Several service members told advocacy groups they felt like pawns in a political game and assignment was unnecessary
California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.
Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions.
“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which represents the interests of military spouses, children and veterans.
They should be troubled.
I mean I have to assume at least some of the armed forces are intelligent enough to know they didn’t sign up to break their oaths and let a felon rapist order them to threaten American citizens.
They’re unhappy, but they’ll do as they’re told. They’ve been trained that way. Without that training, chaos would result.
That’s how the military works. If a unit doesn’t work together and do as commanded, soldiers die. They may feel bad about what they’re doing, but their training will override that. They may suffer from PTSD in the future, of course.
Well, they should be scared if they’re following illegal orders. You’re not a pawn, you’re a US soldier. Act like it.
marines, not soldiers. soldiers are army
Lol! Thanks for the correction. I don’t know which term includes them all, but that’s the one I should’ve said instead.
Good. They should be troubled. This is utterly fucked.
Can’t wait for the Nürnberger defense
They should be troubled. They are breaking their oath on the constitution.
On the other hand, they could easily turn and end tyranny before it really sets in.
You say “easily,” but I doubt it appears so easy, because disobeying the order first starts with you violating the UCMJ and paying for it. Only then can you fight and say hey, the order was unlawful. But you’re doing that from military jail. It’s an uphill battle and there’s nothing easy about it.
I imagine the mindset is go, stand around with a shield, don’t murk protestors, and try to just wait this shit out.
Plus, for the Marines, they were living in 29 Palms beforehand, so it’s practically a vacation.
What if everyone does it en masse though?
It’d be awesome. But how do you get a whole unit openly discussing insubordination? I love the idea, but it’s just not practical, and not in the short amount of time. The order came down within the last week? It was probably go go go since then.
It’s not insubordination, it’s their duty.
Yeah, I just think you’ve oversimplified it all. Like I said, I love the idea, but it’s a huge ask, and it would require a lot of coordination over a period of time. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that sending Marines to the border, and sending them to protests in LA, is causing some kind of disenfranchisement amongst the enlisted, but a circle of dudes throwing rocks at a nalgene complaining about how this is bullshit is a far cry from an organized mutiny, essentially.
And how do you propose this be coordinated?
Talk to each other? They’re all posted to the same place. By ‘everyone’, I meant all the deployed troops.
Well that’s kind of a given, I was looking for something more practical. Getting that many people on the same page about something that could easily have catastrophic consequences for all of them is not a trivial task.
That’s beyond my knowledge of the intricacies of the US military. I’m just asking if it’s possible based on the principal that there’s strength in unity.
That’s beyond my knowledge of the intricacies of the US military. I’m just asking if it’s possible based on the principal that there’s strength in unity.
Pretty sure they were at Camp Pendleton.
From the article:
Earlier this week, he also activated 700 marines from the Twentynine Palms base two hours’ drive to the east, describing Los Angeles as a “trash heap” that was in danger of burning to the ground.
Huh, aight guess I missed that.
I just read this on another site. So who the fuck really knows what is going on?
The Pentagon also deployed 700 U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton, with a military convoy heading from Twentynine Palms toward the City of Angels.
The fuck? Best guess I have is that maybe they are grabbing guys from both Pendleton and Twentynine Palms, either that or maybe the convoy from Twentynine Palms is National Guard and they are moving shit.
2/7 is based on 29 Palms. They may have stopped at Pendleton on the way. 29 Palms is a Marine Corps base only.
An unpaid vacation with little food.
They’re Marines, I can tell you from experience, they are unfortunately used to it.
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Please. Please. Please. Come on boys, just read the Constitution, you didn’t sign up for this shit.
This bullshit is going to absolutely tank military recruitment numbers.
Military will lose tons of public support for turning on us. All those military holidays? They won’t be a thing to celebrate.
we can fucking hope so
It would be really bad if the only people left in the military were trump stooges.
Anyone who obeys his orders is his stooge at the end of the day. Doesn’t matter how they personally feel about it, unless that leads to them disobeying such orders.
This. And that’s a good thing
And also boost retirements of career members who manage and operate the military. Which will be okay with the MAGA Nazis, because eventually they’ll have an entire military of followers who will happily kill ANYONE for HitlerPig.
My Dad was a helicopter pilot in the Army, during the late 50s, and wanted to do that for his entire life. Then Vietnam heated up, and he was going to train pilots to go to over there, and might have ended up there himself. Nobody could explain to him why this was happening, and he didn’t want to train young men (like himself) to go off and die for a war that nobody could explain, so he quit flying, retired from the military, and got into the insurance game.
I would imagine that a lot of career military are questioning their career paths.
I would imagine that a lot of career military are questioning their career paths.
Absolutely.
this is a good thing to hear
Similar when they were doing border patrol in Texas.
