Summary
Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, has sparked controversy over his extremist rhetoric, detailed in his 2020 book American Crusade.
Hegseth advocates for a “holy war” against leftist “enemies” and envisions a potential civil war if Democrats prevail politically, stating the military and police would need to choose sides.
He openly dismisses democracy, endorses gerrymandering, and promotes nationalist, anti-globalist ideologies.
Critics warn of his loyalty to Trump and his potential support for militarized actions against domestic opposition, raising alarms about his suitability to oversee the Pentagon.
They’re planning to use Schedule F to fire hired government employees and replace them with loyalists, regardless of their experience or qualifications. This wouldn’t apply to troops, but it would apply to the DOD.
Soldiers would be given orders by the loyalists. I’m assuming they’d be dishonorably discharged for insubordination if they refused to follow orders, but you’d know better than me.
The military has spent a good decade now training soldiers to know what an illegal order is and that they best ignore it.
Or else what, now? The threat of military and civilian justice doesn’t work well in a system that will almost certainly be rigged to ignore anything illegal that a soldier does in the commission of Trump’s orders. The entire indoctrination there relies heavily on the threat of military and DOJ proceedings, and once both of those are pretty well captured, there’s really not much. We have a law that says the ICC can’t prosecute American soldiers for war crimes - in fact, attempting to do so is considered an act of war.
I don’t disagree that a lot of the military won’t follow orders at first, but I think when some of them start realizing that their fellow soldiers are getting away with things that would normally be considered criminal, you’ll see them starting to turn around on it. Corruption is a cancer and in this case, it’s poised to be incredibly aggressive.