Let's talk about Impeaching Hegseth.... - Belle of the Ranch

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about impeaching Hegseth.

Articles of impeachment were filed against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. What we're going to do is go over the various articles and talk about the legal and political realities of each. Some of these are incredibly serious, some not so much. But there's another issue, perhaps a bigger issue beyond what's just contained in the articles, and we'll go over that at the end.

Okay. So, to start off, we have article one, unauthorized war against Iran and reckless endangerment of US service members. Okay. The overwhelming majority of this article deals with seeking permission from Congress. That's really more on Trump than Hegseth. However, section 3 says, "He has authorized, supported, and advanced military operations lacking defined objectives, lawful authorization, or clear strategic necessity, knowingly exposing members of the armed forces of the United States to substantial and foreseeable risk of injury or death.

We've talked about this repeatedly on the channel. There is no plan here. There is no strategy here and our forces have paid the price. Whether or not that's impeachable is up to Congress.

Article two, violations of the law of armed conflict and targeting of civilians. I want to be crystal clear here. That's war crimes. The articles allege war crimes plural. This is one that carries ramifications far beyond anything on the House floor.

Article three is negligence and reckless handling of sensitive military information. This is the signal chat stuff.

Article four, obstruction of congressional oversight. Honestly, with this one, I think they'd have a hard time distinguishing between being unable to provide information to Congress due to incompetence and willful obstruction. But there may be more here that isn’t public yet.

Article five, abuse of power and politization of the armed forces. This alleges he used the office for partisan purposes, intervened in disciplinary actions, and so on. To be honest, I'm not sure there's much in this article that he hasn't kind of admitted to doing, but I'm not sure this actually rises to the level of impeachable offenses. Not everything that makes Hegseth a less than ideal SecDef is impeachable.

Article six, conduct bringing disrepute upon the US and its armed forces. There's a list of supporting allegations in this one and most of them we've talked about and again most of this he seems to have openly talked about himself.

Okay, so here's the thing about this. The conventional wisdom is that this won't even get to the floor. It won't be debated or discussed. And commentators are saying this as fact, and it may be fact, but when they gloss over it by simply reciting the congressional makeup, they're missing what may be an even bigger story. It is widely expected that Republicans will shoot down allegations of war crimes and recklessly endangering the troops based on nothing more than partisan allegiance.

Let's be clear on this. We've had troops come forward and talk to the press while saying Hegseth misled the public about an incident in which US service members were lost and saying they were left undefended.

If Republicans look the other way based on nothing more than partisan allegiance, it will confirm what so many people believe already, that the Republican party does in fact view troops as losers and suckers. Nothing more than props for campaign ads.

Beyond that, if Republicans want to have Hegseth continue, this has to be cleared up. They can't just leave this hanging out there. It will undermine cohesiveness across the military. Can you have faith in this command if you're a soldier?

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.