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ffr

(22,670 posts)
Sun Dec 10, 2017, 04:04 PM Dec 2017

tRump surrounds himself with generals who are masculine, but also obedient



pResident Donald tRump has brought more generals into the upper reaches of his administration than any other modern president.
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We’re not talking Dwight D. Eisenhower or George C. Marshall here, let alone Colin Powell or Alexander Haig — just your basic war heroes. When generals have to perform beyond their political competence, they’re as fallible as anybody else.

Consider the first foray by Kelly, Gold Star father, into conventional politics. In Kelly’s press conference after tRump’s botched phone call to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, killed in Niger, Kelly deployed his military credentials and story to protect his boss from political attack. And he failed.

He gave a harrowing account of the loss of a soldier in battle. As public discourse goes, this story was a rock from which no critic could possibly dislodge him. Then, Kelly left solid ground and wandered into the treacherous political sea.

He confirmed that tRump said what the president had denied saying. He recounted what he had told the president to say — which was, in Kelly’s elegant formulation, a world away from tRump’s flat-footedness. - NBC NEWS


HISTORICAL CONTEXT
He still surrounded himself with men who agreed with everything he said. General Keitel, known behind his back as Lakeitel (the lackey), seems to have been a mirror who merely reflected the master’s ideas. General Zeitzler, as we have seen, echoed his master’s opinion about the fall the Stalingrad. Only General Jodl sometimes very daringly suggested opinions of his own, but never so cogently that they could penetrate Hitler’s consciousness.

The pattern, which would continue to the end of the war, was now set. Hitler would continue to abandon armies to their fate, refusing under any conditions to let them withdraw, and he would regard all generals in the field as potential traitors.
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The more defeats he suffered, the more arbitrary and intransigent became his conduct of the war, and the more he hated his generals. - The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler - Robert Payne, 1973

This must be what President Obama was referring to yesterday.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029945441
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