“How Dare You Politicize Our Military”

I must confess that I have found “fault” with General James Mattis, both while he served as  Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration and after his resignation from that post. I viewed his silence as complicity.  When he first assumed the appointment as Secretary of Defense many of us were grateful that he would be “there” to keep things “rational.”  When he left that post many of us worried about what might occur without his military experience in that position.  In an interview after his resignation, Mattis said, “When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people  who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country” and then added, “There is a period in which I owe my silence.  It’s not eternal.  It’s not going to be forever.”

Thank goodness that silence was not eternal and Mattis finally relinquished it.  I wish he had done so a long time ago, but that doesn’t matter now.  What does matter is that he is speaking out now in this extremely critical moment in our democracy and saying point blank that the president is “a threat to the Constitution.”  

“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…We must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate.’”

“Donald Trump,” Mattis goes on to say, “is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try.  Instead he tries to divide us.  We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate [italics added] effort.  We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”

“The military is not to be used against Americans,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth.  The president  “is perverting, at best, the role of the military.  And he’s destroying what they stand for and the honor with which they serve.  It is disgusting to me.”  And it is disgusting to me, too,  and ought to be disgusting to every American citizen (and citizens in uniform).  The current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense should resign their positions immediately for executing unlawful orders to target peacefully assembled protestors in Washington DC.  Congress should convene a new impeachment process and remove the president from office for violating his oath of office.  Any member of Congress supporting the use of the military against Americans, or describing American cities and towns as a “battlespace” to be “dominated” should also resign for failing to uphold their oath of office.  

They (Esper and Milley) were “walking along like lap dogs

 behind a draft-dodging wannabe tinpot dictator.

 …How dare you politicize our military.” 

(Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth)