United States Biden administration policies and actions - megathread
- Thread starter Tyzuris
- Start date
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
Do what you want, but don't think I was calling you a liar; I am just unaware of all the details. The black kids getting escorted through a white mob is the thing that makes most of the headlines.
For example, from this contemporary news article, "As the Negroes ascended the wide steps, escorted by six paratroopers, a few boos were heard. From somewhere inside the building a member of the school band taunted the Negroes and their soldier escort with a drumbeat flourish. Someone shouted, "let them walk by themselves."
The crowd opened a path and the Negroes disappeared inside the building. The white students, now silent, trooped in after them."
Obviously if you have soldiers escorting black kids into a white school at bayonet-point, and then the soldiers stand around as white kids subsequently enter the school, you've got white kids and bayonets in close proximity, but in no way were said white kids escorted at bayonet-point.
Can you point me to any textual evidence, or better audiovisual evidence, that white students were also escorted around by troops? Despite your denial of it, I made a good faith effort, albeit a brief one, to find such and failed.
Panzerkraken
Well-known member
No, I agree with your assessment. The military will (and should) understand that their duty is to enforce the decisions of the Chain of Command, National Policy and the Constitution. It's right there in the oath. "... 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; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. "
The support part ties into National Policy, in the sense that the elected or appointed representatives of the government make the determination of that policy, and the Chain of Command are the officers appointed over the individual. Once someone takes that oath, they're bound to subordinate their personal views as a citizen to the national and service policies while conducting their duties. The military exists to enforce national policy, not establish it. As such, someone's personal views on certain topics don't matter at all when there is an established policy on the issue.
This example comes back to policies. Policy development and implementation are nearly glacial, but there are interim instructions that start at the Joint Chiefs of Staff level and trickle down, implemented at each level of command within an amount of time. Generally you'll see something like 60 days from start to finish. Following those, the Doctrine Nerds get to work crafting the changes to the actual regulations. For instance, I was a senior NCO while the Obama-era changes to allow Trans individuals to openly serve came about. I saw all the varied interpretations between the President's announcement of the policy change to the actual guidance for implementation. Initially it was doom and gloom in the senior offices, complaints about how slackers would be "changing their gender to get a better score on the PT Test for the promotion board" etc. Then the actual policy came out, and wow, amazing. Nothing in there allowed anyone who didn't have a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a military psychiatrist followed by an approved treatment plan to receive any kind of official recognition of their preferred gender. They're required to maintain their physical appearance in accordance with regulations based on their gender as recognized by the military, which would not change until their treatment plan had been completed and the reassignment was approved by a medical review board (which board are honestly more likely to just put you out of the military than keep you in, unless you're somehow absolutely critical to ongoing operations).
But, assuming the hypothetical, I'd refuse to sign it if it clearly was contrary to what should be the Commander's Intent. Which is to say, that if the President has issued an order in his capacity as commander in chief (not necessarily in the form of an Executive Order; it gets complex...), and the requisite policy instructions have come down to my level (since I was never a member of the JCS), and my commander asked me to sign something that was against those policy letters, I'd say "Sir, I don't think this is authorized anymore based on the USSOCOM policy letter from last month. You'll have to sign that yourself." Which is actually how it works.. all subordinate authority to sign documents or issue orders is delegated from the next higher level of the chain of command, and those people who are the superiors are able to sign it themselves if they want to. So if they're pushing for me to sign for it for some reason, it's because they're afraid to do it themselves or something, in which case I'm not going to cave in to them.
So, most of these are still covered under my previous response, but one thing I'll point out is that funding ANYTHING is a huge pain in the ass in the military. It's a whole separate line of approvals, requests, proposals, and trackers with entirely different chains of authority and including pecuniary responsibility that can make you directly and personally liable for any mishandled funds. Getting me to sign for anything dealing with money was a LOT harder than the other stuff you mentioned
So.. like.. that's a hyperbolic example. It's on par with suggesting that a fire department might be tasked with patrolling a neighborhood to fight crime. It wouldn't happen. If you're trying to liken it to the use of the military to enforce the civil rights act, in that case the military was used to protect people from rioters who had already committed violence against kids trying to go to school. The National Guard, who aren't directly members of the U.S. Military (their Commander in Chief is the State Governor unless authorized by congress to be activated as a national military asset) were refusing to participate at the time, and so Ike used the Insurrection Act to send in the military. Authorized use, and enforcing national policy.
Depends. Like I said above, the NG are different.
If it's on a list of "If you see this symbol provide information to the Intel guys" then yeah. Not sure why this hits your list of potential hotbuttons.
So.. funny thing here, jurisdictionally the FBI has to work with the Army CID (Criminal Investigations Division), or NCIS (same thing, for the Navy, arguably better known because of those TV shows) when dealing with active duty Soldiers. Functionally, they might come interview the unit Commander, and possibly direct supervisors or associates, but "assisting in the investigation" would be a reach. If the investigators made some comment that amounted to "Then, if we get enough information we'll doxx him to Antifa" in front of me, I'd report the shit out of them in an instant, but the same would go for if they said "Then if we get enough information we'll doxx him on The Seitch." (where I'm sure they'd earn a permaban if they did.)
This is a legal order. In fact, CID could take him into custody for questioning without even informing the Chain of Command, based on their delegated authority that would meet up with the Soldier in Question's Chain of Command somewhere above.
Illegal order. Confinement requires a written order from a Commander with UCMJ Authority, as well as an O6 and JAG review and concurrence. You also can't order someone to sign an NDA, you can only make it contingent on access to things; for instance I've signed several NDA's for the Army, regarding details of programs and activities. If I hadn't, they just wouldn't have let me have access to things.
Overall, I get the direction you're going, and the preponderance of my responses would come in the form of "There'll be a Regulation, Policy, or aspect of U.S. Code that you can fall back on to tell you when you can or can't tell that person to pound sand." Without giving a class on Military Ethics, DoD Regulations, and applicable portions of U.S. Code (Title 10 is a fascinating read (/sarcasm) I can't really cover all of it. I do feel that the existing moral and ethical standards that the military as an organization (individuals may vary, as in any organization) adheres to are sufficient to ensure that they'll remain in their lane unless directed out of it, and will hopefully steer back to what they should be doing as quickly as possible.
Panzerkraken
Well-known member
Apparently that guy with the bleeding forehead tried to take the rifle from one of the screaming chicken guys. I feel like that Soldier showed pretty good restraint, I mean, he's walking and all.
The screaming chickens held a lot of restraint. They definitely did not want to hurt them, and infact had empty rifles. But trying to take a rifle from a soldier is going going get you beat
That is true, but it's also true that the Kent State shooting was in the 1970s. Even basic police riot shields weren't a thing until until the 1980s. They did have tear gas back then, but pretty much nothing else.
Yes, and military forces as a whole weren't generally equipped with *any* less-than-lethal options until the mid-1990s or so, after concerted efforts to develop them for peacekeeping.
Those soldiers were there to protect innocent black schoolchildren, and as @Zachowon pointed out, they were incredibly limited in their use of force.
History Learner
Well-known member
Literally this. It's very telling to me they've also instituted political reliability testing as of late.
That how western roman empire ended.they have roman troops,but they were good only for breaking peasants rebellion,real fighting was done by germans.And when roman emperor killed chief of those german troops,they joined Visigots nad Rome was taken in 410.
Formally there was emperors till 476,but so what ?
I could imagine democrats president holding Washington for decades and claiming to rule over USA,when rest of the country is ruled by somebody else.
LindyAF
Well-known member
Okay, then I don't think we actually disagree here. My disagreement with Zachowon is not that I doubt there are some circumstances in which you can refuse an order without negative consequences. Rather, he put forward this fact as something which would prevent "national policy" from changing in particular, undesirable, ways. I don't think this is the case. It sounds to me like you agree that they would not prevent this, but may disagree about whether or not that is undesirable. If you're the sort that thinks 8 million dollars being taken from Americans and used to give mental cases manboobs and an extra cyst because said mental cases want to dress up in uniforms is defensible, regardless of whether or not the paperwork has the i's dotted and the t's crossed and has been signed off on, then frankly I don't think we can have a discussion beyond our agreement that government-approved disobedience is not a counterweight against "national policy," including bad policy.
I disagree with you however, that the military can be, is, or should be neutral or "stay in it's lane," as an institution. As with any institution- particularly a well respected one, and particularly as one of the institutions which can exert force directly, it has natural political power. At the very least it provides countless bully pulpits. In the past, other nation's militaries have frequently formed the core of those nations resistance to communism, such as in both the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars. However, if that ability to influence policy is not utilized by the right, it will be utilized by the left. As we've seen in recent political drama, the holders of many of those bully pulpits are unafraid to use their position to push the diversity agenda.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
"it's"–>"its"
If you can understand what they meant, there is no need to correct grammar/punctuation/spelling.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
yew mek uh gud paint
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
So, "literally never correct anyone" lol. If you can understand them, you shouldn't. If you can't, you can't.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
More like don't nitpick grammar in a casual forum discussion. I'd totally mention grammar for somebody's story or essay but forum posts are more informal and generally don't adhere to a specific standard of style in the first place. Additionally worrying about grammatical rules risks totally derailing the discussion away from the point of the thread and not contributing to the discuss... oh wait.
And so to get back to the discussion at hand I think it's important to remember that "the military" is not a hivemind and you could well have different soldiers taking different stances on which orders they are willing to obey. That happening is, needless to say, a very bad thing and leaders should think very, very carefully before issuing orders that their soldiers are likely to disobey.
If you can't understand them, then ask them to clarify or correct themselves. If you can, just let it go.
Unless maybe it's a story or they're asking for help or something, as previously mentioned.
This is a casual discussion. A typo or grammatical error is no big deal, and correcting them instead of engaging with the material is off subject, somewhat condescending, and a tad rude. It's just not necessary. Everyone knows what that poster meant.
A lot of people are just blasting off quick messages and not proof reading. They're bound to contain mistakes, I'd recommend just ignoring them.
Git moar gooder grammer urself than correkt others.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
Well that's too bad for them, because mercs don't win wars for the most part. The mercs that do, tend to get so powerful that they have a "hang on, why are we following your orders?" moment, as a lot of the German troops in the Western Roman Empire did. Or better yet, as the Democrats are brainless bimbos, they'll have a "Genoese crossbowmen of Crecy" scenario, where the mercs say "sod this job."
And if you succeed in politicising the army, stamping out any competent officer corps and filling them with party men, that army will then get thrashed in any war it fights. Just look how badly things went for the Soviets in the first years of the Eastern Front, and things only really started to turn around when Stalin fucked on off out of military affairs and let the adults do their jobs.
At least it would allow us to win eventually.