It’s not quite like the 1964 movie Seven Days in May, which concerns a military plot to overthrow a U.S. president. Nonetheless, there does appear to be an anti-Trump cabal in the Pentagon with seditious leanings. What’s more, this information doesn’t come via social media rumor or some random source, but from left-wing CNN. This suggests, states commentator Andrea Widburg,
that something is deeply wrong in the Pentagon — the same Pentagon that “forgot” to send absentee ballots to U.S. troops serving overseas, a gross violation of their civil rights, and one that ought to result in courts-martial all the way up to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
The issue? Pentagon officials are conspiring to finds ways to circumvent orders Donald Trump might issue to have the military secure the southern border or help expel illegal aliens from our country. Apparently, the Pentagon believes its role is only to protect other nations’ borders; e.g., Ukraine’s.
Seven Days in January?
As CNN reports:
Pentagon officials are holding informal discussions about how the Department of Defense would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, defense officials told CNN.
Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.
Trump in his last term had a fraught relationship with much of his senior military leadership, including now-retired Gen. Mark Milley who took steps to limit Trump’s ability to use nuclear weapons while he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president-elect, meanwhile, has repeatedly called US military generals “woke,” “weak” and “ineffective leaders.”
Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon.
“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.
Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.
Perspective
This is striking. It’s one thing if an order is blatantly illegal. We would expect the military to disobey, for example, a command to perpetrate a My Lai-type massacre. But blatant illegality isn’t all — or perhaps even part of — what’s at issue. CNN itself states, in its title, that Pentagon officials are “discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders.” (Emphasis added.)
Sorry, but it’s not the military’s place to side with one major party or another in a political “controversy.” Wasn’t ordering the armed forces to go woke (more on this later), which presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden all did, controversial? And isn’t doing the unprecedented and having a proxy attack targets inside Russia, and inviting possible thermonuclear war, controversial?
The reality is that “both sides” are party to “controversy.” (You can’t have controversy without at least two sides disagreeing with each other.) But which controversial side should prevail was settled November 5 by the people. The military’s only job now is to obey its next commander in chief.
Unlawful?
Moreover, the Pentagon may be confusing “law” with agendas. As Widburg writes:
First, it’s clearly within the federal government’s purview to protect the American border from foreign invasions, whether terrorists, cartels, or the economic refugees amongst whom they hide. That means the president has the authority to order troops to the border. If people in the Pentagon conspire to refuse that order, in the best case, it’s a seditious conspiracy to undermine the president’s constitutional authority. In the worst case, it’s treason. And in any case, if they’re military, that would begin with a court martial.
Second, the president clearly has the constitutional authority to protect Americans on American soil from invaders who have already breached the border. The punishment for obstructive Pentagon officials would range from courts-martial to trials for seditious conspiracy or treason.
Third, the president has the authority under the Enforcement Acts to send troops to hot spots on American soil if there is unrest that is depriving citizens of their civil rights. In addition, even the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the federal government’s power to use the military on American soil to enforce domestic policies, has several compelling exceptions.
For example, the Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy troops to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.
Widburg proceeds to cite nine historical examples in which the U.S. military was used domestically. The first is President Eisenhower’s employing of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to desegregate Little Rock’s schools in 1957. The last is the National Guard’s 2021 occupation of D.C. for Joe Biden’s inauguration.
How Do You Think the Military Went Woke?
Moreover, would it really be, as many media imply, some kind of dictatorial and unprecedented move if Trump remade the military in accordance with his own vision? Again, this is what Clinton, Obama, and Biden themselves did. How, after all, do you think the armed forces went woke?
And military-grade wokeness it is. Just consider a Telegraph article, published just yesterday, titled “The woke Left’s takeover of the US military is a real and present danger.” The Biden administration first opened military service to all “transgender” individuals in 2021, the paper reminds us. The administration also entertained eliminating Space Force fitness standards. (Hey, if Jabba the Hut can buzz around the cosmos at 600 lbs., why not?) Furthermore, the Telegraph writes:
Even the promotion of senior officers has seemingly been affected by political and ideological considerations. Consider some of those whom Biden has elevated: one who allowed a drag show under his command, another who supported kneeling for the National Anthem, one who called for a dialogue on whiteness, and another who declared that DEI should be “in our DNA” at the Air Force.
There’s much, much more in the Telegraph piece, too. Reading it entirely is recommended.
Loyalists for Me, but Not for Thee
The problem, however, is that when leftist presidents degrade the military with wokeness, the mainstream media largely ignore it. So many if not most people don’t even know it’s happening. Then, when a traditionalist commander in chief tries restoring sanity, the media create a firestorm. They portray it as a dangerous attack on the status quo when it’s merely an attempt at restoring the status quo. The media thus bias the public against national security imperatives.
Today’s military is part of the swamp — dark, dirty, and alligator infested — and cleaning it out is crucial. Is this controversial? Sure. Only because, however, among us is a darkness-aligned fifth column that cares more about winning culture wars than actual ones.
