WATCH LIVE: Trump, Hegseth Address Rare Gathering of U.S. Military Leaders From Around the World...
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances. Milarepa
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. Rumi
Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom. Rumi
Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future. Dalai Lama
Program begins at the 7 min. 30 second mark.
Perhaps one of the most un-American utterings I've ever heard from a US President or Secretary of Defense.
A disgraceful and shameful display of ignorance and power lust by a sitting Secretary and President.
Billy Kristol, A man with whom I seldom agree with , but whose views on the above I completely agree with follows below.
We can have policy and ideological differences and disagreements but we do not need to resort to the lying, hate, and lack of compassion and understanding accepted as normal by Trump and his MAGA sycophants and supporters.
All America (now Amerika under tRump-hegseth}can hop for is that the military leaders refuse to comply with the unethical tRump/hegseth idiocy and ignorance.
The unethical sh*t that is tRump and hegseth will infect this country to its core unless every patriotic American (now Amerika under tRump) resists in any and every way they can.
Final note, watch closely to see if military enlistments fall. If I were a betting man I'd surely bet they do. Why sit and be denigrated by two people who are by far LESS than anyone else in the gathering.
My prediction: tRump and hegseth will have this nation at war within 2 years.
Now on to Billy Kristol's article with a big Hat Tip to Progressive Eruptions.
Qualms From
by Bill Kristol
“There was little that was surprising in yesterday’s speeches at Quantico from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. We already knew that Trump is a demagogue whose clownish solipsism shouldn’t mask the danger of his authoritarianism. We already knew that Hegseth is a Fox & Friends personality whose pathetic desperation to want to appear tough shouldn’t overshadow the damage he can do to our military.
Their speeches were predictably depressing and dangerous. My fellow Bulwarkians and I discussed them here and here. And JVL analyzed some of the implications of Trump’s speech here.
So I won’t dwell today on how alarmed we should be by Trump’s wish to deploy the military to fight a “war” against the enemy “within.” And I won’t dwell on how repulsed we should be by Hegseth’s apparent yearning for armed forces that resemble the Soviet military more than the American.
Instead, I want to mention a couple of aspects of yesterday’s news from which we can take some hope.
First, the general and flag officers at Quantico rose to the occasion. They listened in dignified and even stone-faced silence to Hegseth and Trump. Retired Army general Mark Hertling wrote ahead of the gathering that he hoped “the loudest message” the senior officers send “is no message at all—only that they have the quiet, disciplined silence of professionals who know their oath is to the Constitution, not to a man.”
That was the message they sent. It was impossible not to see it. And it was impressive.
I was also impressed by the many younger veterans who stepped up afterwards on social media to express disapproval of what Trump and Hegseth had to say. I was particularly struck by this post from a leader of the group Veterans for Responsible Leadership, reacting to Hegseth’s boast that “America’s warriors . . . kill people and break things for a living.”
This is a disgraceful message. There was a soldier that I served with in the army that later was killed in Mosul, Iraq that said the reason he joined the military was because he believed that it was the greatest force for good that the world has ever known. He said the military not only taught its soldiers to be lethal, but it also taught us to be compassionate and empathetic and care about not only the American people but also freedom-loving and -seeking people from all over the globe. This is the true warrior ethos that so many of us veterans know and love. I’m thinking about him a lot tonight and will be damned if sons of bitches like Trump and Hegseth will transform our great military into something resembling the Russians’. His memory and service must not be in vain.
Obviously, there are post-9/11 veterans who have been sympathetic to Trump and Hegseth. But I’m confident that many understand, especially after yesterday, that Trump’s vision of America—and Hegseth’s of the military—is not what they and their comrades-in-arms signed up and sacrificed for.
Yesterday also saw a notable contribution to our public discourse from a veteran of a different generation, a man who served a tour in the Army over six decades ago and then continued his public service with a distinguished career as a U.S. federal district court judge. William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Massachusetts now a senior judge, wrote a long and careful opinion in American Association of University Professors et al. v. Marco Rubio, finding that in one of the early ICE arrests this year the Trump administration had trampled on the free speech rights of an immigrant.
But Young chose to go beyond his important legal analysis of free speech jurisprudence to discuss the larger meaning of “our magnificent Constitution.” And so he addressed the practice of ICE agents’ wearing masks:
Can you imagine a masked Marine? It is a matter of honor—and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.
This remark was especially striking in the context of the speeches by Trump and Hegseth. For what they want, in a way, is to turn the U.S. military into an institution more like ICE: an internal police force, unconstrained by many laws or norms, bullying and intimidating people here at home on behalf of the current administration in Washington.
I have considerable confidence that the current crop of general and flag officers do not want a kind of a military that looks like or behaves like ICE, and that they would resist it. But what of the military leadership three years from now? The Washington Post recently described efforts by Hegseth to shape the next generation of senior officers. “Even at the one- and two-star level, the secretary’s team is scrutinizing old relationships and what officials have said or posted on social media, as they determine whom to send forward for a higher rank or assignment,” the paper reported.
What will the officer corps look like in three years? Can we be confident that Trump and Hegseth won’t succeed in turning the U.S. military into something more like ICE? The thought seems incredible. But that ICE would be doing what it is now doing on our streets would have been shocking just a year ago.
The opinion of Judge Young and the silence of the generals at Quantico offer some grounds for hope. But military officers and district court judges alone won’t save us. And it’s perhaps worth noting that neither the judge nor the senior officers were elected to their offices. At the end of the day, free government can’t be preserved without the commitment and courage of elected officials. So the question is: Can more of our elected officials rise to the occasion? Which means, can more of the American people rise to the occasion? That’s the question with which Judge Young concludes his opinion:
I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected. Is he correct?
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