Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Gene Nettles doesn’t mince words about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering hundreds of generals, admirals and high ranking non-commissioned officers — some from Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East — to report on short notice to the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, to hear what he expects from the armed forces. President Donald Trump ended up speaking after Hegseth.
“It was dumb,” said Nettles, an 82-year-old Vietnam combat veteran and ex-paratrooper who lives in Fulton County, as far west as Kentucky goes. “Trump is trying to condition the American people to accept his putting troops in our cities, which is wrong.”
Added Nettles: “I don’t think Hegseth has enough brains to set up anything. I don’t think he could set up a checkerboard by himself. It was even dumber for Trump to speak. He speaks gobbledygook. Career officers don’t go in for gobbledygook.”
Nettles is hardly the only veteran who is panning the program.
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” read part of a statement from retired Marine general and former Trump defense secretary James Mattis. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
“We must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate.’ At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict — a false conflict — between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.”
In The Intercept, Nick Turse wrote: “During the largest single gathering of top military brass in memory — and perhaps ever — Hegseth began with an unhinged address filled with confusing contradictions, wild-eyed cheerleading, and politically charged rhetoric.
“Trump followed with a long, rambling address that only sporadically touched on military topics. At one point the president, who has used the troops to quell protests and occupy American cities, warned the assembled military leadership of “a war from within.’
“No dictator or would-be dictator on day one has ever assembled before him in one room the entire senior officer corps of his armed forces in order to have them belittled as failures and humiliated for their slovenly personal appearance, while degrading whole classes serving in the army, navy and air force degraded as inferior and unworthy,” wrote Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian. “No dictator has ever pleaded for generals and admirals to applaud his remarks, followed by deafening silence.”
The brass sat silently as Hegseth, then Trump, spoke, Patton movie-like, in front of a large American flag. Nettles was appalled at the frequent and blatant injection of politics into the event. “I spent 20 years in the Army, and I never had one — not one — political discussion,” he said. “It was verboten. I’d have a beer at the officers’ club, a perfect place to talk politics. But I never had one political discussion in 20 years. That’s the way it ought to be.”
Hegseth, an Army National Guard major who saw combat in the Middle East, harps on what he calls restoring a “warrior ethic” to the military. Nettles is unimpressed, adding that he’s seen it before.
He recalled once watching young paratrooper lieutenants “going around with their fists at their side and a little bend at their elbows like they were trying to show off their biceps. The next thing I saw was the battalion commander — this musclebound knot head — going around doing what they were doing. It made me want to puke.”
In Vietnam, Nettles said, “I spent a lot of time getting shot at, but none of my compatriots bragged about their kills.”
Nettles fervently hopes “that the good people of our country are realizing what a fraud Trump is and what a mess he’s made of the United States. His objective is to do away with a republic and replace it with himself as a dictator.
“The president is loopy and the secretary of war, or whatever he is, is frickin’ crazy.”
--30--
Comments
