GOVERNMENT BY GRIEVANCE

When I first learned about the Trump military purge, I assumed it was primarily intended to lay the groundwork for the miltarization of the American homeland -- troops firing on peaceful protesters, martial law, you know, that sort of thing. This seemed omnious:

I think the administration will at some point begin to use the miltary to curtail Americans' freedoms in blatantly unlawful ways. But it feels as if this purge was primarily about grievances: President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth don't like "woke," which to them (and the rest of the administration) means "permitting any non-white or non-cis-male person to have a top job in government," so women and people of color were purged.

And Hegseth is a big fan of war crimes:

Mr. Hegseth did not say why he was firing the judge advocates general. But in his Senate confirmation hearing last month, he criticized military lawyers for placing needless legal restrictions on soldiers in battle — putting “his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters, their promotions, their medals, in front of having the backs of those making the tough calls on the front lines.”

This is a cause Hegseth seems to take personally. Also, being an advocate for war criminals helped make Hegseth semi-famous within the right-wing mediasphere, while drawing Trump's attention:

On November 10, 2019, just before Veterans Day, Fox News aired an hour-long special, “Modern Warriors,” featuring one of its political commentators and hosts, Pete Hegseth.... Hegseth introduced to viewers a Navy SEAL named Eddie Gallagher, who’d recently beaten a rap for, as Hegseth put it, “mistreating an ISIS terrorist” in Iraq in 2017. Hegseth called Gallagher a “war hero.”

In fact, Gallagher had been tried for murder (and a raft of other crimes). His alleged victim was a seventeen-year-old named Khaled Jamal Abdullah, who had been captured by American troops in Mosul and killed while gravely injured. Gallagher’s own platoon had turned him in, describing him, according to a video obtained by the New York Times, as “freaking evil” and “perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving.” They reported that Gallagher had stabbed the teen in the neck and had also, in separate incidents, shot civilians including an old man and a young girl.... Gallagher was acquitted of the murder after another SEAL, who’d been granted immunity, took the stand at Gallagher’s trial and unexpectedly confessed to killing Abdullah himself. Gallagher was convicted of just one minor charge.

In mainstream military circles, Gallagher’s reputation was ruined, but he became something of a cause célèbre among the MAGA faithful....

Hegseth also championed the case of First Lieutenant Clint Lorance, who’d been sentenced to nineteen years at Fort Leavenworth for ordering his soldiers to fire on three unarmed civilians riding a motorcycle, killing two of them, in Kandahar. Like Gallagher, Lorance’s own men had turned him in for murder.

In early 2019, Hegseth reportedly privately nudged President Trump to grant clemency to Gallagher, Golsteyn, and Lorance. On “Fox & Friends,” Hegseth also made repeated public appeals for pardoning the three men....

Trump had already ordered that Gallagher be moved out of pretrial confinement in the Navy brig. After Gallagher’s commander demoted the SEAL as part of his punishment, Trump reversed the decision. The President also pardoned Golsteyn and Lorance, and a third Army officer, Michael Behenna, who’d been convicted of taking a detainee to a remote location and shooting him dead.

So I think this is less about freeing the military to commit war crimes against U.S. civilians -- though the administration undoubtedly sees that as an additional benefit -- than it is about these past grievances.

General C.Q. Brown, the black Joint Chiefs chair who's been dismissed, is a four-star general, while Dan Caine, the white man who'll replace him, is not, and lacks other qualifications statutorily required of a Joint Chiefs chairman:

General Caine retired with three stars, as a lieutenant general. By statute, anyone picked to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is supposed to have served as a combatant commander, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or as the top uniformed officer of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps or Space Force.

Obviously, that's meant to send a signal that the administration believes white men deserve qualification points just for being white men. On the other hand, Caine seems sort of qualified. A while back, when I learned that Trump want to fire General Brown, I assumed his replacement would be a wildly unqualified MAGA culture warrior whom Trump would ram down the Senate's throat -- the military equivalent of Hegseth or Kash Patel. I thought it might be crazy old Mike Flynn, or possibly retired general Jerry Boykin, who in 2003 wore his uniform to deliver a church address in which he talked about a battle with a Muslim warlord in Somalia and said, "I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol." Boykin endorsed 2020 election trutherism and has also called for banning mosques in America. He has said that Jesus will return to Earth carrying an AR-15. He's now the executive vice president of the Family Research Council. Either Boykin or Flynn would have been the real fuck-you pick, if that was Trump's plan.

Caine hasn't been a culture warrior, as far as I can tell. He apparently got the gig because he kissed up to Trump.

In recent years, Mr. Trump has publicly lauded General Caine for telling him that the Islamic State could be defeated far more quickly than his advisers had suggested. The details of the story, which could not be independently verified, have shifted over time. In one version, Mr. Trump said the general claimed it would take a week to defeat the group; in another, he said four weeks.

Mr. Trump has also claimed that General Caine, during their meeting in Iraq in December 2018, donned a “Make America Great Again” hat, in defiance of military guidelines that active-duty troop should not wear political paraphernalia. General Caine has told aides that he has never worn a MAGA hat.

Trump wants to believe -- and wants you to believe -- that America was doing nothing to defeat ISIS before he became president. He wants you to think he got the job done in a very short time. In fact, the slow process of degrading ISIS began in 2014, while Barack Obama was president. Trump built on Obama's work. But Trump will never admit that (assuming he even understands it). I'd say that Caine was picked because Trump hates Obama and associates Caine with his own belief that he succeeded where Obama failed.

I wonder whether Caine will prove to be insufficiently criminal-minded for Trump's taste. I could easily see him being replaced by a far-right whackjob in the not-too-distant future. For now, this is horrible, but I don't think it's a prelude to an imminent military crackdown in America.