Washington, USA
“Battlespace” was the word Defense Secretary Mark Esper used to describe
protest sites in the United States. The top U.S. general reinforced that image
by appearing in downtown Washington in camouflage during a Monday evening
crackdown.
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper visits DC National Guard military officers guarding the White House amid nationwide unrest following the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington, U.S., June 1, 2020.
Helicopters that could easily be
mistaken for active duty U.S. military ones staged show-of-force maneuvers in
Washington above people protesting the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed
black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
As President Donald Trump
increasingly turns to militaristic rhetoric at a time of national upheaval, the
U.S. military appears to be playing a supporting role - alarming current and
former officials who see danger to the U.S. armed forces, one of America’s most
revered and well-funded institutions.
“America is not a battleground. Our
fellow citizens are not the enemy,” Martin Dempsey, the retired four-star
general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote on Twitter.
A current military official, speaking
on condition of anonymity, voiced concern about the lasting damage that would
come from using the military as a “political prop.”
“Presidents come and go ... the
uniform has to be maintained,” the official said.
For Trump’s critics, the Republican
president’s reliance on the military in domestic endeavors risks making the
armed forces, which are meant to be apolitical, appear aligned with Trump’s
political agenda. He has previously employed the military to help stem illegal
immigration and used defense funding to build his border wall.
But drawing the military into his
response (here) to the sometimes violent civil unrest that broke
out in Minneapolis last week and spread to dozens of cities, is particularly
problematic.
At the core of the discomfort is a
single idea: The military was designed to protect the United States from
foreign adversaries and uphold a constitution that explicitly protects the
rights of citizens to protest peacefully.
Even the head of the National Guard acknowledged that responding to domestic crises makes his troops uneasy. So far, more than 20,000 National Guard members have been called up to assist local law enforcement with protests around the country.
“This mission is an uncomfortable mission.
They don’t like doing it, but we can do it,” said General Joseph Lengyel, chief
of the National Guard Bureau.
Esper and General Mark Milley,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accompanied Trump on Monday as he posed
at a church near the White House while holding a Bible after law enforcement
officers used teargas and rubber bullets to clear the area of peaceful
protesters.
Trump had just delivered a speech
condemning “acts of domestic terror” and saying the United States was in the
grips of professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals
and others.
A senior defense official suggested
neither Esper nor Milley knew about the photo-op and had been at the White
House to give Trump an update on response efforts.
“As that meeting concluded, the
president indicated an interest in viewing the troops that were outside and the
secretary and the chairman went with him to do so. That’s the extent of what
was taking place,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In a memo to Defense Department
employees on Tuesday, Esper called on personnel to “stay apolitical in these
turbulent days.”
James Miller, a former Pentagon
official who sits on the Defense Science Board, said he was resigning from the
board after seeing the peaceful protesters being cleared by tear gas and rubber
bullets before a curfew on Monday and Esper’s accompanying Trump to the church.
“You may not have been able to stop
President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen
to oppose it,” Miller said in his letter of resignation, which he published in
the Washington Post.
Kori Schake, of the conservative
American Enterprise Institute and an expert on U.S. civilian-military
relations, said Esper and Milley need to be held to account for their
“shocking” decision to appear in that setting.
“They made choices. They could have
said, Mr. President, I think it would send a bad signal for me to do this,”
Schake said.
Alice Friend, a former Pentagon
official, said Esper and Milley, by using terms like battlespace, were blurring
the lines between American citizens in the United States and enemies in war
zones.
“To divide and conquer at home, using
the United States military, is an incredible escalation of the government’s
coercive power,” said Friend, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
A senior defense official, asked
about such criticism, said Esper was simply using the terminology he’s
accustomed to using as the leader of America’s military.
But the Pentagon’s role in the civil
unrest could soon dramatically deepen if Trump decides to deploy active duty
forces, something the U.S. military has been reluctant so far to do.
Trump on Monday threatened to send
active duty U.S. troops to stamp out the civil unrest gripping several cities.
To deploy the military on U.S. soil
for law enforcement purposes, Trump would need to invoke the 1807 Insurrection
Act (here) - something last done in 1992 in response to the
Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.
To that end, the U.S. military has
pre-positioned active duty forces, largely military police and engineers, on
the outskirts of the Washington, D.C.-area to potentially deploy, if needed.
The top Republican on the House of
Representatives Armed Services Committee, Mac Thornberry, said discussions
about the Insurrection Act could easily make U.S. troops “political pawns.”
His Democratic counterpart and chair
of the committee, Adam Smith, said he called on Esper and Milley to testify.
“I remain gravely concerned about
President Trump’s seemingly autocratic rule and how it affects the judgment of
our military leadership,” Smith said.
“The fate of our democracy depends on how we navigate this time of crisis.” - Reuters
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