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Marine colonel who resigned because of Trump says personnel should question ‘illegal orders’
(www.huffpost.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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And the military who thinks they're being ordered to break the law should stay and resist...
Like, I know, this a marine. But surely they retain enough critical thinking to understand if everyone who thinks trump is giving illegal orders resigns...
The only people left in the military would be people who are fine with this shit.
When people say "lead, follow, or get out of the way"
The "get out of the way" option is supposed to embarrass them into at least following.
You can't "get out of the way" of fucking fascism and then expect people to clap for you. It's only going to be idiots who don't understand anything clapping.
Giving up is not a viable strategy in the face of fascism.
Resigning is a way to call attention to the problem while you still have most of your credibility. There would be a smear campaign against you, but the alternative situation might be after getting fired for cause, where it would be easier to believe that you are just making excuses to save face. Especially if you are already demoralized and don't have the energy to make a stand, you may start feeding the idea that you are just unfit for the job and lose support internally.
It also adds a bit of chaos into the organization that needs to replace you and may not have somebody prepared to step into a position haunted by this politicized issue and rocky transition. It does happen because organizations are made of limited and discrete people, but it is easy to be afraid of the infinite number of sycophants that must be ready to take their place.
It might be a tactic that is useful in limited situations, but I agree in general that we want rusty cogs slowing down the fascist machine.
Oh wow!
I didn't realize this was for awareness. Someone go get Susan G Kommen out of whatever mansion she's hiding in and tell her we need to raise fucking awareness that trump is violating the constitution.
Obviously nothing is more important than awareness!
Why fight fascism when you can raise awareness?
#Giant fucking /S
You kid but awareness is a first order problem in the fight itself, and I hate to break it to you, but a significant portion of the population is not meaningfully aware of how dire it is.
Something like this might be the thing that gets through to them. There is also probably a large portion of the population who suspects how bad this is but doesn’t trust the media and is specifically looking to see how the military leaders react to this stuff.
If there are any perceived adults in the room at this point, it is probably the military.
Oh yeah, I'm absolutely positive the people who are ignorant of what's happening will see this Huff Post article and their minds will change....
This one news article about a quitter raises waaaaaya more awareness than months/years of court cases where officers are being let go for not following specific orders they felt were illegal
Not as much as you'd think
They'll be even less, if the few adults left fucking resign and leave
You would be making such a killer point if this were even remotely the only article covering it, haha.
Let's say a dozen articles over a week if say that's generous though.
Compare that to years/months of trump having to fire 100s maybe even thousands of officers while they say loudly and repeatedly exactly what the illegal.orders were in a courtroom...
Like cmon man.
Even if you legitimately think awareness is most important, making trump fire them is more awareness.
And that's not even getting into how much of a hassle firing an officer is.
The harsh truth is their cowards who want to retain the benefits that come with resigning.
If they resign they're putting themselves over the country, against the oath they swore.
They're fucking cowards not heroes, and I legit don't know why people don't see that.
I didn’t say awareness is most important, I said it was first order, and I stand by that.
I’m not saying this is enough and we should prop our feet up and wait for it all to blow over. I’m saying awareness itself is critically important for anything else to happen, and whether this is the thing that will do it or not (it won’t be one thing), it’s critical that more of the populace becomes aware.
I’m not even sure what we’re arguing about at this point, but you’re +7 in my upvote history so I clearly agree with you on a lot, but I think it is important for leaders to walk away and it’s important for people to see that happening.
And I'm saying by staying in, refusing to pass down orders you believe are illegal, and making them fire you over it and making a bunch of noise is a better plan.
You have no reason to take my word on it, but I've been thru UCMJ before myself (for valid reasons).
But I've also stopped over 5 people from going thru the same thing on fraudulent charges.
I put ten toes down against a mutiny charge for it, and told them to court martial me, and they backed down.
Again, I know it's a big ask to for you to take my word on it, but I am intimately familiar with what's happening and what various courses of action will lead to.
The best course is to fucking stand your ground and fulfill your oath. Not resign and fuck off with an officers pension while the nation burns.
As I understand it, they were about to fire him, so staying and resisting may not have been an option. Perhaps he wanted to get ahead of the story and have his.moment to speak.
Also, I've never been in the military, but I imagine they have extremely strict policies against active duty members (particularly officers) criticizing the administration in public. This guy probably had to quit first if he wanted to say what he said publicly.
I hope it has an effect on current active-duty troops when they get their illegal orders.
Then make them do it...
It's not something that can happen at the snap of a finger, and even after the fact would involve court cases that take resources away from the shitty things they're trying to do...
We're fucking fighting fascism man, we have to fight every battle even if we lose, because it at least eats up the clock.
There is literally zero gain from resigning.
If all the decent, moral, knowledgeable, experienced military personnel leave, then MAGA will be left with a military of incompetents, led by incompetents, all the way to the very top. They may have the weapons, but they won't know how to use them.
But the Resistance will have all the intelligent experienced military leaders, who not only know how to use the weapons, but know how they are secured, and how they can be "liberated."
...
I can assure you even a child can use a rifle. Sadly it happens every day.
And that "resistance" is not going to have access to any type of weapon that would require more than five minutes of training.
I was military, my dad was military, a grand dad was, multiple aunts/uncles were, literally innumerable cousins...
I can assure you not all of my family is intelligent, and the military designs things for the lowest common denominator.
Even nuclear engineering in the military isn't exactly challenging, the training is just intentionally stressful so it will be harder than actual service.
Like, look at other actual resistances in other countries, you don't even know what will be used as weapons in a hypothetical resistance...
And this place is better than reddit, but I don't think I could get more specific than that
Edit:
Also, intelligence and compassion aren't correlated.
In fact once you get more than a couple standard deviations above average, misanthropy tends to be one the norm.
It's hard to explain. Imagine someone just walks up and hits you in the balls, then acts surprised that you're hurt and upset with them
Long before a very intelligent person understands that they're very intelligent...
They just think every other human is an inconsiderate asshole we doesn't put a second of thought into how their actions effects others. It is incredible easy and unfortunately common for that opinion to stuck around for a long time.
Yes, everyone knows if the majority of the military is untrained and lacks critical thinking skills, they could never successfully oppress their population.
That's why African Warlords with armies full of child soldiers famously never commit unspeakable atrocities on their citizens.
That's a silly analogy. American soldiers do not have the same life experiences as African child soldiers. It's ridiculous to think that both types of soldiers would react the same way.
All soldiers have the potential to commit atrocities, and many will, but a lot of American soldiers will refuse to commit atrocities against their fellow citizens.
Tell that to Kent State.
American soldiers are soldiers. Soldiers follow orders. Soldiers without critical thinking skills follow orders without question.
Which is one of the reasons that any will hesitate to fire on Americans. The reputation of the National Guard was very badly damaged by the aftermath of Kent State, and it took decades before any trust returned.
It's been a long time since that happened, and hopefully there are still a few in leadership that remember that an instant of satisfaction from pulling the trigger will lead to decades of repercussions.
Agreed. I get the guys point, but the most powerful weapon we still have is our soldiers, and their allegiance to the American people, and the principals that our country stands for. He is far more powerful if he remains, and sticks to his beliefs.
That assumes he can stay and won't be dishonorable discharged for some trumped up reason.
This gives him a platform to let others know that shit is going down without that smear campaign.