WASHINGTON -- Senior Pentagon leaders have a lot to worry about -- Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, China, Somalia, the Korean Peninsula. But chief among those concerns is whether their commander in chief might order U.S. troops into any chaos around the coming elections.President Donald Trump
WASHINGTON — Senior Pentagon leaders have a lot to worry about — Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, China, Somalia, the Korean Peninsula. But chief among those concerns is whether their commander in chief might order U.S. troops into any chaos around the coming elections.
On Aug. 11, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, both retired Army officers and Iraq War veterans, published an open letter to Milley on the website Defense One. “In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your constitutional oath,” they wrote. “If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.
Defense Department officials have privately discussed the possibility of Trump trying to use any civil unrest around the elections to put his thumb on the scales. Several Pentagon officials said that such a move could prompt resignations among many of Trump’s senior generals, starting at the top with Milley.
“The main fear is that Portland is off-Broadway and that Broadway would be something here,” said Derek Chollet, who was an assistant secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. “The idea is that you are going to have a lot of kindling out there and Trump is doing nothing to keep that from getting more flammable.’’
“The planning they should be doing is how to prevent playing a role,” said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and an expert on white nationalist movements.“I know that Milley is trying to think his way through, but I have my doubts he can,” said John Gans, who served as chief speechwriter to the defense secretary in the Obama administration. “The problem is that when the military doesn’t want to do something, they don’t like to think about it.
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