Trump Uses the Military to Prove His Manhood
The president’s response to
the coronavirus that killed more than 100,000 people was lethargic and
ineffective. But when it came to anti-racism protesters, it was time to call in
the troops.
Opinion
Columnist
·
June 3, 2020
For two decades, the United States has repeatedly made the
mistake of over-relying on the military toolbox to try to solve intractable
problems — particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq — without adequately relying on
diplomacy. Now President Trump wants to repeat the mistake at home.
The United States military is, according to Gallup
polling, the most trusted
institution in the country. But Trump’s call to dispatch armed forces to crush
protests so that he can look tough betrays the military’s nonpartisan tradition
and should trigger all our alarm bells.
It was exactly 31 years ago that I covered the Chinese military’s assault on pro-democracy
protesters at
Tiananmen Square. There was outrage worldwide, with virtually the only praise
in the West coming from … Donald Trump.
“When the students poured
into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Trump told Playboy Magazine months later. “Then
they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That
shows you the power of strength.”
No, United States troops won’t massacre protesters, as Chinese
troops did, but Trump’s deployment of troops for political purposes would
betray our traditions, damage the credibility of the armed forces and
exacerbate tensions across the country.
Trump introduced Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, to governors as the man “in charge” of putting down protests.
“It’s a beautiful thing to watch,” Trump
said of a National
Guard crackdown in Minneapolis.
The Pentagon has rushed active-duty military police and combat engineers
to just outside Washington, where they would back up National Guard units, and
military helicopters have already been used in a show of force to intimidate
protesters.
“I am dispatching thousands
and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law
enforcement officers to stop the rioting,” Trump said in his Rose Garden address.
The Times has reported that there have been heated arguments
in the White House about whether to invoke an 1807 law called the Insurrection
Act that on its face
provides broad authority to deploy the military. Trump also declared, “I am mobilizing all available federal
resources — civilian and military — to stop the rioting and looting.”
Think of that phrase: “all available resources.” In this annus
horribilus, the United States has endured more than 100,000 deaths and 40
million jobs lost from the coronavirus. In response to those cataclysms, Trump
responded lethargically and ineffectively: The American death rate from the
virus is three
times Germany’s and
the unemployment rate roughly four
times Germany’s. But
in response to a week of protests and looting, Trump seeks to send in the Army?
According to the Daily Beast, he even inquired about sending in tanks.
The impulse to call in the military is perhaps rooted not only
in his authoritarian instincts but also in something more personal. Trump
seemed mortified at disclosures that when protesters approached the White House
on Friday night he was rushed to an underground bunker; on Wednesday, he
claimed instead that he went down “more for an inspection.”
Embarrassment at his “inspection” trip seems to have fueled
his desire to project toughness by using the United States armed forces as a
prop.
Most shamefully, Trump’s aides dispatched federal forces to
use rubber bullets, chemical irritants and flash bang grenades to clear peaceful,
lawful protesters — so that the president could indulge in a photo op at a
nearby church. The church’s leaders were outraged, for those protesters had as
much moral right to be there as Trump did.
General Milley and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper accompanied
Trump on this stroll, and Esper spoke of American cities as a “battlespace.” I
spoke to several retired American commanders who were deeply troubled by this.
“I cannot remain silent,”
Admiral Mike Mullen, a much-respected former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, wrote in The Atlantic. “Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must
never become so.”
In a scathing statement also published in The Atlantic, former
Defense Secretary James Mattis wrote: “When I joined the military, some 50
years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I
dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance
to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to
provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in chief, with military
leadership standing alongside.”
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, tweeted: “America is not a battleground. Our fellow citizens are not
the enemy.”
On Wednesday, Esper backed off and said that he opposed the
use of active duty military forces for now.
I find it thrilling that so many Americans have marched
peacefully against racism, although I do wish they would all wear masks and be
extremely careful about spreading the coronavirus. My 88-year-old mom joined a
peaceful protest the other day in rural Oregon, with hundreds of people turning
out in a lily-white community and chanting, “Black Lives Matter.”
Rioting and looting are deplorable of course, and it’s great
that protesters have tried to stop the looters. Police forces are available, so
it’s baffling to hear Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, suggest sending in the 101st Airborne
Division. We need not turn American cities into Falluja.
When you’ve seen the ugliness of war, you don’t lightly summon
tanks, helicopters or heavily armed troops to deal with civil disturbances;
that’s a dangerous and damaging tactic of an insecure old man who claimed heel
spurs to dodge the Vietnam draft and now needs to prove his own manhood.
