Pentagon officials respond to the idea of a Donald Trump presidency, "This is not the country I joined to defend. I am turning in my papers. I’m moving to a farm."

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

The plans of the next president are personal to the officers of the Pentagon, who are threatening to retire if The Donald becomes commander-in-chief. 

Republican presidential candidate and business mogul Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to build up the U.S. military if elected president. 

But it is not clear he will have the experienced commanders within the ranks to do it.

Here is some of what those experienced commanders had to say:

Some said repeatedly hearing Trump and the other GOP candidates spelling out a plan that is only a more brazen—and perhaps reckless—version of the current strategy was not reassuring. 

This Daily Beast correspondent has heard such sentiments from at least a dozen commanders in the past few months. Such conversations can also be heard at common areas—in cafeteria lines and around lunch tables. 

There are fears of being asked to carry out futile war plans that would bring instability. Almost all of today’s commanders are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They all know someone who died in combat; indeed, they may have sent someone on a mission that ended with death. And because of that they bring a unique vantage point to lessons learned, from the frontlines where the cruelty of warfare is impossible to miss. Those who send them, meanwhile, sit thousands of miles away and learn what is happening through the filter of distance.

And so in the course of conversation, plots of a different kind emerge—contingencies in case Trump really is elected to the White House. 

“By 2016 I will have my 20 years in and can get out of here,” one military official said, referring to the amount of time a service member needs to collect retirement pay. 

“This is not the country I joined to defend. I am turning in my papers. I’m moving to a farm.” 

“Personally, I hope no one will be called upon to serve under a President T… I can’t bring myself to type the words,” said retired Rear Admiral John Hutson.

So apparently they are not buying Trump's quote,  “I will be so good at the military your head will spin.”

Gee go figure.

(H/T to Occupy Democrats.)