Trump's own Pentagon chief publicly tells him NOT to use the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops - as president tweets 'get tough, police' after ordering combat Task Force 504 to D.C.
Daily Mail
June 3, 2020
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters Wednesday he was opposed to invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act to send the U.S. military to impose control of cities – even as the president talked tough on Twitter and ordered an infantry battalion to Washington, D.C.
Esper made the public statement of opposition to the idea after the White House publicly floated it on Monday – and after the administration took heat for the use of tear gas and rubber bullets to clear protesters out of Lafayette Park just before Esper joined President Donald Trump at a photo-op.
'I say this not only as secretary of defense, but also as a former soldier and a former member of the National Guard,' Esper told reporters at a Pentagon press conference as he announced his position.
'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,' he said.
__________
Mattis goes after Trump: The president ‘tries to divide us’
By Lara Seligman
Politico
June 3, 2020
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
broke his silence on the conduct of President Donald Trump on Wednesday,
blasting him and top military leaders and saying he is “angry and
appalled” with the events of the past week.
“Donald Trump 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 effort. We are
witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership,”
Mattis said in a statement sent to reporters Wednesday evening.
This
marked Mattis' first public criticism of his former boss since the
retired Marine Corps general resigned in late 2018 over Trump's decision
to pull U.S. troops from Syria.
While he did not cite any other
officials by name, Mattis harshly criticized Pentagon leaders, including
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, for their handling of the military
response to race-related protests across the country.
Even as Esper reversed a decision to
send home active-duty troops on alert to respond to unrest in the
national capital region on Wednesday, Mattis argued for deploying the
military at home only on “very rare occasions,” and only at the request
of state governors.
“We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose,” he wrote.
He cited Esper’s decision to pose in a
“bizarre photo op” outside St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington,
D.C., after Attorney General Bill Barr ordered the clearing of
protesters on Monday night. Esper said on Wednesday that he hadn’t known
ahead of time that the photo op was happening.
Mattis called the decision to clear
protesters in Lafayette Square an “abuse of executive authority” and
said that Americans should “reject and hold accountable those in office
who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”
Mattis also urged the public to reject
Esper’s characterization of American cities as a “‘battlespace’ that
our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate,'” referring to the
defense secretary’s comments comments to governors on Monday. (Esper
said on Wednesday that in retrospect he would have used different
language “so as not to distract from the more important matters at hand
or allow some to suggest that we are militarizing the issue.”)
Mattis noted that when he joined the
military, he took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution, and “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.”
Militarizing the response to civil
unrest, as Mattis proclaims “we witnessed in Washington, DC,” sets up a
“false conflict” between the military and civilian society, he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment