On Donald Trump's unhinged phone call with governors Monday, the Pentagon's top civilian official chimed in with a truly remarkable statement much to Trump's delight. “We need to dominate the battlespace," Secretary of Defense Mark Esper counseled, as Trump and his top officials urged governors to get more aggressive with protesters. Domination was a simplistic zero-sum concept that clearly animated Trump—he has deployed it repeatedly in his rhetoric about how to handle the protests rippling through the country.
"You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time," Trump told the governors on the same call. "They’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate." Later Monday in the Rose Garden, Trump repeated his contention that governors need to deploy the National Guard "in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets." Trump, the consummate bully, just couldn’t get enough.
But it wasn't just the crowd at the White House that got the military treatment. Later that night, a Black Hawk helicopter along with a medical helicopter sought to intimidate a still mostly peaceful crowd by dropping to rooftop level and training its search lights on protesters, according to the New York Times. The combat maneuver, a purposeful "show of force" used in war zones, worked. Protesters looked up, scattered, and ducked into doorways for cover as tree limbs snapped and signs ripped free from buildings.
Trump's intentional use of military tactics on American civilians cosigned by Esper and Milley drew a strong rebuke from several former high-level military officials.
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2011 to 2015, tweeted, “America is not a battleground. Our fellow citizens are not the enemy.”
Adm. Mike Mullen, another former chairman of the Joint Chiefs from 2007-2011, wrote in The Atlantic: “Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.”
Gen. Tony Thomas, former head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, tweeted a direct reaction to Esper's contribution: “The ‘battle space’ of America??? Not what America needs to hear … ever, unless we are invaded by an adversary or experience a constitutional failure … ie a Civil War.”
Assuming the U.S. doesn't become a fascist state, Esper and Milley will go down in history for exhibiting a complete failure in leadership as our democracy teetered on the edge of collapse. That the two later tried to weasel their way out of their disgraceful conduct really sums up the entire episode.
