What if the US Military One Day Got Fed-up with Trump’s Insults and Insane Lunacies?
Nha Trang, Vietnam, December 23rd, 2024.
Salaroche


The American military, particularly all those Colonels and Generals who have spent their lives methodically climbing up the military hierarchy, always have to swear two important oaths, sometimes at each step of their careers: 1) to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and, 2) to obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed to lead them (see here).

Those oaths, by and large, have been traditionally observed by all American military personnel, but there have been a few notable exceptions. Most recently, in the Summer of 2010, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then-commander of the American troops in Afghanistan, was fired by President Barack Obama for making disrespectful comments about him and other government officials (see here).

Such firing, however, only happened because of a whistleblower who leaked McChrystal’s derogatory comments to Rolling Stone magazine, meaning that such kind of criticism is probably a normal occurrence at those levels of the military hierarchy, except that it is all usually kept under cover.

Most, but NOT all, US military personnel are American citizens. Legal US residents (Green Card-holders) can also join the military, but only US-born or naturalized citizens can become officers. This means that ALL officers have the right to VOTE, which also means that all, or most, officers have political preferences.

At the same time, we all know about the president-elect’s contempt for anything or anybody who doesn’t kneel before him and we all know about the demeaning way in which he has referred to some highly-reputable US Generals. We are also currently witnessing how that convicted-felon, insurrectionist president-elect wants to populate his cabinet with people whose loyalty is to him, rather than to the US Constitution and the American rule of law.

Just picture how insulted some, if not all, of those career Colonels and Generals will feel if the high command of the American military forces, the Department of Defense, is put in the hands of a guy named Pete Hegseth, a second-rate TV presenter and many-times-accused sexual offender whose highest military rank was that of Major in the Army National Guard?

And not only that, but a Major who was removed from service because of some tattoos in his body associated with white-supremacism. If Hegseth were confirmed as Secretary of defense, there will be a deep and constant resentment and frustration among the military officers, particularly whenever he issues orders completely off the wall, which would be quite a Trumpian thing to do.

If Gen. McChrystal’s case can be considered an act of irresponsibility, not because of what he said, but because he was not careful enough to keep his words from being published, we can assume that such criticism is common practice at those levels, which also means they consult with each other about these matters too.

In clear disagreement will Paul Rieckhoff, a smart, well-informed, well-articulated Iraq-war veteran (see here), I'll dare to go out on a limb and suggest that there may come a time when Trump insults ONE high-ranking officer too many and/or issues ONE deranged anti-American order too many, thereby triggering a movement at all levels of the military that results in a confrontation between those military who stand in defense of the Republic and those who stand on the side of Fascism.

Or, what if there were no split in the military at all? What if a commanding majority decided to put a stop to the government’s slide down to autocracy? What if the military one day soon got fed-up with Trump’s insults and insane lunacies and decided, with substantial evidence, that civilians are no longer fit to lead the country?

At that point in time, my fellow Americans, we might have, either a second American Civil War or the first-ever military coup d’état in the history of the United States. A farfetched proposition? Maybe so. But still quite within the scope of possibilities.

The remaining bottomline question being that, if not the US military, who will be powrfull enough to prevent the downfall of the Democratic Republic of the United States of America?

Salaroche