It began with a growing discomfort among many Americans concerning the questionable uses of our military forces. First, we saw soldiers in full battle gear invading several (Democratic-run) American cities, deployed, ostensibly, to “protect” federal property. We immediately understood, however, that it was more than that–it was a show of force to intimidate those who were questioning the current regime.
Not everyone was aware that the military are not to be used to control, arrest, or attack civilians on our own land, not even in aid of local law enforcement. Now, we are.
Then we began to see disturbing and graphic pictures of missile strikes on small fishing boats in the Caribbean, ostensibly to destroy drug runners, but with no evidence that these boats even contained people engaged in the drug trade.
Several members of Congress, who had served in the military, decided to speak out. They each made a statement informing those who were currently serving that there were two kinds of orders given to our armed forces by their leaders–legal and illegal–and that, not only did service members and brass have the duty to question illegal orders, they had a duty to refuse to obey them, else they could be held accountable for the war crimes they committed, even if they were “just following orders”.
“Just following orders” was the defense put forward by many accused of war crimes after World War II, who were brought to justice during the Nuremberg Trials, a slice of history getting a great deal of attention these days.
I am not surprised at the renewed interest, given the daily posturing and violent memes from the white house, as well as the laughable strutting boy in charge of the Department of Defense, our very own Pete Hegseth. Senator Mark Kelly nailed it. “He runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old boy playing Army.” Hegseth has gone so far as to post images of Franklin the Turtle in military garb firing a rocket launcher at a tiny, burning boat. Given this, we are experiencing an increased longing for a comeuppance, an accounting, for these rapidly escalating war crimes, and we are drawn to the justice of the Nuremberg Trials, set forth in a new film by James Vanderbilt, as well as in endless reruns of Judgment at Nuremberg, from a television play by Abby Mann, which was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1959.
Of course, the ever-more frantic and frightened white house resident immediately branded the truth-telling Congress members traitors and said they should be punished, even going so far as to suggest the death penalty. He also posited that Senator Mark Kelly should be called back to duty so he could be court-marshaled. “So they would court-martial me,” snarked the Senator, “under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for quoting from the Uniform Code of Military Justice?”
Of course, since Pete Hegseth fired all the Judge Advocates General appointed during the Biden Administration and replaced them with people more aligned with a “warrior ethos”, and the white house squatter fired all his inspectors general, that is, all those responsible for advising on what was legal and what was not, who is left to tell the current regime, or the military, or any agency, what is right? What is legal? I suppose they think if there’s no one left to give an opinion, anything goes.
Finally, we are given an example so egregious, it should have been easy to spot as an illegal order. The Secretary of Defense is reported by two people who say they were present when it happened, and then reported in the Washington Post, to have ordered the military to make certain that all those on one of these small boats allegedly carrying drugs are killed, even if a second strike is needed. An Admiral said, “do it,” and the pilots carried out the second strike, in a move against every rule of war, including the Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual. The Manual states, “…orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”
Such a second strike is so “clearly illegal” under the laws of the sea, as well as the treatment of the wounded on land, that, it is argued, no member of the military should carry them out, lest they become vulnerable to a charge that they, themselves, committed a war crime. They should think about Judgment at Nuremberg, indeed.
Rarely are we called upon to make the kind of critical decision between right and wrong that can affect the course of history, as well as set down the enduring story of our own lives. I think each of us should consider, in these “times that try men’s souls”, whether each choice we make, to obey or to resist, adds to the course of history. I would hope that we would choose to stand for the law and for human concern. Believe me, someone is watching and will learn from your courage.
Dumb and Dumber
The next question is, “how do they expect to keep fooling us by lying, explaining away the clear truth, and minimizing every breach?” Their answer: “We will make the American people dumb and then we will make them dumber.”
How else to explain the attacks on universities, ICE raids at schools that deeply reduce attendance, attacks on libraries, erasure of history about our diversity, heroes, and what really happened at any given time? It is all meant to wrest control of information, education and the stories of our lives from those who have been trying to help us to understand and know our country, to those who want to force us think like them.
Even the Secretary of Education, Linda E. McMahon, found to have been qualified for this post by her former work as co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), has devoted herself to dismantling the department and dividing up its duties to oversee federal financial aid programs, like Pell Grants, ensure compliance with federal education laws related to discrimination and equal access, and collecting data, and giving them to other federal departments. She has moved some programs to the Department of Defense. ‘Nough said.
In addition, the Department of Labor has been chosen to oversee K12 literacy, the teaching of American history and civics and Title I funding. Of course we trust that those who have, to date, been gathering labor statistics, will do these jobs.
She also has slashed funding for that division of the Department that assists students with disabilities and their families. On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called for her immediate resignation.
It has long been considered a grave danger, to those wanting to aggregate and keep power, for certain portions of our population to have the ability to get a good education, have access to books and libraries, or even learn to read. Study our own country’s history of making it illegal to teach a slave to read. Or remember that, before our revolution, girls were not admitted to public town schools and then were slowly admitted, in the 19th century, to schools that remained segregated by sex well into the Twentieth Century.
Perhaps that’s why the right hates the word “woke” so much. They would much rather we are kept in the dark, asleep.
Who could imagine, in the Twenty-First Century, that we would have to stand up and fight for education, and the preservation of knowledge and history? Yet, nothing we do could be more important. If we are kept from our own history, as the phrase goes, we are doomed to repeat it. Dictators, kings, tyrants and all.
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