USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Don't send active duty troops into America's cities
Thankfully so far, President Donald Trump has not followed through on Monday’s blustery threat to send American soldiers to battle American citizens in cities where demonstrations and rioting have broken out.
There’s no question that civilian law enforcement — with the assistance, in some cases, of state- activated National Guard troops — must be swift and firm in responding to the looting, vandalism and fires that have marred so many worthy street protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.
But just because Trump can, under the Insurrection Act of 1807, order U. S. troops deployed inside the United States doesn’t mean he should. Such a step should be considered only if and when all other options have been exhausted. The Insurrection Act has been invoked rarely and narrowly — in 1992 to quell Los Angeles riots at the invitation of the California governor, and to safeguard the civil rights of blacks in three Southern states during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Trump, clearly grasping for a way to appear tough in a crisis, declared himself “your law and order president” and raised the prospect Monday evening of sending troops into states to “dominate the streets” with or without the permission of a governor.
Further blurring the lines between civilian law enforcement and the military, Trump was accompanied by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who jarringly referred to American soil as “battle space,” and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Both Pentagon officials allowed themselves to be drawn into Trump’s grotesque photo opportunity, when federal law officers used smoke, chemical compounds, shields, batons and personnel on horseback to drive peaceful demonstrators out of Lafayette Square in front of the White House, just so the president could stroll over to St. John’s Episcopal Church and hoist a Bible like a prop for the cameras.
Deploying U. S. forces across the country would send a sharply divisive message in a nation where the line between righteous anger and wrongdoing can sometimes be hard to distinguish as a mass demonstration unfolds, where the military remains an admired and nonpartisan organization, and where most surveyed Americans agree with what protesters are justifiably angry about — the travesty of Floyd’s death under the pinning knee of a law enforcement officer.
After blistering criticism from former Pentagon brass, Esper — wrestling over how closely to align himself with a polarizing and mercurial commander in chief — landed on the side of reason Wednesday, correctly telling reporters that “the option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.”
The Pentagon chief added: “We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”
It was a sharp contrast, and already there’s word out of the White House that Trump was irate about Esper’s commentary. Nevertheless, a nation gripped by interlocking health, economic and racial crises doesn’t need more turnover at the top of the Defense Demartment.
Trump should listen to his Defense secretary and abandon the idea of sending active duty troops into the streets of America.
As retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it in an essay this week: “Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.”