Trump Using Our Military Against Americans is the Lowest He’s Sunk
No Respect for the Souls of Soldiers
In 1970, it started with a war that we should not have been fighting. It started with peaceful protests of a draft that came for the young and sent them to kill and die for the beliefs of the old.
National Guardsmen sent to the campus of Kent State University to quell a student demonstration against the Viet Nam War opened fire, killing 4.
It was wrong for them to shoot. It was wrong for their leaders to put them in that position.
In 2020 it started with a murder and a collective action to protest ongoing injustice that really started as far back as 1619.
It is wrong for our leaders to speak of this, as Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has, as a “Battlespace” to be “dominated.”
It is wrong for our leaders to employ military helicopters and other weapons of war to clear our streets of peaceful citizens.
It is American soil. The demonstrators are Americans. They not only have as much right to that space as the President, they are in the right.
Right side of justice. Right side of history. Right side of “right or wrong.”
Meanwhile… humans want to be human.
Who will be the next soldier or civil servant to go down in history for the next avoidable killing, the next tragedy, the next atrocity?
Who will be the next soldier who volunteered to protect his country only to end up facing down the people he swore to protect, who will later watch himself on video making a terrible mistake, taking a life that he swore to defend?
And why, in God’s name, for the memory of those who gave their lives for our country, who fought and killed specifically so Americans can march for justice today… why, for all that is decent in this world are we allowing unqualified, uncaring civilian officials to put them in that position?
Why, when we are on the same side? Why, when we are all Americans? Why, when our cause is just, and right, and overdue?
For what? For who’s benefit? Why?
“As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property. I am your president of law and order.”
— Disgraced and impeached President of the United States, Donald Trump.
George Floyd was murdered by a racist hiding behind the authority of our government.
Our. Government.
George Floyd was murdered by a man hiding behind the power that we, the people, gave him.
That makes his murder our responsibility.
As of this writing, there are 11 dead across the country so far. The military has not caused any of these new deaths. The circumstances are different in each case. Criminals have killed the innocent. Police have killed the innocent, seemingly by the same kind of tragic mistakes that happened at Kent State (policing policy in America needs to be re-thought from the ground up, but that is a different subject). The blame in each case may be different, but the fact is, 11 are dead and eleven other people have to live with their part in ending those lives. And the fire only burns hotter.
When the next person is killed by our government in the fallout from that crime, whether they are trampled by a horse, struck too hard by a baton or a tear gas canister, or a bullet from a government issue gun… it’ll very likely be legal. But someone will still be dead that shouldn’t be, and the soldier or policeman who takes their life will still have to live with it.
If the killer is a soldier, we can, and probably will say that he or she should have resisted immoral orders. But do we give any thought at all about how hard it is for one soldier (the one who will eventually be behind this act) to stand up to their orders? Do we really expect a 21-year-old to risk their career and disgrace and jail to stand up for principles that we, the people they work for, don’t seem to have?
Because the truth is, that soldier should not be there in the first place. And the fact that he is, is on us. We let it happen. Enough of us voted to let this happen. When the time to remove a morally unfit president came, enough of us stood idly by when we could have made a difference.
Will we stand up for these men and women before another tragedy happens? Or will we vilify them to make ourselves feel better after the fact?
Our government has a long history of treating our soldiers and veterans with glowing words when it doesn’t matter, and no respect at all when it does.
We thank them for being willing to die for us. And we don’t talk very much at all of the consequences when we ask them, expect them, to kill for us.
Kill who? For who’s benefit? Why?
Sometimes there are good answers to those questions. Sometimes it’s what we saw on Sunday.
“As military helicopters flew low over the nation’s capital and National Guard units moved into many cities, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly aligned themselves behind a president who chose chemical spray and rubber bullets to clear peaceful protesters from a park so that he could stage a photo op at a nearby church.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/us/politics/military-national-guard-trump-protests.html
Attorney General William Barr gave the order for the Police to attack moments before the President gave that speech to set up his staged walk of authoritarian cosplay to the church across the street.
You’ve seen the footage by now. Unarmed, peaceful men and women, standing still for hours in broad daylight. An order was given by an openly corrupt Attorney General, and Police in riot gear did what they are trained to do, what they are expected to do— follow orders.
Our orders.
It is our responsibility, yours and mine as voting members of a democracy to have their backs. Our soldiers and our police. They are servants of the people, not the president. We are responsible for allowing every unfit leader, every corrupt bureaucrat, every single person in the chain of command that can influence an order to attack the innocent.
“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Viet Nam? How do you ask a man to die for a mistake?” — John Kerry
The year was 1971 and Kerry was a veteran of the Viet Nam War testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in an attempt to bring our soldiers home.
The last two men to die in Viet Nam were Marines. They died in a rocket attack one day before the Fall of Saigon in 1975, four years after Kerry asked that question.
This is a good time for another question.
How long are we going to keep putting our soldiers in positions where they might kill innocent people for our mistakes?
Our next chance to do the right thing by our men and women in uniform is 11/3/2020.
* Edit: Link added to this new development in this story. This is a good sign… 89 former defense officials have signed their names to this message:
“Beyond being unnecessary, using our military to quell protests across the country would also be unwise. This is not the mission our armed forces signed up for: They signed up to fight our nation’s enemies and to secure — not infringe upon — the rights and freedoms of their fellow Americans. In addition, putting our servicemen and women in the middle of politically charged domestic unrest risks undermining the apolitical nature of the military that is so essential to our democracy. It also risks diminishing Americans’ trust in our military — and thus America’s security — for years to come.”
More from Stephen T. Harper:
“I wonder, when we thank veterans for putting their own lives in danger, whether it might be better to apologize for the lives we ask them to take.”