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      Republican who wanted Trump to declare ‘Marshall’ law only regrets the misspelling

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      Republican who wanted Trump to declare ‘Marshall’ law only regrets the misspellingText from Ralph Norman to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, urged president to declare martial law A Republican who urged the Trump White House to declare martial law to stop Joe Biden taking office has only one regret: that he misspelled “martial”.Ron DeSantis leads Donald Trump by 23 points in Republican pollRead moreThe text from Ralph Norman of South Carolina to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, was given to the January 6 committee by Meadows and revealed by Talking Points Memo this week.On 17 January 2021, 11 days after the deadly Capitol attack and three days before Biden’s inauguration, Norman wrote: “Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of no return in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!”No response from Meadows was revealed. On Tuesday, a HuffPo reporter asked Norman about the message.Norman said: “Well, I misspelled ‘martial’.”He added: “I was very frustrated then, I’m frustrated now. I was frustrated then by what was going on in the Capitol. President Biden was in his basement the whole year. Dominion was raising all kinda questions.”The reference to Biden’s basement was to the then Democratic candidate’s decision largely to stay off the campaign trail in 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic.Dominion Voting Systems has filed major lawsuits, notably against Fox News, regarding claims its machines were involved in voter fraud.Trump insists his defeat by Biden – by more than 7m votes and by 306-232 in the electoral college – was the result of electoral fraud. It was not.Norman was among 147 Republicans in the House and Senate who voted to object to results in key states, even after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, a riot now linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection, proceedings which were ongoing when Norman texted Meadows.According to CNN, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman, also asked Meadows about “Marshall law” on 17 January, writing: “In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law.”This week, Greene said that if she and Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, had organised the Capitol riot, “we would have won”. She also said rioters “would’ve been armed”.Marjorie Taylor Greene: Capitol attack ‘would’ve been armed’ if I was in chargeRead moreAccording to the Congressional Research Service, “crises in public order, both real and potential, often evoke comments concerning a resort to martial law. “While some ambiguity exists regarding the conditions of a martial law setting, such a prospect, nonetheless, is disturbing to many Americans who cherish their liberties, expect civilian law enforcement to prevail, and support civilian control of military authority.”The CRS also says that since the conclusion of the second world war, “martial law has not been presidentially directed or approved for any area of the United States. Federal troops have been dispatched to domestic locales experiencing unrest or riot, but in these situations the military has remained subordinate to federal civilian management.”On Tuesday, Norman told HuffPost: “I was frustrated at the time with everything that was happening. It was a private text between a friend and myself, nothing more, nothing less.”TopicsRepublicansUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsUS militarynewsReuse this content More

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      ‘A sacred space’: Sebastian Junger and Seth Moulton on Vets Town Hall

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      ‘A sacred space’: Sebastian Junger and Seth Moulton on Vets Town Hall The bestselling author wants to help Americans understand those in the military. On Veterans Day, the Democratic congressman hosted a hometown eventOn Friday, Veterans Day, the Democratic congressman Seth Moulton hosted a town hall in Marblehead, his home town in Massachusetts. He first staged such an event in 2015, working with Sebastian Junger, author of bestsellers including The Perfect Storm, War and Tribe, which considers how veterans might be better understood and helped after coming home from war.‘I almost died last summer’: Sebastian Junger on life, death and his new book FreedomRead moreOn the page, Junger considers how Indigenous peoples treated warriors who returned from “intimate and bloody warfare”. Before the Marblehead event, he said: “I’d read about the gourd dance, this process that some of the Southern Great Plains tribes had. I’m sure all of them had some variant on allowing for warriors to recount what they did.”What Moulton did is this. After graduating Harvard in 2001, he joined the US Marines. In the wars after 9/11, he completed four tours in Iraq, taking part in the invasion in 2003 and the Battle of Najaf the following year. Moulton did not buy George W Bush’s case for war. As he said in Marblehead, even in action he thought the invasion “probably shouldn’t have happened”. But he was determined to lead his troops through it.In 2014, he won a seat in the US House. Speaking before the event on Friday, he described how he had “read Sebastian’s book, and said, ‘This is an amazing idea. We should actually do this.’ So I reached out to him and said, ‘Hey, I just got elected to Congress. I’m a marines vet. And I want to start this tradition. So he and I started putting together what would have to happen.”The project grew. It now has a name, Vets Town Hall, a new organisational structure as a non-profit and established rules. Politics are left at the door. Any veteran can speak. There are no questions. Attendees simply listen.Junger reported from Bosnia during the Balkan wars and later made Restrepo, a searing documentary about American soldiers in Afghanistan, and its sequel, Korengal. His co-director, the British photojournalist Tim Hetherington, was killed in Syria in 2011. In his book War and elsewhere, Junger has described being shot at and surviving a roadside bomb. But as he says, when he and Moulton staged their first Vets Town Hall, he had no role to play but to listen.There was, Junger said, “this extraordinary moment where an old lady stood up and said that she fought in Vietnam as a man and came home and got a sex change. Marblehead – it’s one of the more conservative enclaves in Massachusetts. Certainly traditional. And I watched that sort of blow people’s hair back. It was great. It was quite extraordinary.”Marblehead counts itself the home of the US navy. On Friday, busts of François Joseph Paul de Grasse, admiral of the French fleet off Yorktown in the revolutionary war, and Charles Snellen, a gunner’s mate on the USS Monitor, the first civil war ironclad, looked over the town hall speakers.A Marine veteran described a moment in 1967 when he and a North Vietnamese soldier both decided not to fire, then a visit to Vietnam, years later, and a salute to his unknown foe.A former soldier described his service in Afghanistan and what happened on 15 August 2008, when 1Lt Donald Carwile and Pfc Paul Conlon Jr, of the 101st airborne division, were killed by a roadside bomb.A retired naval commander described the wrench of deployments far from his wife and children. Other speakers, men and women, described work on the home front, supporting veterans or advocating for them.Before the event, as Moulton spoke outside Abbot Hall, a man with a prosthetic leg made his way into the venue. He later rose to speak about his struggles since leaving the marines, an edge of anger in his voice.“I took care of myself,” he said, “because I’m a veteran.”In this “dire time of polarisation”, Junger said, Vets Town Hall might provide “kind of a sacred space. I’m an atheist, but I use the word sacred all the time. It’s a sacred space in the sense that ordinary life is suspended and here we are in this place, and we’re honoring something, and we’re healing something, we’re doing something together. And it doesn’t matter if you were for or against the war, or you’re Republican or Democrat, Black or white, rich or poor. None of that matters.”He added: “Anytime you are in a space where you have to be respectful, and you hear things that are anathema to your ideology, it forces you to reconsider. To conservative America, America is always right. The virtuous nation. And the veterans are the heroes in the conservative ideology, almost beyond reproach. And then here, you have a veteran who’s just in a rage about a war we fought. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam. Whatever it is, that’s healthy for a conservative psyche, to have to navigate through that.Geoff Dyer on war reportageRead more“But likewise, I’m a liberal, but it’s very healthy for liberals to share space with a veteran who’s saying, ‘You know what, I’m not a victim of all this. Going off to war was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. I was a troubled young man, and it was exactly what I needed. And I chose it freely. It wasn’t because I needed money. This was an amazing thing for me, and I miss it a lot.’ That’s great for liberals to hear.”Moulton was less keen to discuss political divisions, saying he thought the town halls might instead help bridge a social chasm between the general public and the “very small percentage of Americans who have served”. He did say the “no politics” ground rule established seven years ago “feels like it’s even more important now, with how divisive politics has become, especially in the last five years”.When Moulton ran for Congress – six years before campaigning, briefly, for president – it took an investigative reporter to find out he had been decorated, in part for “fearlessly expos[ing] himself to enemy fire”.Speaking to the Boston Globe, Moulton described “a healthy disrespect among veterans who served on the frontlines for people who walk around telling war stories” and said he was “uncomfortable calling attention to his own awards out of respect to ‘many others who did heroic things and received no awards at all’”.Through Vets Town Hall, he seeks to provide a forum. He said: “I have told stories at this town hall that I’ve never told before because I think this is the one place where it is appropriate. And I learned from Sebastian the value of telling some stories from war that helped explain both the experience overseas and how it influences our lives back home. And that’s what we really need to share with non-veterans, to help bridge that divide.”Junger described a story Moulton has told. It is about Najaf, where, in a hellish fight in a cemetery, Marines faced the Mahdi army, a militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, a powerful Shia cleric.“He told a story about taking a break, because he’d been up for 48 hours straight. And it was a hot day. And he personally was just really starting to get wobbly. And they took a five-minute break. And because they stopped, the 19-year-old sitting next to him got a bullet in the forehead. And that’s the ghost he lives with.“You know, that’s combat. These random things. ‘If we hadn’t stopped’ or ‘If we had stopped’, or ‘If I hadn’t tied my shoe …’ If you’re a lieutenant or a captain or whatever, you take on responsibility for all the random shit that happens. It’s all your fucking fault. It’s not, of course, but psychologically that’s what it feels like. And it’s really, really hard.“Hearing Seth say that story? I was choking back tears. Everyone was choking back tears. It was absolutely brutal. You might ask him, if he doesn’t bring it up.”In Marblehead, Moulton did not bring up Najaf. Instead, he described a moment outside Baghdad, “dug into the mud” and freezing cold, when intelligence indicated that he and his marines were about to meet a column of Iraqi tanks without protection from their own.Tribe by Sebastian Junger review – why we need the solidarity felt during wartimeRead more“I remember thinking to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here? I’m about to die, in the mud, in a town nobody’s ever heard of, in a country on the other side of the globe, in a war that probably shouldn’t have happened.’ I knew my buddies back home were probably on a good night in a Boston bar. ‘Why am I here?’ But that thought lasted for about 10 seconds, because I remembered why I signed up.“I didn’t want someone else to fight my place. I didn’t want to be in the Boston bar. And after that, I felt a little bit more warm. A little bit more comfortable. A little bit happier, perhaps, because I was exactly where I wanted to be.”TopicsUS militarySebastian JungerUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS national securityfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Pentagon spokesperson tamps down concerns over nuclear ‘armageddon’

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      Pentagon spokesperson tamps down concerns over nuclear ‘armageddon’ John Kirby says Biden’s warning about threat of a nuclear attack from Russia were not based on specific new information The US military’s top spokesperson tamped down concerns of an imminent nuclear threat from Russia, days after Joe Biden warned of a potential nuclear “armageddon”.Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser this week, Biden talked bluntly about the threat of a nuclear attack from Russia. “We have not faced the prospect of armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” the president said. He added that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming” after invading Ukraine earlier this year.Echoing comments from the White House earlier this week, top Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said Biden’s comments were not based on specific new information.“His comments were not based on new or fresh intelligence or new indications that Mr Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons,” Kirby told Martha Raddatz in an interview on ABC News’ This Week. “Quite frankly, we don’t have any information that he has made that kind of decision. Nor have we seen anything that would give us pause to reconsider our own strategic nuclear posture.”U.S. has not “seen anything that would give us pause to reconsider our own strategic nuclear posture” following Putin’s threats in Ukraine, NSC spokesman Kirby tells @MarthaRaddatz. “We don’t have any indication that he has made that kind of decision.” https://t.co/OpYwwOBhrk pic.twitter.com/RHNNlj06Ar— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 9, 2022
