According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.
Archived at https://archive.is/He9O6
“There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
-Commander Adama
The reason is that one is trained to (supposedly) keep the peace and prevent and investigate crimes. The other is trained to kill people. Military methods are incompatible with effective police work.
Ironically the American military is better at it than the police are. They usually only kill someone if they were being fired at first. It’s called rules of engagement. American police have zero concept of it.
Not exactly, read more US history, especially in situation when the military was called in to remove demonstrators. Look up the Bonus Army and no fucks were given even though the protestors were WW I veterans. Douglas MacArthur and George Patton were involved too. Disgusting piece of history.
You know that happened over 100 years ago right? Things have changed since then. If you wanted to make a good case, then you should have brought up Kent State because that one is very valid for criticism.
Kent State was national guard. I would have brought up something like drone strikes or the infamous “collateral murder”.
The infamous “collateral murder” was selectively edited by Assange. And there are some very good reasons to use drone strikes, even against US citizens who are also at the time enemy combatants. And by “enemy combatant,” I mean literally that, not just someone the US president doesn’t like. I mean people who are attached to an organization such as Al-Qaida or to the military of a hostile state, taking up arms against the US or US allies. They’re as bad as Russian assets going into politics to betray the US.
I am choosing to believe you are saying all this ironically.
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Largely because they’ve spent two decades trying to police Afghanistan.
Wait…which is which?
Trump literally calls anyone who disagrees with him an “enemy of the state”, so yeah, we’re way past that.
So say we all!
If that guy truly believes cops “serves and protects the people”…
Then we shouldn’t be listening to anything they have to say.
The guy is a fictional character in a TV show, and he is arguing that his military troops should not be used for police work.
Ah, so it’s not relevant at all because it’s literally not even based on our own universe…
Thanks!
It’s a hypothetical scenario on a military warship in space with refugees in tow.
Also, it’s not even praising the police, just stating its purpose.
it’s not even praising the police, just stating its purpose
Maybe in that universe…
In ours “serve and protect” was never what the police were for, it was just a PR slogan they put in cruisers
That’s what I’m talking about, our universe is not the same, although you seem to not be sure about how our universe works…
If not youd see why the quote isn’t applicable.
You people are insufferable.
Okay.
You’re so dark and edgy. Do you also use phrases like “the owning class” after reading that summary of Karl Marx that one time?
Science Fiction is largely used as an allegory to explore the real human condition in a way that is parallel to political and cultural topics of the day without the inherent baggage that people would bring to exploring the real topic.
While the original quote and topic is about deploying a military as a policing force, it actually also holds true in the reverse as well, as policing forces shift towards an adversarial militarization against their community, leading directly to the issues you raised in the first comment about the failure of them to live up to the “protect and serve” motto.
While fictional events aren’t real, they are written by real people with views, desires and goals. Good writers will have internal consistency for their characters and try to ensure their external interactions have the authenticity of the ring of truth, because that’s how people will relate to the characters and story.
Good fiction is just a random meaningless story, it’s a platform for education and safe exploration of the real human condition.
Also, just to add some context for the specific example of Battlestar Galactica: the show premiered in 2004. The 9/11 attacks were still fresh in peoples’ minds. Congress had passed the Patriot Act giving law enforcement and intelligence services new directives to surveil and police US citizens and look for signs of future terrorist plots. We were entrenched in two new wars, and there were lots of protests. There were scandals involving the president and his advisors misleading the public about the nature and quality of intelligence they had.
The plot and themes of B:G were a direct response to all of this. The idea of martial law being declared and rights being suspended was not some far-fetched idea the show writers were playing with. People were really concerned that it might happen to squash public unrest.
Yeah, but in the real America police have literally never had “serve and protect” as part of their duties…
It was just a PR slogan.
Invalidating the whole analogy.
It’s just not relevant, and I’m sorry I can’t communicate that in a way you can grok
Good thing you’ll never read 1984, or animal farm, or brave new world, or anything by P.K. Dick, because, yep, completely irrelevant.
No idea why you would make that assumption…
Or why you think that would be meaningful to the discussion…
Just sounds like a bad attempt at an insult which resulted in demonstrating ignorance. If that was your goal, then well done.
The new battlestar galactica was very much based on earth’s problems.
It’s a fictional character from Battlestar Galactica.
The constitution is your oath, not the president. Acknowledge that this administration is a domestic threat and deal with it.
The Praetorian Guard killed something like 13 emperors. Food for thought.
In their defense, they killed more terrible emperors than good ones.
Pertinax though… I’ll never forgive them for that. Who knows how the entire world would look now if he’d been emperor for a decade or more…
Please enlighten us, how was or in which sense was pertinente so terrible?
Other way around, I believe. Pertinax is commonly pointed to as one of the best potential Emperors, and I think Kyrgizion is saying that Pertinax is one of the few good ones that they killed, not one of the many terrible ones.
STTL, Emperor Pertinax!
Also installed its own. All power goes both ways.
In any case, even in US history military has been used against US citizens too. Not many things can really be new.
Didn’t you hear? Apparently if we vote for it, a domestic threat is allowed to just walk on in and do his thing.
eyup. surprisingly voting for hitler gets you hitler. I was surprised pikachu as anybody about it.
Every person in the US military has a right to defy orders they see as inhumane or unethical
It is not a right. It is a duty to disobey.
Treatment of Whistleblowers makes this statement demonstrably false.
Let’s hope they know that and care. I’m sure it’s a mixed bag
As I understand, they’re under no obligation whatsoever to obey jack shit from comrade trump if said jack shit involved orders to turn weapons on Americans on American soil.
And such a request should come with it an immediate impeachment hearing and a tribunal to determine how many years in prison he should get.
Dude’s already been impeached twice. What the hell does that shit even do? I remember it being a huge deal with Clinton and that didn’t seem to change things either.
impeached is like “tried in court”
neither Clinton nor Trump was convicted, which would have meant removal from office.
Bypass Congress court martial him and chuck him in Leavenworth, Gitmo, or some gods forsaken blacksite in Alaska.
This is one of the very few exceptions I have for the death penalty.
There are more peremptory methods available as well.
Hopefully the US military will honor and protect the US Constitution. If key officers drank the shitty Orang Kool-Aid, then the USA will have become FUBAR (Fucked-up Beyond All Repair).
There are definitely hawks in the upper echelons of military power, but I’ve never met one who didn’t hold the ideals of the United States as sacred.
I believe they will stand against tyranny. At first.
Then they will be replaced, made examples of, forced into retirement, and violently removed. If history is any indication.
I’m no military or historical expert, but I do believe if we’re counting on our military to save the country it is already lost.
Well then, the US is facing what the Germans went through in the late 1920’s to 30 Jan 1933.
Agreed.
This is an important step in establishing a police state, which will be crucial for when trump doesn’t want to end his term peacefully.
He’s got four years to shake any of the disloyalty out of military ranks. There is no reason at all to think he won’t be president until he dies. The other side of that, of course, is that he’s very old.
I feel fairly certain he’s accomplished the downfall of the US, but not at all certain he has the wherewithal to follow through. The real question will be how the general population handles the passing of the baton.
I wonder how many people using social media today have gone back and actually watched the beating of Rodney King.
It is really horrifying. And VHS video recorders are the only reason the police were caught.
There are countess stories like this one that never ended in riot’s. One that comes to mind is Kelly Thomas a mentally I’ll man, schizophrenic if I remember correctly. I remember Thomas cried out for his mother as they beat him to death.
These atrocities sadly are commonplace here.
Wasn’t that literally the last thing Julius Caesar did immediately before declaring himself emperor for life?
No.
Pompey and his allies induced the Senate to demand Caesar give up his provinces and armies in the opening days of 49 BC. Caesar refused and instead marched on Rome.
Source: Wikipedia
Addendum:
The civil war ultimately led to Caesar’s becoming dictator for life (dictator perpetuo). Caesar had been appointed to a governorshipover a region that ranged from southern Gaulto Illyricum. As his term of governorship ended, the Senate ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome. As it was illegal to bring armies into the northern border of which was marked by the river Rubicon, his crossing the river under arms amounted to insurrection, treason, and a declaration of war on the state. According to some authors, he uttered the phrase iacta alea est (“the die is cast”) before crossing.
Source: Wikipedia
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It was not what he did before declaring himself ‘Emperor for life’, because Caesar never declared himself Emperor.
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The initiation of the civil war was not because Caesar decided to deploy troops as a matter of suppressing popular dissent, but because the Senate, at the behest of the ultraconservative Cato the Younger, was hell-bent on having the reformer Caesar executed for behavior of his that the Senate had already sanctioned, and preventing the democratic popular assemblies from saving him.
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Caesar, quite famously, did not repress his political enemies, even during the civil war; those political enemies who remained in territory he controlled were left unharmed and unimpeded; those who fought against him were unconditionally pardoned. Many of them went on to stab him several years later, so it’s not like he was pardoning just the harmless ones.
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Caesar’s appointment as dictator in perpetuity was not preceded by military crackdowns.
You just love ruining our Ancient Rome arguments with reality, don’t you? 😝
It’s an addiction. ROME’S HONOR MUST BE DEFENDED
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“There was real sensitivity about keeping federal troops away from the front lines,” said Ollivant, who was ordered in by President George H.W. Bush as rioters in central-south LA set fire to buildings, assaulted police and bystanders, pelted cars with rocks and smashed store windows in the aftermath of the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist. “They tried to keep us in support roles, backing up the police.”
Important to note the real reason they kept military and cops “from the front lines” is they kettled Black protestors into Koreatown and then just let the two groups of minorities to fight it out while cops, ambulances, and firefighters were forming a barrier to protect the white neighborhoods.
I stopped reading the article as soon as the author showed they didn’t understand that. It’s been over 30 years, if the author didn’t know by now it’s because they didn’t bother to research what they’re writing about.
I think the senior military types will only talk about this stuff to journalists who have swallowed at least a little bit of American propaganda, but yeah thank you for getting the correct version of history out there
I mean, both explanations can be right. The military leaders could have had severe objections about deploying domestically, because they are well versed in history and understand why that is simply not done here. However, they no doubt understood what the local police were doing, and also looked at that policy as permission to take a back seat and not get more involved in the controversy directly.
What?
The “controversy” was manufactured by authorities…
There was no violence, no looting, no destruction until police attacked the protestors, then they drove them into another minority area after using violence to antagonize them…
Like, this was 30 years ago, lots of people have investigated this by now.
We knew it the year it happened
“In April, for whatever reason, there was no government assistance in this area. For three days we tried to find police officers. There were none,” he said. “There were conscious efforts to move officers from this area to other areas.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-09-12-me-298-story.html
Cops are still doing it, when there’s a peaceful protest they instigate violence so they can label protesters as violent looters and use that as an excuse to not listen to their demands.
Everyone who was sent to LA to help with the riots then just stood at the border where “white neighborhoods” started instead of actually going to where the riot was knew what they were doing and why.
It doesn’t take a fucking genius to put it together. Yet the author and some commenters appear to be having a lot of difficulty…
My point is that even now that we know all that stuff happened, that doesn’t mean that the military held back because it was directly complicit. Their justification is a solid one, and backed up by years of military history and tradition in this country. Yes, the justification is convenient, but that doesn’t make it less valid. I would have much preferred that the police did their jobs back then without all the overt racism, but sending the military in to do the police’s job would not have been the correct answer, either.
You seem to be lumping in “cops” and “the military” in the same category, where the whole point of this discussion is that they are not, and if Trump tries to use them in that fashion the military ought to stop him (for as long as they can, until Trump purges all the military leaders who are loyal to the country over him.)
The country is fucked, isn’t it? We’re cooked?
Deep fried, even
End of the line yes. This is no longer something that is recoverable within a single generation. There’s some hope that our grandchildren or thereabouts can put things right, but I’m halfway through (40’s) and I fully expect every year after this to get objectively worse until I die.
Yes. The US’s peak has come and gone.
I hope Trump is dumb enough to spend years hollowing the military out instead of doing the easy things. All he has to do in red states is convince the governors to use their National Guard. If they’re under state orders there’s no legal conflict. And in blue states he could start giving badges to the Proud Boys or whoever, (literally anyone willing to do his bidding) and set them loose as federal agents.
What the old officer corps is really afraid of here is the destruction of military norms and institutions.
There’s also the police that are basically ready to go now. I wonder how ham the military would let the police and brown shirts go before stepping in. I’m guessing very very ham.
Yup, they’d make temporary on base housing available to soldiers who normally live off base to keep them away from the police in that case. But for the most part the attitude would be, “not my lane, not my problem.”
Also, just to be clear, that temporary housing would be permanent. In the best tradition of governments everywhere.
When military coup? Asking for a friend.
I seriously wonder whether this is the real reason they are putting so much effort into keeping the Classified Documents case report totally secret, without even disclosing it to Congress.
As absurd as the thought that the US military would rise up and depose a duly elected President is, ask yourself under what circumstances might it happen? Perhaps it would happen if it came out that there was incontrovertible proof that duly elected President sold that military’s secrets to foreign parties (or, worse yet, freely gave them away in exchange for compliments, and plauditudes.) And that two (possibly all three) branches of government refuse to do anything about it.
It’s not the most absurd conspiracy theory I’ve heard.
Not until after they purge the “woke” and “DEI” generals first and install their loyalists. Then the executive and military can operate as one.
On the plus side, it would be the first time in several decades the military is deployed in a terrorist rogue state
But aimed at the wrong people.
Some things never change.
We got oil and unbombed children.
