Summary

The Trump transition team is reportedly considering investigating U.S. military leaders involved in the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, with potential charges ranging from mismanagement to treason.

The effort aims to review decision-making, assess accountability for the chaotic exit, and possibly recall commanders to active duty for legal action.

Critics, including Trump and his allies, have condemned the withdrawal as a failure, citing deadly incidents like the Abbey Gate bombing and missteps in leadership.

Some insiders question the legality of such actions, while others frame the move as politically motivated.

  • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The Trump transition team is reportedly considering investigating U.S. military leaders involved in the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    The withdrawal that Trump set in motion with his inept foreign policies…

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      1 month ago

      Man, there’s so many weird half-informed implications there I don’t even know where to start but Trump bad and Stalin bad so why bother?

      Sure, it’s just like that. Just like the Great Purge, no notes.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        They are considering charging people with treason though, and this is the group of people that keeps screaming about how people convicted of treason should be executed.

        … And Trump and his ilk keep saying they want to deport at least a million people a year, which is logistically impossible without directing segments of the military to do it.

        … And he keeps saying he wants to use the military to crack down on ‘the enemy within’, including military tribunals for basically any prominent politician or journalist he’s offended by, as well military deployment to put down any riot or protest involving anyone to his left.

        … And then there’s Stephen Miller’s Plan.

        Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, has publicly declared that they would pursue such an enormous effort partly by creating a private red-state army under the president’s command. Miller says a reelected Trump intends to requisition National Guard troops from sympathetic Republican-controlled states and then deploy them into Democratic-run states whose governors refuse to cooperate with their deportation drive.

        Such deployment of red-state forces into blue states, over the objections of their mayors and governors, would likely spark intense public protest and possibly even conflict with law-enforcement agencies under local control. And that conflict itself could become the justification for further insertion of federal forces into blue jurisdictions…

        That would be a … pretty… totally, complete and overt transformation of the military into an overtly partisan force, you know, potentially setting up different State’s National Guards into direct conflict with other State’s Nat. Guards and local authorities.

        Yuck yuck, Private Red State Army, yuck yuck, Red Army, yuck yuck yuck.

        … Oh and of course Trump just keeps yammering on about overtly politicizing courts, the FBI, you know, just everything.

        Vivek has said, stone cold, either being an utterly incompetent idiot, or a decent liar, that his plan for downsizing the civil servant workforce would be to just take every gov employee, if their SSN starts with an even number, fire them, then of the remainder, every SSN that ends with an odd number, fire them.

        75% reduction in overhead, and, I again stress that Vivek delivered this all completely seriously… He said this would have absolutely no negative effect on the ability of these agencies to perform their duties.

        … And then you backfill that with totally unqualified people who just basically check off enough MAGA loyalty points, akin to how Christian scholars and scientists at fundamentalist think tanks have to sign a faith affadavit.

        I guess maybe … ‘baby’s first Stalin-esque purge’ would have better captured that this would likely (hopefully?) be more inept (initially, at least) at direct mass murder and imprisonment than the NKVD’s terror under basically the direct command of Stalin and Beria.

        … Or, maybe Trump will actually go completely nuts, you know, fully commit to the bit.

        It’s kinda the whole problem with an absurdly singly powerful person backed by a like minded, well positioned bunch of amoral cultish bureacrats, in a government system that offers fewer and fewer effective barriers to the enacting of whatever they decree:

        You can basically only count on them being either incompetent or not sufficiently pissed off, or distracted by some other random bugaboo issue.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    He’s sending the same message to military commanders that he just sent to the US senate: “I am in charge. Get on board, or get run over.” Success here will ensure his control of the US military. The “hearings” will be a bunch of generals either being thrown in jail, or telling Trump what he wants to hear and throwing Biden under the bus. These hearings will be used to purge non-MAGA commanders from the military and give Trump complete control.

  • Josey_Wales@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    This is 100% a political stunt that will go nowhere. If this gets to a trial the jury is active duty military of the same rank or higher than the accused. That’s means the men and women that took over when these people retired will be the jury. These individuals served their careers together.

    Even with a court martial not needing a unanimous jury, they won’t be able to field enough Trump supporters to convict that high up the chain.

    Edit: typo

    • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I kind of figured that’s how this process worked, and I’m glad you mentioned it. Now I really hope that you’re right and that there’s no way around it.