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This post partially motivated in response to fustakrakich journal post: https://soylentnews.org/~fustakrakich/journal/4779
I don't really expect that civilians understand the real issues at stake here. Some will, most won't.
Bottom line, in this issue, is whether the military answers to civilian authority, or it does not. Like it or not, President Trump is the Commander in Chief of our armed forces. Soldiers and sailors in the enlisted ranks don't get to pick and choose which officers they will follow. Junior officers don't get to pick and choose their own superior officers. And, flag officers don't get to pick and choose who will be elevated to the office of Commander in Chief. Things just don't work that way.
That was true when Obama was president, when Bush 1 and 2 were president, when Clinton was president, Ford, Reagan, Carter, and the other 40 or so presidents.
Military discipline is not threatened by Trump's decision - it is threatened by the rebellion of flag officers.
Further, streiff explains clearly how this rebellion is based on nothing more, and nothing less, than hypocrisy.
Read on, be enlightened, and enjoy.
To be quite honest, there is a lot of bullsh** being slung about here. First and foremost, Gallagher was tried by a jury and acquitted of all but the most chicknsh** of charges. It was a verdict that expressed revulsion at the tactics of the Navy JAG officers carrying out the prosecution and their minions in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and a total rejection of the evidence presented against Chief Gallagher. Even the court-martial convening authority thought the punishment meted out went too far and he intervened to prevent Gallagher from being reduced to the lowest enlisted grade. The whole episode, as I’ve posted before, was nothing more or less than an admiral who was torqued because a court-martial panel did not give him the verdict he wanted decided he’d take his pound of flesh.
On the subject of war crimes, the United States has never severely punished war crimes by our own troops, even in egregious cases. William Calley served some three years of a life sentence in house arrest for the My Lai Massacre. His commander, Ernest Medina, was acquitted. (I, myself, made the pilgrimage to V.V. Vick Jewelers at Cross Country Plaza where Calley worked.) The soldiers convicted of kidnapping, raping, and murdering Phan Thi Mao in 1966 served a mere four years of a life sentence before being released. I’ve posted on two cases from Sicily in 1943 were some 72 Italian and German prisoners were executed by two Americans. One was acquitted based on a “following orders” defense, the other was sentenced to life but served less than a year before being restored to duty and eventually receiving an honorable discharge. In short, Clint Lorance served longer for a war crime than any other American ever convicted of one, in fact, he served nearly as a long as all previous convictions combined.
Every senior officer who was interviewed for the CNN and New York Times articles, at a minimum, violated the UCMJ. Their statements were, where not outright contemptuous (Article 88 of the UCMJ), manifestly detrimental to the maintenance of good order and discipline by expressing the opinion they did not trust President Trump’s decisions. This issue with the pardons for Gallagher, Lorance, and Golsteyn is not the first instance of rebellion. We’ve seen this as the military hierarchy fought tooth and nail to continue to allow transgenders into the military despite an order to cease doing so (imagine this, a straight man with braces is barred from enlisting but a person who is unbalanced psychologically and taking several varieties of drugs is cleared). We saw a military judge tie the UCMJ to the rack and torture it in order to allow the duplicitous, if not outright treasonous, Bowe Bergdahl go free in order to take a jab at President Trump. All of this calls into question whether the military command structure would actually obey President Trump when called upon to do something that they viewed against their institutional interests or if they would take action favorable to their perceived prerogatives despite a presidential order to the contrary. This, by the way, is not something unique to the past three years. If you’ll recall, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki was fired because he tried to do an end run to Congress around Don Rumsfeld to preserve a redundant artillery system that he had championed. So the rot is deep and long standing but only clearly visible today.
citations found in source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-sabotaging-his-military/2019/11/21/6b46199e-0cad-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-undercuts-his-military-leadership--and-dishonors-troops-who-uphold-our-values/2019/11/24/67702788-0d66-11ea-8397-a955cd542d00_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/24/firing-richard-spencer-trump-recklessly-crosses-another-line/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-ill-advised-pardons-will-damage-americans-view-of-the-military/2019/11/21/5c356fda-0c9a-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/27/politics/pentagon-concern-trump-decision-making/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/us/politics/trump-seals-eddie-gallagher.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_on_Hill_192
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @10:09AM
You fucking lickspittle to tyrants, Runaway!
An illegal order, is an illegal order, and the officer who issues it, is no officer. Trump needs to be Court Martialed, the same as the child-POW killing coward Gallagher was, and then summarily executed, by executive order.
My gawd you are stupid, Runaway. Do not the US Constitution, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the rule of law mean anything to you? Are you such a mercenary twat that you would sell your fellow Americans down the river to a Russian disinformation operation that only pays you in Rubles? I spit on you, Runaway. I would revoke your VA benefits, if I could, for aiding and abetting the enemy. And I haven't even mentioned Rupert, yet.