Generals Denounce Trump’s Protest Crackdown Plan
U.S. President Donald Trump wants a military response to street protests, but his chief military advisor thinks otherwise.
As Trump Threatens Military Force, Generals Push Back
BY COLM QUINN
Foreign Policy | JUNE 4, 2020
As protests across the United States enter their tenth day, senior U.S. military personnel have been lining up to voice their opposition to a Trump administration that has signaled its eagerness to unleash military force to put down the demonstrations.
U.S. President Donald Trump hinted on Monday that he may invoke the Insurrection Act, a two-century old law that would allow active duty military personnel to support law enforcement. It was last used in 1992 to quell riots in California in the aftermath of Rodney King’s beating by Los Angeles police.
He has been egged on by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who published an op-ed in the New York Times online Wednesday entitled “Send In The Troops.” The piece prompted ridicule online and a rebuke from Times journalists who said the piece endangered the newspaper’s black workers.
Will the top brass force Trump to back down? Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the most senior military advisor to Trump, issued a rare memo to the country’s armed services reminding them of their duties as well as the rights of their fellow citizens to free assembly. “We all committed our lives to the idea that is America—we will stay true to that oath and the American people,” Milley wrote in the handwritten portion of the memo.
Writing in Foreign Policy, John Allen, a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star general and current president of the Brookings Institution also criticized calls for militarization. “Right now, the last thing the country needs—and, frankly, the U.S. military needs—is the appearance of U.S. soldiers carrying out the president’s intent by descending on American citizens. This could wreck the high regard Americans have for their military, and much more,” he wrote.
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https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/04/generals-denounce-trump-plan-mattis-milley-allen-esper/
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