      Biden’s remarks invoking Armageddon drew a sharp rebuke from former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, a member of the Donald Trump White House’s cabinet who is mulling a 2024 presidential run.“Those comments were reckless” and “a terrible risk to the American people”, Pompeo said on the Republican-friendly Fox News network.Kirby on Sunday also declined to weigh on a recent explosion on the Kerch Bridge linking Russia and Crimea, the Ukrainian territory under Russian control.The explosion dealt a blow to Russian military logistics and embarrassed Putin, for whom the bridge had symbolic personal importance. Ukraine has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but it has been celebrated by senior leaders in the country.“We don’t really have anything more to add to the reports about the explosion on the bridge,” Kirby said. “I just don’t have anything more to contribute to that this morning.”Kirby also addressed Biden’s comments last week that the US was trying to find where Putin could get an “off ramp” to the war on Ukraine.“Mr Putin started this war and Mr Putin could end it today, simply by moving his troops out of the country,” Kirby said. “He’s the one who chose to start this conflict again and he can choose to end it.”Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February. But Ukraine’s defenders in recent weeks have taken back some of the territories it had lost control of during the invasion.With its hold on Ukraine weakening, Putin recently ordered the mobilization of reservists to reinforce the invasion, which ignited protests in dozens of cities across Russia and has led to long lines at its land borders with other countries.TopicsUkraineJoe BidenVladimir PutinRussiaUS politicsUS militaryEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      Texas Fort Hood to be renamed for US army’s first Latino four-star general

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      Texas Fort Hood to be renamed for US army’s first Latino four-star generalThe facility, named for the late retired general Richard Cavazos, will become the first to honor a Latino service member The US army’s first Latino four-star general is set to become the namesake of the country’s largest active-duty armored military base, replacing the Confederate leader after whom the facility was originally named.In a recent memo to top military brass at the Pentagon, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said officials had until 1 January 2024 to implement a recommendation to change the name of Texas’s Fort Hood to Fort Cavazos, honoring the late retired general Richard Cavazos.West Point’s Ku Klux Klan plaque should be removed, commission saysRead moreThe base long named after John Bell Hood – who served the Confederacy – is just one of multiple military installations and facilities that the US defense department has been asked to rename by the Naming Commission, created by Congress to remove symbols commemorating Confederate figures.Eight other military bases whose names were inspired by Confederates who betrayed the United States while waging and losing the US civil war will be renamed as well.There has been a broad push to remove public symbols of the Confederacy after the 2017 killing of a counter protester during a white supremacist rally opposing the removal of a Confederate Gen Robert E Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. The killings of nine people at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 also helped spark the push.Austin’s memo said the bases’ names should “fully reflect the history and the values of the United States and commemorate the best of the republic that we are all sworn to protect”.The fort destined to be renamed after Cavazos houses about 40,000 soldiers and sits in Bell county, Texas, where Latino residents make up more than a quarter of the population.Since its permanent establishment in 1950, the fort commemorated the commander of the Confederate army’s Texas brigade during the civil war. But it will now be named after a Mexican American native of Texas who served the US army in the Korean and Vietnam wars.In Korea, as a first lieutenant, he earned the Distinguished Service Cross – the American military’s second highest citation for valor – for repeatedly returning to a battlefield to personally evacuate soldiers that were wounded while fighting along his side, according to the Naming Commission.He earned another Distinguished Service Cross in Vietnam, where he had attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, for leading soldiers through an ambush, organizing a counterattack that repulsed their enemies and exposing himself to hostile fire numerous times in the process.Later, Cavazos – who also taught military science as part of the reserve officers training corps at Texas Tech – became the US army’s first Latino brigadier general in 1973. Among his roles was commanding soldiers based out of the fort slated to be renamed after him.He became the Army’s first Latino four-star general in 1982 and was put in charge of sustaining, training and deploying all the forces that the Army could deploy at the time.Cavazos retired in 1984 after a 33-year career in the army, which also saw him accumulate two Legions of Merit, a Silver Star, five Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart, among other medals for service in war and peacetime. He spent his retirement in Texas before his death in 2017 in San Antonio.