940
Donald Trump tells court he had no duty to ‘support’ the US Constitution
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
940 points (97.1% liked)
News
36993 readers
1801 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There's about a dozen layers of nuance that need to be addressed before we advocate for all million or so military members to rise up against presidents (or congressional representatives, or judiciaries, or...)
The first of which is the definition of "enemy."
It's a huge fucking stretch to expect individual soldiers to be able to declare who is or is not an enemy when you're not under imminent danger or protecting any critical assets. Supervising officers largely do not make that decision, as they're focused on a specific near-term tasking set. Unit commanders largely do not make that decision, as they're focused on meshing tactical warfare requirements with the administrative and logistical burdens needed for a competent force. Even combatant commanders largely do not make that decision, as they fight for resources and posture their chess pieces to be able to respond in SHTF situations. The same way we do not expect US Naval ships facing harassment from Iranian rocket boats on a daily basis to decide that "today's the day" and start a war with Iran is how important this distinction is and why it's not an easy ask.
The military needs an actual order, coming from some combination of the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council in order to define enemies and engage in combat. Congress (should) officially declare enemies of the United States. There is some current debate on if the US needs to officially declare "enemies" in order to add gravity to some charges like treason, but my understanding is that China is no more an enemy of the US than Russia is. Another way of saying that is the US might not be friendly towards some, but is not willing to declare those countries as explicit enemies. It's hard to perform effective diplomacy with another entity if you've already announced that you cannot coexist peacefully.
Thus, expecting the military to rise up against a president is expecting them to jump every level in the chain of command and take on the impossible decision of deciding what's in the United States' best interest themselves. I think that's generally considered a shitty take.
For what it's worth, joining the military and serving contributes more to society than you probably think. The fact that you and your peers are able to have these discussions while performing your duties speaks volumes to how much the US military has improved over generations past. I have no doubts that any blatantly unlawful or unconstitutional orders coming down from the president wouldn't be met with pushback.
It is not only the military who takes the oath to support the Constitution and defend it against all enemies. It's generally most Federal employees. I took the oath as a requirement for one of my former jobs too and I'm not military. I was proud to take that oath and I still uphold it for life.