Senior Army leadership was caught off guard by Thursday’s abrupt announcement, a US official told CNN — learning of George’s forced departure along with the rest of the Defense Department, when it was announced publicly.
George found out in a phone call from Hegseth on Thursday while he was in a meeting, a second US official said. He later spoke to his staff in-person about the announcement and his staff was “very stoic” when receiving the news, the official said.
Hegseth’s move comes a day after Donald Trump’s address to the nation on the Iran war. In the speech, Trump signaled the US will intensify strikes on Iran, after earlier suggesting the US could be done with the war within two to three weeks.
Depends on how you mean that; America’s system has been flawed long before even Trump1.0. It all contributed to the shitshow we’re now experiencing.
And it’s not even “the law is good, the people in power are bad”. Over decades, even centuries, people in power have poked holes into the system, codified as law. See e.g. Patriot Act.
True, but such flaws (either the same or different ones) also exist in—or are being carved into—the law in European systems (see: chat control). Europeans are also in general more nationalist than Americans since they actually live in nation states, making them in general more susceptible to rightwing spacegoating. The specific events might differ, but the mechanism is the same.
What’s with the whataboutism?
But OK, let’s entertain it:
It’s not a 1:1 comparison. Things are much, much worse in the USA.
That’s not my point; I’m trying to counter the common European/Anglophone idea that the current state of America is due to unique American flaws and not the end result of a West-wide trend due to greedy, powerful and unresponsive elites. My point is therefore that, because the underlying problem and many catslysts are the same, people living in these countries have to do something about their greedy, powerful and unresponsive elites if they don’t want to go fascist like America. America was also much better ten years ago, but it rapidly got worse because the underlying conditions made it inevitable.