The best part is that both him and trump prepared a “funny” speech with pauses for cheers and applauses but were too stupid to realize the difference between a military meeting (listening in silence at blank face) and a political rally (cheering at whatever you say, even if it doesn’t make sense)
they wanted a north korean, russian style rally.
Let’s have every single general, admiral, and other very high ranking military personnel in the same room with the secretary of war and the president. Oh, and let’s announce it publicly ahead of time. What could go wrong?
JFC Pete is so fucking stupid. A smart, motivated, and malicious individual could have wiped out all of our military leadership in an instant.
I felt the same way on 9/11… The reaction was to close every bridge and tunnel on and off Manhattan and my first thought was “Well, shit, captive audience, so if whoever did it has a dirty nuke, that’s the time for the dirty nuke.”
Dirty bomb sounds much worse than the danger it actually creates, although it does creates panic and having closed bridges and tunnel would def increase effects of it
Yeah, I didn’t expect them to have a NUKE nuke, but a dirty bomb felt like an actual possibility.
I know Hanlon’s Razor and what not, but in this case, I do have to wonder if the intent was malicious, or more data from this was gleaned by our adversaries than we realize.
At this point we know the GOP is compromised with Kremlin assets masquerading as asshats.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, and almost all their internal documents became public, western intelligence was shocked to discover that their own operations far, far outpaced the KGB in both scope and budget.
I don’t really think we need “Kremlin assets” to explain this. Trust me, we have a more than sufficient asshat capacity.
A smart, motivated, and malicious individual could have wiped out all of our military leadership in an instant.
A smart, motivated, and malicious individual could have wiped out all of our military leadership in an instant.
How? Is a foreign actor going to launch an ICBM at Virginia? This was at Quantico, not exactly a place where anybody can enter or even get near.
Edit because I was curious and checked: the base occupies over 55,000 acres.
An insider threat (which is seeming more and more likely) wouldn’t’ve needed an ICBM
The US goes through a threat situation like this every state of the union, if they can’t handle something like that for this, they can’t handle it for that either, and the state of the union is a better target.
Sure, I’m not saying it would be easy for an insider threat, I’m just saying there’s options other than an ICBM.
A quick reminder
he declared war on American citizens yesterday
He encouraged war crimes against American citizens
He told them to prepare for war
Trump told them they are loyal to him now or they’re fired
I am not advocating for it but in other nations, that would cause a military coup.
I’ve been wondering why that didn’t happen right then and there. A boy can only dream, I guess.
Thank you, everybody is focusing on Pete and his stupidity and not the important part, I feel??
Although he called and made the speech for general, the fact this was broadcast tells me this speech was not for the generals…
I disagree. An email wouldn’t have captured the full scope of Hegseth’s immaturity and desperation. Now, all our military leaders have seen it first hand. Well done.
The drunk TV guy with a make-up room tells generals he wants manly men. Did I get that right?
He sounded like a guy in my area who gets drunk, gets on Grindr, and complains that there aren’t any twinks around here in their constsntly updating profile.
“You’re all too fat and hairy!”
This was a “look how powerful I am that I can demand you all show up to here me rant” meeting on Pete’s part. So yes, a waste of time, and money.
“in USA they can only choose between two haircuts”
DPRK has 7.
Remember that conspiracy theory about JFK being taken out because he crossed the military complex?
Well now we can see how this experiment goes, piss off every capable military leader, and see how long this attempted dictatorship lasts.
Stress-testing the government to find out who shot JFK.
It was Lee Harvey and the Secret Service
HW Bush was supposedly in the city at the time, and spent decades being “unable to recall where he was” on that very memorable day
crossed the military industrial complex
The best part was “You’re not allowed to do that (laugh)”, said by a guy who tried to invade Chicago.
This is right out of a Sacha Cohen movie…Haffaz Aladeen… complaining to military the missiles should be pointy.
I bet every single one of them is thinking “This little toe-rag is my boss?”
