Often, in this age of self-quarantine, just sitting in your home exchanging emails with friends you tend to welcome receiving communications from friends and from even those that are not too friendly that gets you thinking. Recently, my friend Terry sent me a lengthy email about the viability of the belief by some that Trump will use the military to keep him in office should he lose the election. He had planned to submit the letter to the New York Times. I have not seen it appear there yet.
Many years ago, Terry served in the military, including a stint as Professor of Military History at West Point. He was also co-author of a textbook on US military history. While at West Point, in the summer of 1969, he was assigned to the White House as a Special Consultant to the White House Urban Affairs Council, working for then Assistant to the President, Danial Patrick Moynihan. He, along with another colleague from West Point, conducted a field study on the political use of the food stamp and donated food programs in Mississippi, Missouri, California and New York which formed the basis for a Memorandum to the President on the Misuse of the Food Assistance Programs intended to provide factual support for President Nixon’s proposed “Guaranteed Annual Income” legislation designed to eliminate the welfare bureaucracy and make direct cash payments to families in need thereby circumventing local power structures that were using the food programs to enforce racial and political agendas. Although the ideas were quashed by Martin Anderson an advisor to the president who was a great admirer of the philosopher Ayn Rand and was a vehemently opposed to the plan, on June 2, 1970, he and his colleague’s testimony on the White House Memorandum and Field Report before Senator McGovern’s Senate Committee on Hunger created more publicity than anticipated, leading to extensive coverage in the Washington Post, the New Republic, and other national media.
Since then, Terry has had a rather checkered career in public service and business. Nevertheless, I have always found his insights into national and local politics insightful. For that reason, I decided to share this with the readers of Daily Kos.
A MILITARY COUP TO KEEP TRUMP IN OFFICE? IT’S HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL NONSENSE
Paul Krugman recently lamented in the New York Times :
“The United States could follow the path of Hungary into an authoritarian one-party state”; “Today’s Republican Party” would cheer on a “Trumpian power grab even if it amounted to a military coup”. And that as a result, we are in “dire political straits”.
This may make hearts flutter but it is really historical and political nonsense. The United States is not now, nor has it ever been, with one possible exception at the end of the Revolutionary War, in danger of a military coup. And certainly not to maintain a defeated President in office beyond his elected term, as a number of leading politicians fear.
The key to understanding the successful American experiment starts with a victorious General: George Washington. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the victorious Continental Army, the progenitor of the United States Army, (US Army flags proudly carry the battle ribbons of the Revolutionary War), had no future. It also had not been paid for months, going on years. The highly educated, for its time, officer corps also had not been paid. These intelligent, powerful, young men had won a war and were dead broke, with families in economic distress, if not facing starvation. These men were in charge of the only organized institution in the former thirteen colonies that represented the entire United States. It was a lethal and effective instrument of national power.
The elected government of the United States, the Continental Congress, had no Chief Executive, was without funds because it had no taxing authority and existed only at the sufferance of the thirteen State legislatures. States reluctantly sent it money to pay for the war. The War was won, the States had their own problems and The Congress and the Army were on their own.
The problem for the country was that the Army was the country’s only disciplined, armed force and was armed to the teeth, with thousands of men in artillery, infantry, and cavalry regiments. The only other armed forces were part-time soldiers organized in state militias that had neither the training nor the experience to stand up to a disciplined and trained professional army such as the Continentals had become. And the Continentals were very unhappy.
They were loyal to one man: their victorious General, George Washington, who had organized and led them through great hardships to victory. He had begged the powers that be for their food, clothing, arms, and shelter. He had succored them in defeat and celebrated them in victory. And now they demanded that he take over the country and govern as an undisputed Prince or King. Under similar circumstances, Napoleon Bonaparte twenty years later would become Emperor of the French.
But George Washington not only refused but lost his famous temper and castigated his troops for being disloyal to the American Democracy that they had fought and died for. He told them that his loyalty was to The Congress that had given him his commission as Commander in Chief of the Army and that he would return his Commission to The Congress within a matter of weeks. He told his officers and men to return to their families, their farms, and their shops and enjoy the liberty that they won with their comrade's blood. And in the most important Initial act that occurred in the history of the United States, he voluntarily resigned his commission as Commander in Chief in person to The Congress. The moment is captured in a large scale painting by John Trumbull and hangs today in the US Capitol rotunda.
