Inglorious D.C. moments can repeat themselves

A small fraction of a large number can be a significant number. So, although the fact that there are a significant number of ninnies among the 329 million people in this country is embarrassing, it is not surprising. What is puzzling is that specimens such as Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have reached positions of considerable responsibility in today’s government.

It might be a fact of today’s political physics that these two have floated upward because they are lighter than air.

They will not exist for long if the nation does not recoil against an administration that includes a defense secretary who refers to this Republic as a “battlespace.” And also includes a four-star Army general who reports to the Oval Office in combat fatigues, dressed appropriately for an evening of police and military engagements that involved clearing a public park of peaceful demonstrators, and intimidating protesters elsewhere. The purpose of the clearing, achieved with flashbang grenades and chemicals, was to enable the Bible-brandishing commander in chief to stand in front of a church for the purpose of stroking the portion of his political base that is composed of Evangelical Christians who relish rendering their souls unto this particular Caesar.

Monday night’s Battle of Lafayette Square, which took place in a traditional venue of protests, and operations elsewhere in Washington, were inglorious engagements for the U.S. military, comparable to events of July 28, 1932. President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to disperse the members of the self-named Bonus Expeditionary Force, generally remembered as the Bonus Army or Bonus March, which at one point that sweltering summer numbered approximately 20,000.

It was made up of World War I veterans drawn to Washington to exhort Congress to pass bonuses for veterans. They were encamped in a sprawling jumble of tents and shanties on the Anacostia River south of Washington.

But Hoover was reeling toward paranoia under the pressure of the Depression, the worst economic calamity in U.S. history until the one that has today’s president floundering. Hoover ordered the dispersal of the remaining marchers.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Army chief of staff, who had been sniffing what he considered the stench of revolution, suspected there were more communists than real veterans. MacArthur had ordered tanks brought from Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, and had alerted mounted cavalry under the command of Col. George Patton.

The cavalry came down Pennsylvania Avenue with drawn sabers, the infantry threw tear-gas grenades, D.C. police pitched in and the mission was accomplished. Sometimes it does seem that history is not one damn thing after another, it is the same damn thing over and over.

Monday’s military and police engagements in downtown Washington were in the service of the president’s promise to “dominate” protesters.

It is perhaps a mistake to be angry at Esper or Milley, or, for that matter, at the officers who ordered military helicopters to hover menacingly at rooftop level to intimidate protestors exercising a First Amendment right in proximity to monuments commemorating those who founded and preserved this Republic. The military officers involved, like their civilian leaders, have been promoted to the level of their incompetence.