“Richard Cavazos’s service demonstrates excellence at every level,” the Naming Commission wrote in a summary of the late four-star general’s career. “His 20th-century service will inspire soldiers as they continue those traditions of excellence into the 21st.”US House representative Joaquin Castro – a Democrat from San Antonio – pushed for Fort Hood to be renamed after Cavazos and received support from the congressional Hispanic Caucus. When that push began, no US military bases had been named in honor of a Latino service member.Other name change recommendations include renaming Georgia’s Fort Gordon to Fort Eisenhower after Dwight Eisenhower, who led the army during the second world war and later became president; North Carolina’s Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty; and Virginia’s Fort AP Hill to Fort Walker after Dr Mary Edwards Walker, the surgeon, prisoner of war and women’s voting rights advocate.TopicsUS militaryTexasRaceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ex-US army medic allegedly lured migrants on to flights to Martha’s Vineyard

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      Ex-US army medic allegedly lured migrants on to flights to Martha’s VineyardPerla Huerta was reportedly sent to Texas from Florida to fill planes chartered by DeSantis, offering gift cards to asylum seekers A former US army combat medic and counterintelligence agent allegedly solicited asylum seekers to join flights out of Texas to Martha’s Vineyard that Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, chartered.Perla Huerta was sent to Texas from Tampa to fill the planes at the center of the trips, which many have argued could amount to illegal human trafficking, a person briefed on an investigation into the case told the New York Times.In September, dozens of asylum seekers were transported to Martha’s Vineyard, an affluent community in Massachusetts, and were promised cash assistance, help with housing and other resources if they traveled to the state. DeSantis claimed responsibility for the flights, portraying it as a protest against the Joe Biden White House’s immigration policy.The flights – one of which made a stop in Florida – departed from San Antonio and therefore have drawn scrutiny from the sheriff’s office there.Huerta was discharged from the US army in August after serving the military branch for two decades. A migrant told CNN that a woman named “Perla” offered him clothes, food, and money in exchange to help find other migrants, mostly from Venezuela, to board the flights to Massachusetts. She gave him $10 McDonald’s gift cards to be handed out to the asylum seekers who agreed to join the flights.Florida officials confirmed a payment to the airline charter company, Vertol Systems, for $615,000 on 8 September. The money comes from a state budget signed earlier this year giving DeSantis $12m for a program to deport migrants.Vertol Systems offers aviation maintenance and training services and performs work for the US government. The company has networked with Florida’s Republican power brokers over the years.The charter has contributed money to some of DeSantis’s top allies, including the Congress member Matt Gaetz and Florida’s public safety director in charge of immigration policy, Larry Keefe, according to NBC News.Attorneys representing the asylum seekers have filed a federal class-action lawsuit against DeSantis and others, contending that the plaintiffs were misled into thinking they would receive benefits upon arrival to Martha’s Vineyard.However, those benefits are only available for refugees, a specific status that the asylum seekers do not currently fall under.Some legal experts have deemed DeSantis’s acts as human trafficking or smuggling. The group Lawyers for Civil Rights labeled the move as an “appalling” political stunt.In the San Antonio area, the Bexar county sheriff, Javier Salazar, launched an investigation examining the flights that took off from there.Upon the asylum seekers’ arrival, aid group workers quickly gathered food as well as supplies and set up shelter. Island residents set up a church to house the migrants and provided translation services.The asylum seekers were also receiving clothing from community thrift shops, and people were increasingly calling to volunteer to help them and donate to them.Many of the asylum seekers ended up at a military base in Cape Cod with little knowledge of what would happen next.The flights are an escalation of Republican officials sending hundreds of asylum seekers to predominantly Democratic areas. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has sent more than 100 migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela by bus from Texas to the Washington DC home of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Abbot has also sent buses to New York City.TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsFloridaUS militaryTexasRon DeSantisMassachusettsnewsReuse this content More

