The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan.
Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the two sources said.
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President-elect Donald Trump has condemned the withdrawal as a “humiliation” and “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.”
It is not clear, though, what would legally justify “treason” charges, since the military officers were following the orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
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“These generals lied. They mismanaged. They violated their oath. They failed. They disgraced our troops, and our nation. They got people killed, unnecessarily,” he wrote. “And, to this moment, they keep their jobs. Worse, they continue to actively erode our military and its values — by capitulating to civilians with radical agendas. They are an embarrassment, with stars still on their shoulders.”
The transition team is looking at the possibility of recalling several commanders to active duty for possible charges, the U.S. official said.
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Speaking to NBC News days before the election, Howard Lutnick, one of the two advisers leading the transition, said that Trump learned after his first administration that he had hired Democratic generals and that he would not make that mistake again.
Trump has this really weird attitude to the military. He decries war because it’s wasteful (and because this stance plays well to a US that is going through one of its regular isolationist phases), but he also seems have a deep seated insecurity about the military. Like, it’s really obvious that military personnel make him feel less manly, so he has to constantly flex on them by shitting on their traditions and attacking their leadership, but also by engaging in big flashy military actions like missile strikes and dropping “the biggest non-nuclear weapon in existence.”
He hates war but loves doing war stuff. He hates the military but loves proving that he’s better than them by any metric possible. The whole thing is fucked up in a really pathological way that makes me think the whole “private bone-spurs” thing really, really gets to him.
I just don’t see trump as especially manly anyway. I don’t really understand how anybody does.
Of course not. Because he’s like the least manly person ever by any normal definition. Which is exactly why he’s so fucking insecure about it.
This is also why his followers have to constantly reframe him as some sort of paragon of manliness (see Ben Garrison’s absolutely ludicrous hagiography, for example), because they know, intuitively, that he in no way measures up to their supposed ideals of what manliness is and that bothers them a lot.
My circles tend to be full of “traditionally manly men” types
A bunch of eagle scouts, hunters, fishermen, mechanics of various types, construction workers, people who enjoy guns knives and axes, beer and whiskey drinkers, DIYers, veterans, woodworkers, blacksmiths, guys who like camping and sitting around a fire, getting together to watch the game, and damn-near every one of us sports a full beard.
None of us see ourselves reflected in Trump at all, he’s the antithesis of all of the values we take pride in. He’s the dude we only talk to at a bar because he’s either being weirdly possessive of the pool table or creeping out some girls and we’re trying to distract him while they make their exit. He’s the neighbor we hope we don’t run into because he’s going to try to talk to us and every word out of his mouth is garbage.
And of course, those of us who are going bald just suck it up and shave our heads instead of whatever the fuck is going on with his head.
This description is is exactly how I feel about him. He only seems manly to people who never interact with real men, and are probably insecure about it. Guys who sit at some computer all day at their dads company and contribute nothing to society while their wives are fucking some other dude at home.