US Army speaks out against Trump

JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 0 points –
cnn.com

Trump can have one more felony, as a treat

23

Honestly, those families of fallen soldiers can go fuck themselves. They dishonor the memory of their children that made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. They don't get to invite Trump to wipe his ass all over the graves of soldiers. Their children deserve respect, but they deserve scorn.

Those children made " the ultimate sacrifice " to expand and maintain American imperialism and violence worldwide. Just because we hate trump there is no reason to defend the American empire and its willing enforcers.

Oh yes all those soldiers from, (checks notes), fighting the Nazis and Japanese.

Yeah them. Horrible people, the absolute worst amiright?

This incident was with the parents of people in section 60 specifically for people dying post 9-11 "War on terror" soldiers in other words. Stop obfuscating.

Oh okay the ones who got rid of Saddam and helped Iraq hold free and fair elections?

Those guys?

Oh you are an Iraq war defender I'm not going to bother getting into an argument with you it's not worth it to argue with someone literally defending the Iraq war as bringing "Democracy" to Iraq with all the current information freely available about the true motives and the lists of war crimes.

Hey you're talking about the soldiers. The guys who actually went over there. If you want to talk about Bush then talk about Bush. And the "list of war crimes" is just that, a list with a fraction of the people who served in Iraq.

And yeah I'm going to talk about bringing democracy back to Iraq. Because that's exactly what happened. Are you going to try and tell us they weren't the first free and fair elections since Saddam seized power?

Let me guess, you were there and killed a bunch of people, and this is what you have to tell yourself in order to make it day to day.

That sucks. But if you're going to post publicly defending the Iraq War, then you better be ready for criticism.

I was there. And yeah Bush lied his ass off and got 4,000 of my friends killed. I'm incredibly bitter about that. But we also took Saddam out of power, and brought democracy back to Iraq. We were halfway through our peacekeeping period objectives when Bremer released his orders that gave life to the Iraqi insurgency and let AQ get a purchase in the country. But then we allied with those local militias to repair that situation too. And when ISIS reared it's head we again supported Iraqi militias in their fight to secure their country.

It's a far more complex situation than previous wars were. But the military did it's best to actually stabilize the country, support the leadership the Iraqis voted for, and get out of the way as fast as possible. We just had to fight the white house the entire way because Cheney and friends were making billions of dollars on the services contracts for us being there.

We may have made the best of the situation when we were there, and obviously I don't blame you for the evil decisions of the Bush administration, but I don't know if anyone can justify going there in the first place.

Afghanistan? Ok sure. Maybe. Iraq? Nah

Yeah but remember we're talking about the soldiers buried in section 60. Not the white house staff. So I think the distinction here is fair.

Everyone posting quotes from the trump side, so here’s what the Army said:

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve,” the statement said.

So the Army sided with the people at the cemetery, and tge following paragraphs indicate the Pentagon does as well.

Barely... They don't even condemn the people who did it. They say it was "unfortunate." Give me a fucking break.

Imagine if this was a Democrat.

The US military is very apolitical. They don't get involved with campaigns or politics. I think it may actually be illegal for an active serviceman to make statements with any political leanings. Certainly in uniform I think.

So for them to say this much is actually a big deal.

Let's see how "apolitical" works when fascists are running the country.

Actually, surprisingly not badly. US generals like Milley took precautions to prevent Trump from doing even more disastrous things. Military leadership is generally respectable.

And yet they continued to voluntarily work directly with a fascist administration.

I'm so glad he pissed off the army before trying to stage his second coup.

Good luck asshat.

The US military is aggressively non-political. Don't count on them to do anything as long as the civilian institutions do nothing.

That's not the point. The Military is no longer a tool he could use. Staying neutral unless things get really bad is a good thing. He's already tried to use the military against protestors. (And the military told him to pound sand)

Am I crazy? I distinctly remember a military helicopter hovering quite low over protesters in a city and that very much didn’t feel like them telling trump to ‘pound sand’

Yeah, not crazy: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/politics/pentagon-national-guard-helicopter-dc-protests/index.html

I appreciate the army’s attempts at trying to stay neutral but from my perspective they were already complicit in the trump regime and I have no faith that they would be any different if he gets another shot.

Not American, I thought national guard and army are different because the national guard do stuff like security at disaster sites and riots which the army aren't allowed to?

You're not crazy. The thing is there's a difference between the national guard and the regular army. The national guard is used to control protests all the time by state governors. In D.C. Trump gets to act as that governor. What Trump wanted was a regular army Infantry division with lethal weapons. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs actually got into a shouting match with Trump over the issue.

When he couldn't have that toy he tried to tell the National Guard to use live ammo without actually ordering it. He told them to use "all available means" to protect federal property. The National Guard however has trained extensively against using live ammo in protests since May 4, 1970. So they used every non-lethal method they knew, including the down wash of their medevac helicopters. Which the Pentagon later said not to do again as they consider that to be against the regulations for medevac helicopters.