shortly after that kind of order, but most likely not our troops.
What a fun alternative!
Trump has the Supreme Court, the Senate, and almost certainly the House. All three will do as they are told. If the millitary refuses illegal orders, I think those orders will be made legal. Either that, or he will be allowed to replace military leadership.
It’s going to take more than just replacing the leadership. Every e-nothing gets that same training; whether illegal orders are coming down from the president himself or their immediate supervisor or anyone in between, they’ll be met with resistance.
Now, there are plenty of trumpanzees among the ranks who will put their loyalty to Agent Orange over their country and constitution, and do whatever he says no questions asked, just as it is with the non-military population. So, if we see an ‘order 66’ event, what’s going to happen is a SHIT TON of in-fighting within the ranks to the point that our military readiness is going to nosedive, leaving us vulnurable to other forms of attacks, but I don’t see troops actually hitting the streets like that in any organized fashion.
Again though, what I’m worried about are the cops. They’re already completely loyal to that shitstain, and have a long and regular history of extreme unnecessary violence and not actually following the law. And they’re already mobilized and infused into every single city in the US. Combine that with the civilian trumpanzees and we’ve got a very large force that have been itching for a civil war for like a decade at least.
Stand your ground laws should work on cops. An acorn might fall and they’ll start blasting randomly, best to nip that in the bud.
We’re getting to the point where laws don’t mean shit. You have the right to defend yourself, whether or not it’s a legal right.
Thought provoking question of the day: Leading up to the holocost, would the average German citizen have been justified in taking up arms against their own government in order to prevent it? If yes, what line was crossed that gave them the moral obligation to do so? And finally, what’s the modern equivalent of that line?
One good thing is that the ratio of police to other civilians is quite low. They don’t have the numbers to oppress a large area.
What if I told you, there are PLENTY of soldiers in every branch ready and waiting to betray any oath for daddy trump. They went through the same classes you did and just nodded along to get through it. Now they’re trained, and ready to fill the void when Trump fires or demotes anyone who refuses his orders.
That would require massive and obvious reorganizations of the military. It would also effectively hollow out the officer corps with so many of them refusing an illegal reorganization. (The organization at the high levels is set by law)
It’s far more likely Trump will take volunteer veterans into the DOJ, give them a badge, and run it like a military unit with all of the equipment and none of the accountability. It’s easier, faster, and legal.
I keep saying this again and again. Being set by law, does not fucking matter now. Being illegal, does not matter now. They will MAKE IT legal, or they will hand wave the illegality.
Sure, great, but the military isn’t about to hand waive anything. They will send the MPs to arrest soldiers for desertion. They will process people out of the military for following illegal orders.
They aren’t robots and they have decades of experience in slow walking stuff, malicious compliance, and straight up refusing illegal orders. There isn’t just one officer to fire either. It would take them years to build a military willing to be used against the American people.
They can have a DOJ task force up and running in a month. They can be recruiting veterans in 2 months. They can use the surplus system to transfer armored vehicles to the DOJ in about 6 months if someone is dragging their heels. And the military is actually in the middle of getting shiny new armored vehicles so seeing M113 APCs showing up on the surplus list isn’t even going to raise eyebrows.
I sincerely hope they smash their heads against the military for another 4 years. But by the end of his last term they figured out they could use a DOJ task force to beat up and abduct protestors. Just adding surplus military equipment and Trump cultists to that isn’t going to be hard to figure out. Stop trying to put the military in a hole it’s not going to easily fit into and start looking at what’s actually likely.
You’re absolutely correct.
Rank and file grunts may be gargling nazi balls, but the officer pool are often college educated and will not hand over America to a dictatorship. It’ll take a decade just to fire all the officers who won’t follow his illegal orders. Another decade to reform into a stazi.
The secret police will be local police forces organized under a Fed Dept probably Homeland or ICE.
You’ve heard of Vietnam right? Why are you putting so much faith in the US military acting like they have any sort of mortality?
The military was almost completely reworked between Vietnam and Desert Storm. They were getting tired of having to deal with the paper work for fragging, accidental friendly fire, and junior officers getting the shit beat out of them. Also a lot of the reforms had to do with ethics and rules of engagement, Vietnam was a fucken PR nightmare and the military did not want to deal with that shit ever again.
That’s his training. The military mentally conditions these men to respond to stuff like this in this way: absolute, unyielding, expected. He is not going to be able to conceive of a different way because his training was that thorough. That’s probably a good thing. My dad was in the military also and when you ask him about military stuff, his personality goes into soldier mode like this too.
However I will say, having met modern young men who are soldiers - idk that they got the same training at all.
I’m not the other poster. But we already have examples of the military standing up to Trump during his previous term. We know he’s going to have to wade into the leadership pool to find sympathetic leaders.
Uphold the constitution? Great- they’ll pass an ammendment.
They don’t have the numbers to pass an ammendment. They will just use the Supreme Court to “interpret” the constitution into oblivion.
They don’t need numbers, They will just do it. Because what are you going to do about it.
And what if I told you that there’s also plenty of soldiers that will uphold the constitution and will be ready to fight for it.
The military is majority conservative especially enlisted. If officers try to keep things under control Der Fuhrer could just strip them of their commissions and give them to anyone he wants to. Especially if his people run congress.
That is absolutely not how that works. Also while they’re conservative, they are not fans of Trump. The active duty military voted blue in 2020.
Give the military time. Good people will get tired or will retire. No one wants to have to fight this much.
You’ve never met an e-4 with the regulations on their side. They will professionally become a rock and hate-love every second of it.
Except the military is trained to… y’know fight and defend the constitution.
He should have been arrested last time. Now we have to hope a soldier or officer has enough of a spine to destroy his career by so much as telling the Cheeto in Chief “no.”
That’s why he wants Hitler’s generals instead. Much more suited to his style of governance.
I hope the generals succeed in their attempts this time.
You record it and impeach him
I wouldn’t think the Wagner group is big enough, or organized enough to take on the US military though.
Changes made to dod policy in September allows him to use the military domestically upon request of local police force.
No. Just no. That’s been completely blown out of proportion. It’s a reissue of a decades old memo to update intelligence sharing. It’s for groups like the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Which specifically says local police can request us military assistance
In regards to intelligence sharing. You can’t write a memo to invalidate a law.
Which would still violate the posse comitatus act
Im sure there is a gray area there with DOD adding it to 5402.01
Jesus Christ would you people stop citing on the books laws as if they mean ANYTHING now. Trump and his people will do whatever they want, the law be damned. Ink on a page in a law book means nothing to them now.
He’s not even right about what he’s citing.
