cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38323356
Oct. 31, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET Michelle Goldberg
Andy O’Brien, a former Democratic state legislator and newspaper editor, told me that outsiders didn’t fully understand how radicalizing the second Trump presidency has been for ordinary Democrats. Even senior citizens, he said, were becoming “fire-breathing leftists. They’re just pissed off.”
These voters understood that Platner had made mistakes, but they saw him as a fighter. “Five years ago, he would have been dead in the water, I think,” said O’Brien, who now works with the labor movement. “But this is such an unprecedented time. I think a lot of people really believe that we need somebody who can effectively fight against fascism.”
Maine is an overwhelmingly white state, but it’s not just white guys who feel this way. “We’re sticking by him,” said Safiya Khalid, a Somali American activist and former member of the Lewiston City Council.
I don’t know how so many keep missing the point here.
Routinely, one weapon system is not authorized for use, when another of lesser explosive yield is authorized for use.
They did not, due to concerns for collateral damage, want to use the higher powered indirect fire option (mortars). So the marines created a way to calculate trajectory for use of a lower powered option (40mm grenades).
Every single conflict in the last 100 years occurred with noncombatants in the theater of conflict. None, I repeat none, hold themselves to the standard of never using a munition is it could harm a civilian at all. We try like hell to avoid it, and you do due diligence to target attackers embedded in civilian infrastructure as precisely as possible.
In the very same deployment, in the very same AO, the same command team did change authorization later for the larger indirect fire munition (mortars). There was no evacuation of civilians. Decisions on what weapon to employ are made based on ground conditions at the time.
Tell me this; what is the standard of when you can use a munition? 90% confidence no civilian casualties? 99%? 99.99999%? If it is 100% no military force could ever fire a shot, so why does this use of force in a calculated way to avoid civilian collateral damage not make the cut but other instances do?
I’m opposed to all wars except the class war, if you’re going across the world to kill civilians in an imperial war and you joined the Marines to kill, I’m not going to have a lot of charity about the use of improvised explosives in civilian areas
do you think there was anything wrong with what the US was doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? do you think that launching full scale invasions of other countries is okay as long as there’s a justification?
As I have stated in other comments:
“To be very clear, we never should have been there fighting in cities in an unjust war or inversion…”I will repeat it over and over again.
I joined the military before it was known where I would go. I joined before we knew about WMDs or the lack thereof. I joined to give to something bigger than myself, and serve my nation. It was an idealistic view of civil service, and I was deployed to a theater I did not want to be in. The military doesn’t choose where we go. Elected officials do. Enlistments are 4-6 years in length. I watched the towers crumble in high school and signed the recruitment documents.
While deployed I rebuilt infrastructure, brought cooking oil to families, created wells for water, rebuilt community, and in 10 months we went from casualties every single day to press being able to walk the streets openly daily without issue. We treated their people with dignity and respect. We ensured women were present to search other women at traffic security points. We took our boots off in reverence when entering homes to speak to leaders. We learned Arabic to ensure communication in stressful situations could be maintained.
I stood on top of IEDs as part of my job, and placed my whole body over a family in a living room of their home when an insurgent was firing into their living room. He was shooting at us because I had rendered safe two blast grenades he stages by the road side to kill people that I was still holding.
So no, I do not want nor justify any use of military force beyond defense of our own sovereignty. Once deployed, enlisted personal are under oath to follow all orders deemed legal by the UCMJ. Which include, killing people who shoot at you, in urban areas, near civilian populations.
A CWO5 ordered me to shoot a child while deployed. He was running towards our vehicle with a bulky vest under his shirt. 2 weeks before that the parents of a child rigged a suicide best to him and detonated it to kill marines. I shouted in his language and mine. I tried desperately to think of something as this kid was not stopping and the crew served weapon on top was rotating to mow him down. I ran at the kid and hugged him, picked him up, and figured if I was wrong it would just be me as I carried him away. Kid had had a back brace for spinal deformity. I would rather be wrong, and die, than be wrong and kill an innocent person.
War is a horrible practice. It should never be entered lightly, as no conflict will avoid harming innocent people fully. They are the monument to all our country’s sins, but in the case of Platner he did his job and did it with more than enough due diligence to say with certainty it was not a war crime.
why qualify it? if there’s a justification does that suddenly make full-scale invasions okay?
I’m actually curious, would Afghanistan an example of another unjust war?