'I hate the optics of it,' retired Army Special Forces Col. Robert Wilson said.
In an extraordinary rebuke, General James Mattis blasted President Donald Trump for how he handled the protests, calling him a divisive force and a “threat to the Constitution.”On Wednesday night, after five days of at-times violent confrontations between police and thousands joining protests near the White House, a group of U.S.
MORE: Backlash after Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton pushes Trump to invoke Insurrection Act in NYT op-ed: 'Send in the Troops' Special forces were in place near the White House this week as protests broke out in Lafayette Park over the death of George Floyd.by two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Wednesday and by Trump's former Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Putting soldiers from secretive commando units into the fray may erode the public's trust in the military, some argue.
"It's pretty calm," one of the service members told the Army Times when asked just past midnight Thursday how the day had gone."So far, so good," another soldier told the newspaper, which covers the Army, but is privately owned.A National Guard spokesperson told ABC News that the special operations soldiers on the street had been preparing for a different mission when the need arose for more guardsmen on the ground in Washington.
Special forces were in place near the White House this week as protests broke out in Lafayette Park over the death of George Floyd.Another retired Green Beret, Lt. Col. James Gavrilis, said the selection of troops from a commando unit was not well thought out, but was skeptical it was anything nefarious concocted by the Trump administration.
Mick Mulroy, a former CIA officer and Marine who until last year was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy at the Pentagon, said many in the defense establishment had bristled this week when Defense Secretary Mark Esperin the protests to"dominate the battlespace." Sending in troops from a commando unit did nothing to calm nerves even if they are unarmed, he said.
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