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      US couple charged in alleged plot to leak military health data to Russia

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      US couple charged in alleged plot to leak military health data to RussiaDoJ indictment alleges that former army major and his wife wanted to help the Russian government after it invaded Ukraine A former US army major and his wife, an anesthesiologist, have been criminally charged for allegedly plotting to leak highly sensitive healthcare data about military patients to Russia, the US Department of Justice said on Thursday.US charges Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska with violating sanctionsRead moreJamie Lee Henry, the former major who was also a doctor at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and his wife, Dr Anna Gabrielian, were charged in an unsealed indictment in a federal court in Maryland with conspiracy and the wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information.The indictment alleges that the plot started earlier this year, after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ordered the invasion of Ukraine.Prosecutors said the pair wanted to try to help the Russian government by providing them with data to help the Putin regime “gain insights into the medical conditions of individuals associated with the US government and military”.The two met with someone whom they believed was a Russian official, but in fact was an FBI undercover agent, the indictment says.At a hotel in Baltimore on 17 August, Gabrielian told the undercover agent “she was motivated by patriotism toward Russia to provide any assistance she could to Russia, even if it meant being fired or going to jail”, the indictment says.In the meeting, she volunteered to bring her husband into the scheme, saying he had information about prior military training the US provided to Ukraine, among other things.At another meeting later that day, Henry told the agent he too was committed to Russia, and claimed he had even contemplated volunteering to join the Russian army.“The way I am viewing what is going on in Ukraine now, is that the United States is using Ukrainians as a proxy for their own hatred toward Russia,” he allegedly told the agent.The agent urged them to read a book called Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy, telling the pair it would help them understand what they were about to do.“It’s the mentality of sacrificing everything … and loyalty in you from day one,” the agent said. “That’s not something you walked away from.”Apparently Henry had some reservations about providing healthcare data, saying it would violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the indictment says, but his wife had no hesitations.In a 24 August meeting, she told the undercover agent her husband was a “coward” to be concerned about violating HIPAA but she violated the law “all the time” and would see to it they could provide Russia with access to medical records from Fort Bragg patients.By the end of the month, she had handed over information on current and former military officials and their spouses, the indictment says.TopicsUS militaryMarylandUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s not a banger’: response to Space Force official song is less than stellar

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      ‘It’s not a banger’: response to Space Force official song is less than stellarThe new song, Semper Supra, is set to a jaunty tune, but critics say its lyrics are ‘verbal word salad’ Space Force, the sixth and newest branch of the US military, unveiled its official song on Tuesday amid a less than stellar critical response.As one website dedicated to covering America’s armed forces put it: “It’s not a banger.”Space Force was created in 2019, calved from the US air force at the behest of the Donald Trump White House.Critics wondered if the new force was needed. Announcements including the badge and uniform (suspiciously like badges and uniforms in Star Trek) and the name for service members (Guardians) attracted controversy, mockery and a satirical Netflix series starring Steve Carell.US and Australia to launch second joint spy satellite from site in New Zealand Read moreBut Trump seemed proud, for instance telling writers Peter Baker and Susan Glasser – who authored a new book on his presidency – that founding Space Force was among his greatest achievements in office.The US military has a tradition of official songs, from The Marine’s Hymn (adopted in 1929, beginning “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli / We fight our country’s battles / In the air, on land and sea”) to The Army Goes Rolling Along, from 1956.The moment you’ve all been waiting for: The Space Force has unveiled its official song pic.twitter.com/v6CG3I4sYD— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) September 20, 2022
