The top lawyer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff last month advised Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine on how best to handle an illegal order from war criminals Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth: Submit a retirement request rather than resign or attempt to get fired on purpose, CNN reports, adding that this came right after Caine saw the “double-tap” video of American taxpayer missiles being wasted for the purpose of wasting two helpless men clinging to wreckage after their “drug boat” – which had actually been headed to Suriname – was blasted by Naval combat aircraft.

That option, per counsel Brig General Eric Widmar, would be seen as less “political” than the other options. Being a “request” obviously it can (hopefully) be rejected and serves as a marker to future inquiries as well as prevent some fucking extremist MAGA freak from assuming that role – which is the real reason why nobody should want these guys to walk when they know something is wrong.

It’s horrible that people who may or may not actually be willing drug traffickers are being summarily obliterated in the Carribbean and Pacific. But if there’s ever going to be a reckoning for it then it’s on the brass to record their objections to these relatively low-consequence war crimes while staying on the team to prevent worse shit from happening. The way to prevent a reckoning is for them to quit and be replaced by Nazis who will cancel elections and establish a permanent Trump dictatorship that by 2055 will be ruled by a 400 lbs alcoholic chain-smoking Barron who spends his free time shooting hoops with the laminated corpse of Dennis Rodman and executing military officers with anti-aircraft guns on suspicion of passing intel to the capitalist scum of the California Republic.

So not great. Could end with retirements accepted anyway. Still better than no acts of protest at all.