• RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
      15·
      6 hours ago

      It’s real. From the yahoo news article that someone else linked: The defense secretary wrote “Cool story, General” in response to a tweet from retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges about Adolf Hitler gathering Nazi generals in 1935 and them being “required to swear a personal oath to the Führer.”

  • F_State@midwest.social
    184·
    15 hours ago

    Obviously no good can come of this domestically, but since all the Generals will be there instead of doing their jobs, it would also be a window of opportunity for China to invade Taiwan.

    • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
      232·
      15 hours ago

      Yeah. Unless of course it’s not the 18th century and it no longer matters where a General is physically located.

      • F_State@midwest.social
        72·
        13 hours ago

        It always matters, especially with the increasing importance of Electromagnetic warfare capabilities.

        • FundMECFS@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          7 hours ago

          You know US personnel isn’t stationed on Taiwan (but pacific bases hours away like Okinawa) and there is such a thing as chain of command.

          • F_State@midwest.social
            23·
            6 hours ago

            Since Japan is widely expected to enter into such a conflict, there’s strong speculation that any attack on Taiwan would be preceded by a first strike against Japan and US forces there.

            • FundMECFS@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              2·
              5 hours ago

              Highly unlikely. Neither the US or Japan are guaranteed to act in Taiwan’s favour. Especially in a borderline situation. If the CCP has strategy (and it usually does), it will push limits and borderline situations.

  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
    2351·
    1 day ago

    That is 100% in character for MAGA: at the same time they screech “dOn’T cAlL uS nAzIs” while also saying “Hitler did many good things”

  • Serinus@lemmy.world
    73·
    1 day ago

    So if you’re one of those generals, do you recite the new oath or do you allow them to purge everyone loyal to the Constitution?

    • betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      6 hours ago

      If you’re one of those generals, you have an oath to the Constitution so you protect the Constitution with the same dedication as if you were on a battlefield. Soldiers don’t change team midway. Even amateur athletes don’t do that.

      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        5 hours ago

        If you rise to the rank of general, you’re more politician than soldier though, and politicians change teams all the time

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Not that kind of politics, though. Any General has had to navigate an elaborate military political labyrinth of rules, regulations, and the erratic and unpredictable vagaries of higher command. That’s far different from dealing with the politics of elections, votes, campaign financing, public opinions, etc., that an elected politician has to deal with.

          Generals are people who have fully bought into the concept of protecting America from its enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. They also have a military education equivalent to a doctorate in any other career. They are fully aware of what their rights and responsibilities are, should they be involuntarily confined to a room, and ordered to dismiss their original oath to their COUNTRY, and take a new on to the Führer.

          They will recognize this for what it is, and it will be a watershed moment for this administration. What if all the Generals simply refuse? What will Trump and Hegseth do? Fire them all? Imprison them? Remove them from positions of responsibility? Who will replace them? What if the next several levels of command also refuse? Who will operate the military?

          Whatever MAGA does to respond to a Rebellion of Generals will weaken America in the eyes of our enemies.

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
          1·
          3 hours ago

          If it ever came down to it, I would seriously float that to a judge.

          “Yes, your honor, I took that abominable pledge, because I wanted to stay in my position, and fight from within, so I crossed my fingers, and I MEANT IT! I never renounced my original pledge, and I never properly took the new one.”

      • Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com
        46·
        23 hours ago

        This is actually a tactic listed in the official CIA “Simple Sabotage” handbook. Basically, if you can’t overtly sabotage things by blowing them up while maintaining your cover, work to sabotage things from inside instead.

        Get a job in middle management, and do everything in your power to live up to the term “middle manglement”. Do your job as poorly as possible while still maintaining plausible deniability. Make it difficult for people around you to do their jobs. Give other managers bad info. Sow division via gossip. Divert employees towards busy work so they can’t focus on important tasks. Waste budgets. Ensure deadlines get missed, while demanding unreasonable deadlines for other teams. Et cetera…

        And I can guarantee that generals will be well aware of this fact. Plenty of them got into their spots by being war dogs, but they won’t be stupid.

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Years ago, I read an article by a Democrat who got a job working for a local Republican campaign office, just so he could be incompetent at it.

          While he was sabotaging things, he caught the flu. He came to work anyway, and smeared his flu-ridden saliva on doorknobs, computer keyboards and mouses, etc. Within a week, most of the office was sick, in the middle of a big campaign.

          • F_State@midwest.social
            2·
            15 hours ago

            In every company I’ve worked for that had middle managers, they spent 80% of their time trying to justify their position with self-assigned busy work to try to look useful for the company.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
        462·
        1 day ago

        Just thinking out loud here.

        Faking it also give them power. If all the generals go in an give an oath to the furher, they don’t all have to mean it for it to have far reaching effects.

        But if you’re not going to take the oath, I feel like you have to have a real plan for resistance beyond just get escorted… out.

        It doesn’t help that our government was founded with a core principle of the military being subservient to a civilian command.

        These are smart people entrusted with the most powerful military in history. If anyone can find a strategy to prevent the Fourth Reich, it’s them.

      • njm1314@lemmy.world
        11·
        1 day ago

        I feel like that’s probably the logic of a lot of Nazi generals who just you know continued to be Nazi generals. As in just self justification.

    • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      1 day ago

      Last year I heard a talk by retired Admiral Stravidis, who among other things was supreme commander of NATO for a few years. He pointed out that by the time somebody makes the rank of General or Admiral they will have sworn that oath a bunch of times. They renew that oath each time they are promoted etc. They also would have administered that oath to countless other soldiers & sailors over the years.

      Fire all the generals and admirals, and guess what? They are replaced by junior officers who have repeated the oath to the US Constitution almost as many times. There’s always the chance that some may decide to bend the knee to Trump, but there are significantly more that likely won’t.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
      81·
      1 day ago

      Here’s how this goes: they take any other oath instead of the one they already took, TO PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION FROM ENEMIES DOMESTIC, we kill them.

      It’s that simple. This clownfuck administration has been fucking around for nine months. How bad do they want to find out.