      The new song, Semper Supra – taken from the Space Force motto: Always above – was unveiled by Gen John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations, at a conference in National Harbor, Maryland.Military.com, the site which said the new tune was “not a banger”, reported that Space Force used a 1901 march by John Philip Sousa, The Invincible Eagle, as a stopgap while the new song was written.Semper Supra is set to a jaunty tune reminiscent of The Liberty Bell, another Sousa march, from 1893 but now widely known as the theme to the British comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.The chief musician of the US Coast Guard Band, Sean Nelson, worked on the music for the Space Force song. The lyrics were penned by Jamie Teachenor, a country music songwriter and member of the US Air Force Band.Nelson said: “I went for it and I did what I thought was going to be the most exciting kind of sounds.”Teachenor added: “I wanted to make sure that everything that was in the song would adequately represent all the capabilities that our Space Force is involved with and make sure I didn’t mess up on the mission.”Teachenor’s lyrics are as follows: “We’re the mighty watchful eye / Guardians beyond the blue / The invisible front line / Warfighters brave and true.“Boldly reaching into space / there’s no limit to our sky / Standing guard both night and day / We’re the Space Force from on high.”Critical response was at best mixed. The executive editor of Defense One, a military news site, Kevin Baron, wrote: “The tune is a fine march. The lyrics are awful.“Grammatically, I’m dying to edit: You’re not the ‘invisible’ front line. CIA is. We literally see you singing this song. ‘Warfighter’ is NOT A WORD. ‘Both’ is redundant. Strike it.“‘Boldly’ steals from Star Trek (again). And how is one boldly ‘reaching into space’ without going there? There is a ‘limit to our sky’. It’s called space. Sky ends. Space begins. These lyrics are the verbal word salad version of a bad air force painting.”TopicsUS militarySpaceUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American history

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      Interview‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American historyMartin Pengelly in New York The discovery of a plaque showing a member of the Ku Klux Klan at the US military academy made headlines. One member of the commission which recommended its removal is a historian of the US army and the lost cause mythIn a 36-year army career, Ty Seidule served in the US, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Kosovo, Macedonia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He retired a brigadier general.Lincoln and the fight for peace: John Avlon on a president in the shadow of new warRead moreAn emeritus West Point history professor, he now teaches at Hamilton College. His online video, Was the Civil War About Slavery?, has been viewed millions of times, and in 2021 he published a well-received book, Robert E Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause.Outside academia, Seidule is a member of the Naming Commission, a body set up in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd and the protests for racial justice it inspired, tasked with recommending changes to military memorials to Confederates who fought in the civil war.Asked how the US military came to name bases, barracks, roads and other assets after soldiers who fought to secede from the union and keep Black people enslaved, Seidule said: “The first thing to know is that in the 19th century, most army officers saw the Confederates as traitors.“That’s not a presentist argument. That’s what they thought. And particularly about Lee, who renounced his oath, fought against this country, killed US army soldiers and as [Union general and 18th president Ulysses S] Grant said, did so for the worst possible reason: to create a slave republic.“So in the 19th century, they would not have done this … the first memorialisation of a Confederate at West Point is in the 1930s. So, why is that? [It’s about] segregation in America. The last West Point black graduate was 1889. The next one was in 1936. West Point reflects America. [The first memorials] were a reaction to integration.”Seidule rejects the notion that memorials to Lee and other Confederates – PGT Beauregard, a West Point superintendent fired for sedition, William Hardee, a commandant who fought in the west – might be claimed as symbols of reconciliation.“The problem with that is it was reconciliation among white people, at the expense of Black people.