Thursday, December 8, 2016

INCREDIBLE Even More Military Coming to Trump Administration

The Wall Street Journal reports in an article titled, Donald Trump’s Choice of Generals for Top Posts Raises Concerns:
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday turned to a third retired military officer to help him run the country when he takes office in January, a move that represents an unusual level of military influence in the executive branch.

Mr. Trump gave the nod to retired Marine Gen. John Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the decision, a nomination that comes after he already has asked retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to be his defense secretary and retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn to be his national security adviser.

In addition, Mr. Trump is considering retired senior officers for at least two other top jobs: retired Army Gen. David Petraeus or retired Adm. James Stavridis to lead the State Department, and Adm. Michael Rogers to become director of national intelligence...

“I can’t honestly recall an administration with as many flag officers” in top roles, said Thomas Alan Schwartz, a history professor at Vanderbilt University. “I think this is probably somewhat unprecedented.”...

Critics of Mr. Trump still believe the choices threaten the constitutional fire wall between the civilian government and the military. “This is not normal,” said Stephen Miles, director of the antiwar Win Without War coalition. “As the saying goes, if all you have is hammers, everything looks like a nail.”..

[G. Calvin Mackenzie, a professor at Colby College who has studied presidential transitions] said the Bay of Pigs fiasco during John F. Kennedy’s administration gave the then-president a wariness of military advisers, especially the highest ranking among them.

“Kennedy learned to be very skeptical of the generals, he learned to keep them at arm’s length,” he said. “I don’t know if those lessons of history have trickled down.”
Libertarian Trump fanboys should be very careful. And this, which one commenter posted, doesn't work:
[A]lthough there are definitely exceptions, and these two generals may well be that, often generals are less likely to engage in war as they've seen it up front and personally. Back in my military industrial complex days, I knew some very high-level generals who were against the Kuwaiti invasion (but could not speak out publicly, of course). I have found that military people, in general, are less likely to promote war over the civilian chickenhawk neocon.
Both Flynn and Mattis are very eager to take out ISIS. There will be US combat troops on the ground in Iraq/Syria in no time after Trump assumes the presidency.  Both also have a passionate hate for the Iranian regime and we should expect at a minimum aggressive destabilization efforts of that government.

However, most disturbing is the surprise naming of  Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Do we really want a military man skilled in foreign civilian military occupations running domestic security?

-RW

5 comments:

  1. RW, your description of the "Unknown" poster as a "Libertarian Trump fanboys" is completely unfair. If you want people to comment from their experience you might want to adjust your defensive shields.

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  2. Been saying it since the beginning of the summer, anti-war Trump was nothing but a very weak lie. As awful as it is, I'm really looking to reading the mental gymnastics from Trumpitarians when more troops are deployed to that hell that is the Middle East

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  3. One can not escape the slow but inexerable saturation of militarism in the daily lives of Americans that has taken place over the past 36 years since Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency in 1980. The United States was tired of war, and men and women in uniform until Ronald Regan abetted the military to bring back spit polished memories of what patriotism could do to American's sense of pride.

    The adulation of the military today has so throughly saturated sports, sporting events, insurance ads, movies, television, and every nook and cranny of main stream media that you are hit by a sense of coerced worship. The fact that Trump is coloring his administration with delusion, one dimensional generals only furthers the idea that the citizens of this nation are mere mortals who are not qualified to call into question anything shrouded by the aura of an authoritarian militarism.

    Robert, the Trump fan boys will not recognize what is happening until it is too late, they have the distinct disadvantage of not having witnessed enough of history to recognize the palpable danger.

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  4. Trump is getting a lot of backlash about him picking very wealthy / military people to lead the Country. This article makes a point about looking at history to gauge such picks....maybe we all need to take a breath here and remind ourselves that this Country was invented by a group of very wealthy / military people back 240 years ago.

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    1. 240 years ago Hamilton lacked the ability to in essence read your mind as you communicated on any number of devises that would betray what you thought on any given subject. Hamilton could now simply call on the almost limitless power of the state to incriminate you for your rebellion in the blink of an eye.

      What do your think Trump's generals will do with over 80 Fusion Centers in the the U.S., make them stand down? No, Trump will create more Fusion Centers, with far greater ability than we can imagine.

      Sadly, you are far too sanguine to accurately access the dire nature of Trumps merging of a rabid militarism with the executive branch.

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