And because it wasn’t an email, they can share their discontent in person with each other without being spied upon.
One does wonder…
With so many generals and admirals together in the room, would they talk to eachother? Would they wonder if the country is going in the right direction? Would theyy be okay with being deployed in the US to arrest and fight citizens?
Would they talk about being okay having a drunk and irresponsible idiot as their boss who will push them to commit war crimes?
One wonders if any of these guys are willing to talk about better solutions
Bros flew 20+ hours from South Korea for important briefing: “no fatties on the frontlines.” It would be unreasonable to not be pissed.
Hopefully they are.
In private
Given their rank, they’re probably not doing it in private, but just in general
Dammit alright you got me, that was funny.
The best scenario we can hope for is for generals to simply refuse an illegal order, and when told to retire, refuse, and when reassigned to also refuse on the grounds that it’s illegal punishment for refusing an illegal order.
Anything more and you’re in coup territory, which sets the precedent that the military can step in and “correct” civilian government when it’s wrong in their view. See, for example, Myanmar. Even after the military relinquished control to allow democracy, they still decided to “correct” that democracy when it started to drift from their wishes.
Refusing civilian government requests that violate the constitution is literally part of their oath. It is the highest and most important part. To cede ultimate authority to the constitution, to the law, and not to a leader.
This is an existential battle between those who want a framework of power that is a hierarchy and those, like the founders, who wanted a division of power across a community of leaders, to prevent monarchic hierarchies. If democracy falls to the consolidation of a hierarchy then the American experiment has concluded and we return to the age of kings and warlords. The dream of community rule, not individual power, must be tried elsewhere, with whatever learnings can be gained, like the influence of power of private capital and the role of wealth on democratic integrity.
I hope American patriots, those who believe in the separation of power as the founders did, win this battle.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Well, it’s also part of the oath the civilian leadership takes, for what it’s worth.
Point is, you want the military to say “you can’t tell me to do that” and not “I won’t let you do that”.
The latter is the military exerting power over the civilian government, which is a deeply dangerous precedent.Agreed.
Myanmar is a bit different. It was under constant control of the military and families connect to it (which also got extremely rich through corruption).
They switched to “democracy” to get sanctions lifted, but they still controlled what government did. Once people voted on a bill that would remove their power and turn Myanmar to true democracy, that’s when they stepped in and took control back to prevent it.
Well that’s sort of my point. Once you go down the military coup path it’s hard to get out.
and they used aung sun suu kyi as a lightning rod, eventhough she had no power in the government.
These generals have been doing war crimes for decades for money. You think they will stop taking orders when they tell them to turn their guns on you? These soulless fucks execute orders as told, and would gladly kill you for a promotion
What does that have to do with what I said, which was about how a military coup is bad?
Whether you’re right or wrong, it’s just unrelated to what I said.
Something like 150 people sitting in this picture and 6 black men and 3 women. But there’s too much diversity in the military!!!
The upper ranks in nearly every American organization is a poor representation of those in lower ranks. Roughly 1/5 of military members are black. 6/150 is 1/25, so not really an accurate representation.
Just like our representatives are
I am glad to see several skin tones. There are not enough women in this picture.
I would like my Military-Industrial Complex that bombs schools and hospitals to come in pink, please.
hesgeth, trump got rid of them.
:(
enough women
can’t seem to find any though
Not that it matters, but the colours in there are just black and white, no asians or latinos
can’t seem to find any though
I think there are some female generals in the upper right corner, but the resolution is too low to be sure
There is one person with long blonde hair right off the center and one with longer black hair in the same position on the left side. Alltogether there could be eight female generals.
The Corps has about 10 and theres a couple dozen in each of the other branches, then again there are also a bunch of enlisted folk sitting there so it’s not just a room full of generals. The enlisted Marine front right for example, is sitting in a seat that could be filled by a female black Marine General but something tells me the folks organizing this wouldn’t want to see her prominently displayed during their practice civil war speech