“There had already been reconciliation. Magnanimously, the United States of America pardoned all former Confederates in 1868 … reconciliation is sort of an agreement among whites that Black people will be treated in a Jim Crow fashion. So no, it’s not a reconciliation based, I would say, on an America we want today.”Last week, the Naming Commission made headlines when it highlighted a bronze at the United States Military Academy which depicts a member of the Ku Klux Klan.Seidule told the New York Times that though the Klan bronze fell outside the remit of the commission – the racist terror group was founded after the defeat of the south – the panel chose to highlight it “because we thought it was wrong”.The commission has issued reports concerning military bases and the military and naval academies. It will present its final report in October. Speaking to the Guardian, Seidule cited such ongoing work as reason not to discuss the Klan plaque further. But West Point did so on its Facebook page.It said: “There is a triptych (three bronze panels) at one of the entrances of Bartlett Hall [the science centre] that depicts the history of the United States. The artwork was dedicated on 3 June 1965 … As part of the middle panel titled ‘One Nation, Under God, Indivisible’, there is a small section that shows a Ku Klux Klan member.“The artist, Laura Gardin Fraser … wanted to create art that depicted ‘historical incidents or persons’ that [documented] both tragedy and triumph in our nation’s history.”Noting that the work was dedicated to graduates who served in the second world war and the Korean war, West Point added: “The academy strives to graduate diverse leaders of character for our nation.”Lee did not lead the Confederacy. Its president was Jefferson Davis, a former secretary of war and senator from Mississippi. But Lee, who died in 1870, became the most-memorialised Confederate.Asked why, Seidule said: “If you think of Confederate monuments, of the burning of books which the United Daughters of the Confederacy did in the early part of the 20th century, to ensure that textbooks said the right thing, really it’s that every religion needs its God. And in a way, that’s what Lee became.”Today, conservatives are banning books in attempts to control teaching of history, race, sexuality and other culture-war issues.Seidule concentrates on his historical work. Lee, he said, was in part idealised for lack of other options. James Longstreet enjoyed battlefield victories but after the war “fought for biracial democracy in New Orleans. So you can’t use him.“While Lee ended up losing hugely, completely defeated, his armies destroyed, he was successful for a time before that. And so he was seen by the white south as their best general, as their ideal. And by the 1930s, he comes to represent something not just in the south, but among white Americans in general.”Beyond West Point, the Confederate battle flag has become a symbol of rebellion, reaction and racism more potent than any statue or building. On 6 January 2021 it even flew in the halls of Congress, when Trump supporters attacked.Again, Seidule rejects any notion that use of the flag might in any way be excused.“We have to remember that it really didn’t mean that much different then than it does now. In 1863 it represented the Army of Northern Virginia, which was fighting to create a slave republic. Now, some people say it reflects rebellion. But remember, this was rebellion to create a slave republic. And so, to me, it is a symbol of all that America is not.“It’s a symbol of insurrection, it’s a symbol of somebody that would not take the results of a democratic election. I grew up with it, my dad had Confederate flags over the mantle. I know how powerful these symbols are.“One thing we often do with the civil war as historians is we let the smell of gunpowder seduce us into thinking about the war as American football, [about the] Xs and Os of military history, without understanding the purpose. That’s the thing I always come back to: why this cruel war?”He today that sheds his blood with me: when West Point rugby went to warRead moreSeidule’s next book will be about events at West Point towards the end of another cruel war: Vietnam. In 1971, Richard Nixon decided he wanted to oversee “a moral rebirth” of an army in disarray.“OK,” Seidule says, “that’s great. But the next thing he does is go to Trophy Point”, the focal point of the West Point campus, high over the Hudson river. “If you’ve seen Battle Monument, you know it says on there, ‘the War of the Rebellion’. Nixon says, ‘Where’s the Confederate monument?’ So he orders the superintendent to put a Confederate monument on Trophy Point.“And the Black cadets find out. And they nearly mutiny and they write a manifesto based on the Attica uprising” – at a New York prison in 1971 – “and [eventually] just so many things change.“They put on a concert to raise money for sickle cell anemia research, featuring Stevie Wonder and the Supremes, up at Michie Stadium”, the home of Army football. “They bring Louis Farrakhan to talk. They institute remarkable change, which I’m arguing comes from one of the most successful protest movements in American military history that nobody knows about, and eventually it kills the Confederate monument.“So that’s the book I’m writing now.”
      Robert E Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause is published in the US by St Martin’s Press
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