Military training is kinda big on threat identification and assessment. You don’t have to like the military to appreciate some of the stuff you can learn from it.
Protesting is not a threat to America. It’s a threat to the people who are in charge.
That’s why it’s essential we keep it peaceful while we increase our numbers. If we are non-violent, we cannot be determined to be a domestic threat, and it’s the military’s duty to protect us.
If we are non-violent, TACO will just say “They’re violent!” and a majority of this country, including our military, will believe him. Things can only go downhill from here.
Arm yourselves.
And if we’re still non-violent, someone will join who isn’t and ensure some violence exists. It’s Plan 1A in the dictator playbook.
Yup, that too. There is no happy ending.
It’s not the military’s duty to protect protestors. Just as the police have no obligation to protect and serve citizens.
I wholeheartedly agree with regards to the cops and ICE.
But I actually completely disagree on that statement being applied to the NG and Marines.
I’d argue that the armed forced have a rather explicit duty to protect their own fellow citizens as best they can.
And if some dipshit commander orders the marines or CANG to actually open fire on US civilians, I really do think that the E4 mafia might have something to say about that, and that the commissioned officers and cops and ICE fascists might very quickly find themselves staring down the barrels of the deployed troops.
Put another way: if active duty troops are ordered to fire on unarmed protesters, I would not at all be shocked if the enlisted and noncoms refuse the orders and mutiny, up to and including fragging the officers who gave the orders if they keep pushing.
Orangeboi et al seem to think the troops are robots. They’re absolutely not.
I really hope you’re right
One way or another, I feel like we’re all gonna see the answer to that question before this bullshit settles down in any meaningful way
It’s not the military’s duty to protect protestors.
The path of enlistment starts like this:
I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same
Peaceful protest is our constitutional right.
The swearing-in of the President starts with something very similar, if not identical.
And yet, here we are.
Just because Trump isn’t performing his duty doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a duty.
My point was that that also applies to the military. Just because they have a duty to uphold the Constitution doesn’t necessarily mean that they will perform that duty.
Maybe they can identify the actual threat and neutralize him.
You means the person(s) funding all of this?
/s
Police rules of engagement is shockingly 0, cops kill anyone for any reason if they perceive even the slightest chance of a threat to themselves. The military has a rigorous 5-6 steps for using increasing amounts of violence from shouting to actually firing.
It’s not. Unhappy people can lash out. You put a bunch of angry people on the riot control line, and they might start hitting people. It’s all downhill from there.
You’re right, it would be so much better if they were happy to be there. I would much prefer knowing that all of the soldiers are excited to suppress our constitutional right to protest. WAY better than the chance of one lashing out because they’re mad at their boss, right?
You’re making a lot of wild leaps from “I don’t feel good about being here and being used life this” to “I want to hit people!” even if they did, the people they want to hit are the ones who sent them there. And that’s also good.
“Man we don’t want to be here this is stupid, guess I’ll just fucking murder a bunch of people to feel better”
Low morale/dissatisfaction =/= anger. They’re more likely to be uncomfortable and unwilling to use violence against protesters, especially since they are significantly more trained to identify threats than police are. They know these protesters are not a threat, and all their training and rules of engagement tell them to not engage.
While I generally agree that dissatisfaction != anger, soldiers who are repeatedly given orders they know are bullshit and that they strongly disagree with typically tend to get pissed at the people issuing those orders.
MobHerd mentality
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I wonder if any of them have seen No Escape?
Then the American populace will forget all about how they raided your country, move on to the next one while moralizing to the colonized. Or like what’s happening now, they’ll lecture everyone about genocide and invading countries, won’t realizing the hypocrisy.
The monopoly on violence dictates such things
Well, they haven’t made a movie about how the Philly police got depressed after they bombed their own city yet.
Hey, good news about the movie…
They are upset that they are witnessing police tear gas their own community members and civilians exercising their 1st amendment rights, yet soldiers cannot use that same weapon against enemies… what does that say?!? STOP GASSING US! Stop with the rubber bullets! We have right and Americans need to stand up and realize this!
If there are no consumers, there is no capitalism! If all essential workers all don’t show up ONE DAY… we shutdown America! We
THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN, mass organized protests across the nation!!!
Sadly there are enough people who agree with it or simply can afford to protest, so too many scabs
If enough people protest, maybe those who can’t afford to protest can at least legitimately say “sorry, there’s a protest in my neighbourhood and I can’t get to work.”
This bullshit is going to tank military recruitment numbers.
At least some good news came out of this then
You did a double post.
No, in the other one they said it would absolutely tank recruitment numbers. They seem less sure here.
Fuck yeah
In this thread: a lot of people who have no idea about how the military operates.
They’re welcome to come defend the American people from the criminal gangs known as the police and ICE.