Why is this story so important: Because it is taught with great reverence and firmness to all of the succeeding generations of West Point cadets, Annapolis midshipmen and Air Force cadets at all of our military academies. It is the foundation of the Country’s trust in our Armed Forces. It binds the generations of military professionals who have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. And that means the Constitutional provisions to elect a President every four years and install and honor the President-Elect in his new office. If necessary that will be enforced, if required, by the Armed Forces. And there is plenty of historical precedent for such action.
In 1861 when the coming of Civil War threatened the inauguration of President-Elect Abraham Lincoln, General Winfield Scott, a Southerner from Virginia, victor of the Mexican War and Commander in Chief of the United States Army, mobilized regiments of infantry and artillery in Washington to ensure the peaceful inauguration of Lincoln. In 1876, outgoing President Ulysses S. Grant mobilized the troops to ensure that the duly elected President, Rutherford B. Hayes, who had been elected by the House of Representatives by the slimmest of margins, be sworn in as President. There are numerous other examples in American history of the military honoring the requirements of the Constitution and obeying the law, not a particular man.
The recent reaction of the military professionals, both active duty and retired, to President Donald Trump’s threat to impose martial law by invoking, illegally and unconstitutionally, the Insurrection Act of 1807 to restore “law and order” to suppress peaceful protests, demonstrates the profound abhorrence of the military leadership and ranks to a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of Americans to peacefully assemble and protest their government. This abhorrence underscores the obvious: the United States Military serves the constitutionally elected leaders of the country only in their legal roles. Not in actions that may be manifestly contrary to the Constitution.
A President-Elect in January 2021, whoever it may be, will command the Military’s loyalty and devotion. If directed, they will install and defend the duly elected President “against all enemies, foreign or domestic”. And that includes an outgoing President Trump.
I sent a copy of this letter to a few close friends. At least one, Peter, had a strong reaction. It seems almost like a comment to a Daily Kos post.
I hope the Times prints this letter in its editorial page. The military’s historic loyalty to the Constitution needs to be revealed to all Americans, but also to the Military itself to remind them of their over two hundred year loyalty, not to an individual or a political philosophy but to the Constitution. However, I cannot remain sanguine that his argument that the history of the US military’s defense of the Constitution is adequate to withstand the possible coming constitutional storm. History is rife with countries and their military's commitment and loyalty to a specific organizing principle only to have that commitment and more importantly their understanding of the organizing principle to be confused as a result of disagreement over its interpretation. Today, the politics in America is only too often a disagreement over the meaning of provisions in the document. For example, Attorney General Barr’s interpretation of the Constitution as granting almost unlimited Constitutional power to the President. A position that appears a majority of the current Supreme Court seems sympathetic to. How can we expect the military’s loyalty to a Constitution that the people of the country disagree as to its meaning?
Also, it seems this administration is relying primarily on para-military forces to rally to their defense. Militarized border security forces, AFT, Secret Service, and the like appear to have been called upon by this administration to execute its orders and put down protestors. Now we also have lurking in the background, disgruntled local police forces who over the years have been armed with military weapons as well as the well-armed right-wing militias to worry about. We eventually may be looking for military intervention to keep these energized para-militaries under control. Will they be available, or will the colonels not trained at West Point join with the paramilitary forces already acting of the Crazed Clown’s behalf? Probably not, but neither should its possibility be overlooked.
Like Peter, I am not so sanguine about the military or Trump's quiescence should he lose in November. So far, we have received many public comments from retired members of the military General Staff objecting to one or another action of He Who Believes He is the American Dear Leader as well as one or two current members of the General Staff and perhaps from a few lower officers on loan to the administration that have publicly protested specific actions of the administration. I seem to recall, however, that someone once pointed out that it is not the Generals that lead the coups, but the colonels leading elite fighting units. Be that as it may, I would expect Trump would rely more on his irregular troops, the KKK, Boogaloo Boys, and the like. But, of course, I am exaggerating. But, again, if in November 2016 someone said that by 2020 we would have become the laughing stock of the world, seen tens of thousands of our citizens die from administrative incompetence, and millions of Americans out of work, they would have been criticized for exaggerating also. Didn’t Maya Angelou or was it Disraeli say something like, “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”