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Comment: This is exactly the situation that I have worried about and occasionally commented on here at MFO since Trump was reelected. We have arrived, and it only took nine months.To capture a democratic nation, authoritarians must control three sources of power: the intelligence agencies, the justice system, and the military. President Donald Trump and his circle of would-be autocrats have made rapid progress toward seizing these institutions and detaching them from the Constitution and rule of law. The intelligence community has effectively been muzzled, and the nation’s top lawyers and cops are being purged and replaced with loyalist hacks.
Only the military remains outside Trump’s grip. Despite the firing of several top officers—and Trump’s threat to fire more—the U.S. armed forces are still led by generals and admirals whose oath is to the Constitution, not the commander in chief. But for how long?
Trump and his valet at the Defense Department, Secretary of Physical Training Pete Hegseth, are now making a dedicated run at turning the men and women of the armed forces into Trump’s personal and partisan army. In his first term, Trump regularly violated the sacred American tradition of the military’s political neutrality, but people around him—including retired and active-duty generals such as James Mattis, John Kelly, and Mark Milley—restrained some of his worst impulses.
Now no one is left to stop him: The president learned from his first-term struggles and this time has surrounded himself with a Cabinet of sycophants and ideologues rather than advisers, especially those at the Pentagon. He has declared war on Chicago; called Portland, Oregon, a “war zone”; and referred to his political opponents as “the enemy from within.” Trump clearly wants to use military power to exert more control over the American people, and soon, top U.S.-military commanders may have to decide whether they will refuse such orders from the commander in chief. The greatest crisis of American civil-military relations in modern history is now under way.
Senior military leaders should have stepped in to prevent Trump from turning addresses at Fort Bragg and Naval Station Norfolk into political rallies; the silence of the Army and Navy secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and some top generals and admirals is appalling.
Trump, in his speeches to the military, has ridiculed former commanders in chief, castigated sitting elected officials, and told the members of America’s armed forces that other Americans are their enemies. In deploying troops to American cities, he has set up a confrontation in which military commanders may soon have to choose between obeying the president and obeying the law.
“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Judge Karin Immergut—a conservative Trump appointee—wrote last week when she blocked Trump’s attempt to send troops to Portland. The White House aide Stephen Miller likely foreshadowed Trump’s next moves, including possibly ignoring such rulings, when he lashed out at Immergut’s decision. Miller, a man who hates being called a fascist, made the fascistic accusation that a “large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country” is being “shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general.”
Reports are already surfacing that some military commanders are trying to figure out if they face legal exposure for acting as Trump’s personal hit squad. Their questions are likely more difficult to answer since Trump and Hegseth fired the top military lawyers who would have helped field such queries.
Even if one officer declines an illegal order, Trump can just keep firing people until he gets to another officer who is enough of a coward, or opportunist, or true MAGA believer, to carry out the order. The officer who finally says yes after the others say no would bring shame upon the U.S. armed forces, endanger U.S. citizens, and undermine the Constitution, but eventually, Trump will find that person.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre
Following are edited excerpts from a current report in The Guardian:
Survey finds 58% backing restricting armed forces to external threats amid Trump deployments to US cities Comment: While this survey indicates that only 58% of all Americans agreed that the US government should only deploy armed troops "in the event of external threats", it seems to me that there is ambiguity in that question. Perhaps some of the other 42% may regard our southern border to be exposed to such an "external threat", thus justifying deployment near the border.
Also, 25% of all Americans said that the US military "could be used for other purposes", which I interpret to mean assistance with such things as major disasters, although they wouldn't need to be armed for that sort of service. Still, another possible source of ambiguity.