Other sources without paywall:
https://newrepublic.com/post/188338/trump-executive-order-military-board-purge
More than anything else I’ve heard, this Trump action scares me the most.
Military generals recognize the president as commander in chief. They’re generally going to follow the chain of command in situations where the US is attacking a strategic target, regardless of the ‘ethics’ of the situation.
If Trump wants to level the Gaza Strip or the West Bank or even parts of the Ukraine. They’ll likely follow orders because there’s a strategic value in those targets militarily. They might not agree with the strategy, but they’re primarily loyal to the office of the president regardless of who’s sitting in it.
But when generals would push back, is any scenario where following orders was a risk to the country with no strategic gain. Like attacking US citizens, using nuclear weapons, attacking strategic allies or starting World War III for no other reason than because Trump wanted to flex his ego.
The scenarios where these roles needed to be replaced by a Trump loyalist willing to do anything are… nightmarish.
This is the move Trump needs to make if he wants to become a true dictator. You need the military protecting you from the populace if you’re going to consolidate absolute power. If he starts purging the military brass, that’s a confirmation that he’s planning to be president for life.
Seems like the potential loss of a lot of valuable experience for the US military…
Seems like a potential win for the likes of Americas adversaries… Useful idiot does useful idiot stuff…
Bet the “art of the deal” douche isn’t even getting anything from them, he’s just doing the “I want the types of generals Hitler had” thing for himself…
Please create beef with the military.
If Trump were smart, he’d play the long game at this point. He’s won. Install friendly sycophants in charge of all the elections, keep stuffing the Supreme Court, and depend on the lock on power created by that and the current electoral trifecta to consolidate all his power. Keep the Democrats around as a puppet opposition to siphon off any energy from a genuine resistance, and live out the rest of his days as a king without creating any massive upset that can go sideways on him.
Trump isn’t smart. He wants to create massive disruptions in civil society, for reasons of his own, and now he wants to commit the classic bloodless-coup-er’s mistake of firing a bunch of military people so they’re left wandering loose in civil society, still with all their connections and skills and respect in place, available to be slotted into a resistance against him if it goes beyond a certain point, in which role they can transform it from a laughable potshot-bunch into a modern fighting military. And, ensuring loyalty by randomly punishing people who are judged to be disloyal makes everyone disloyal. They just won’t be disloyal to your face.
I’m not saying this definitely won’t work. But tangling with the military at this stage introduces what they call a critical success factor into his plan. Again, for no reason. The military isn’t going to get involved if he only usurps society on the civilian side.
Edit: Typo
See. If he’s just wanting to fire people out of spite - I don’t care.
But I feel he may want to stuff generals with his hires to then just invoke a martial law and execute a coup.
That’s absolutely what he’s trying to do. My point is that the US military doesn’t operate like Toys-R-Us or Twitter or whatever. You can’t just fire the boss of the division, bring in a new guy who says we’re going to go shoot some protestors now, and have all the battalion commanders under them say, “Oh, okay, that’s weird but w/e.”
At least, I hope not. I’m pretty sure though. It’s not simple like Trump is thinking, and he doesn’t have the level of understanding to pull it off and make it work.
Remember this? Listen to them cheering:
