{"id":299489,"date":"2025-11-22T11:15:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/299489\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T11:15:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:15:04","slug":"horribly-wrong-us-veterans-condemn-trumps-politicization-of-military-us-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/299489\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Horribly wrong\u2019: US veterans condemn Trump\u2019s politicization of military | US military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veterans have condemned the politicization of the military after Donald Trump accused Democratic<\/a> lawmakers of \u201csedition, punishable by death\u201d after a small group of them released a video in which they urged US soldiers not to follow any \u201cunlawful\u201d orders.<\/p>\n

The extraordinary exchange was sparked after Democratic lawmakers with military or national security backgrounds \u2013 the Congressional representatives Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chris DeLuzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and the senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin \u2013 posted a video<\/a> on Facebook addressed to US service members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence professionals against American citizens,\u201d they said, and added: \u201cYou must refuse illegal orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although they did not specify which orders might be illegal, Trump has come under fire<\/a> for sending the US military into American cities<\/a> for poorly defined reasons, including amid peaceful protests against a massive and aggressive deportation campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeditious behavior, punishable by death!\u201d Trump responded in a post on Truth Social. \u201cEach one of these traitors to our Country should be arrested and put on trial.\u201d He also reposted a message from another user reading: \u201cHang them George Washington would!\u201d<\/p>\n

His comments infuriated the military\u2019s legal community.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe uses sedition and treason very broadly and inappropriately,\u201d said David Frakt, a retired air force officer and attorney in the judge advocate general (JAG) corps, the military justice branch. \u201cThe irony is that if anyone committed sedition or treason, it was the people that he urged to overthrow the government on January 6<\/a> [2021] \u2013 and you know, he pardoned all of those people<\/a> and calls them patriots and martyrs and all the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rhetoric of execution places the safety of lawmakers at risk, Frakt said. \u201cI think all of those people are very likely in fear for their life now, not because Trump would actually prosecute them for something because they didn\u2019t actually commit a crime \u2026 but that they\u2019re the \u2018enemy of the people,\u2019 and [the administration is] going to go after them. They\u2019re going to say, \u2018Well, Trump will pardon me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He expressed a shared anger with the Democrats in the video about the legal environment facing US service members, citing as an example the recent actions by the US government to blow up<\/a> the vessels of alleged drug trafficking boats off the coast of Venezuela, in the Caribbean<\/a> and Pacific, which he said is illegal and \u201cnot a close call in any way \u2026 it is laughable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sinking these boats is \u201cmurder, not combat,\u201d he said. \u201cAdherence to the law is taking a back seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don Christensen, a retired air force colonel and former chief prosecutor of the air force, described Trump\u2019s comments on sedition as \u201chorribly wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also condemned the senator Lindsey Graham, a former air force attorney, who sent a letter to the Democratic lawmakers after their video aired asking exactly what orders they believe were unlawful, but who has not condemned the president\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cGraham knows everything [Trump is] saying is wrong because Lindsey Graham was an attorney, and he\u2019s given briefings to the troops when he was an attorney about unlawful orders and the obligation not to follow them, and he knows what the law is,\u201d Christensen said. \u201cHe should be full-throated out there saying what the president is doing is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while Christensen agreed with Frakt that the Venezuela attacks were illegal, he noted that disobeying orders in those operations would be difficult for US service members.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think those are clearly unlawful orders, but for those that are dealing with this, they\u2019re in a tough position, because the last thing that in my mind they want is to have this to be an issue in the criminal court, where a court system determines whether or not that\u2019s a lawful order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, while military attorneys are outraged at Trump\u2019s comments, some expressed concern for the fate of service members who take the burden of refusing an order upon themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a service member thinks an order is unlawful, they can disobey it, but they disobey at their peril,\u201d said Rachel VanLandingham, a law professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a retired air force lieutenant colonel who served as a military attorney.<\/p>\n

Orders are presumed to be lawful, she said. The legal duty to disobey arises only when an order is \u201cmanifestly, patently unlawful\u201d, meaning any \u201cperson of ordinary understanding\u201d would know it is criminal, like an order to murder non-threatening civilians. That bar is intentionally extremely high, drawn from cases like the My Lai massacre<\/a> of hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Vietnam war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The lawmakers\u2019 video elides that legal nuance, she said: orders can be unlawful without being manifestly unlawful, meaning troops who follow them are not guilty of breaking the law, even if the underlying theory is \u201cbullshit\u201d. The US strikes on alleged drug boats are highly dubious, she said, but the situation is legally \u201cmurky\u201d, not \u201cmurder\u201d.<\/p>\n

VanLandingham said more retired general officers should criticize the legal and moral problems with the way Trump is deploying the military, rather than telling troops they \u201cmust disobey\u201d without specifying which orders meet the manifest-unlawfulness threshold \u2013 which is, in her view, irresponsible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a political message,\u201d VanLandingham said. \u201cI think the American people should say, \u2018Wait, what, who\u2019s looking out for the service members here?\u2019 Not the Dems. Not those Dems. They weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

A duty to disobey illegal orders is not new: it \u201chas always been the law\u201d, said Coretta Johnson Gray, a former air force attorney. What is unusual now is the heightened anxiety among service members who normally operate without questioning the legality of typical orders.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a world of legal difference between dropping a bomb on a boat and setting up tents in a field when ICE<\/a> (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is running an operation, she said.<\/p>\n

Facing a questionable order, a service member\u2019s first responsibility is to get clarification from their chain of command, she said. Following that, they should seek guidance from a military chaplain or a member of the judge advocate general\u2019s corps.<\/p>\n

However, given that one of the first acts of incoming secretary of defense Pete Hegseth<\/a> was to fire or demoting legal advisors to the service branches, there are concerns that the JAG corps<\/a> is becoming politicized, too.<\/p>\n

Gray further expressed alarm that many military lawyers are quitting the service. \u201cIt\u2019s important to have good people who have integrity in these positions, because if you get rid of everybody who could even question, you really got a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

She urged active-duty senior leadership to publicly reaffirm their oath to the constitution and their political neutrality. \u201cYou don\u2019t want the American people to think \u2026 the military is going to change based on [who\u2019s in charge],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kevin Courtney, an attorney with the Military Law Center and a former Marine captain, warns that the current political discourse around unlawful orders puts junior service members in a dangerous position.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s intervention is \u201ca dangerous comment for the president to start getting into, literally the politics of whether service members should be following rules or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The risk, he said, is that \u201cif you are politically motivated \u2026 if you\u2019re a liberal, you might follow the video\u2019s guidance. If you\u2019re conservative, you might follow the president\u201d \u2013 creating a politicized split inside the ranks.<\/p>\n

Courtney repeatedly stressed the core legal principle that \u201cevery order is presumed lawful.\u201d The only exceptions are the extreme and obvious ones: \u201cI want you to shoot that guy in the street. OK, well that\u2019s not gonna be a lawful order.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u201c10-minute decision\u201d not to follow an order \u201ccould take 10 years to really fix\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

The public should be concerned about politics influencing the military, Courtney said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason the public honors veterans and service members so highly and puts them in high regard is because they represent all of America. They\u2019re not only representing Democrats or only representing Republicans. And when the president comes in and starts to politicize it, I think half the country has an opportunity to start looking at the military in a degraded light.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veterans have condemned the politicization of the military after Donald Trump accused Democratic lawmakers of \u201csedition, punishable by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-299489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}