6mo ago

‘I Think Things Are Going to Be Bad, Really Bad’: The US Military Debates Possible Deployment on US Soil Under Trump

www.politico.com /news/magazine/2025/01/12/trump-military-immigration-domestic-deployment-00195609

According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.

Archived at https://archive.is/He9O6

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"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
-Commander Adama
- The reason is that one is trained to (supposedly) keep the peace and prevent and investigate crimes. The other is trained to kill people. Military methods are incompatible with effective police work.
  
  Ironically the American military is better at it than the police are. They usually only kill someone if they were being fired at first. It’s called rules of engagement. American police have zero concept of it.
  
  Wait.....which is which?
- Trump literally calls anyone who disagrees with him an "enemy of the state", so yeah, we're way past that.
- So say we all!
- If that guy truly believes cops "serves and protects the people"...
  Then we shouldn't be listening to anything they have to say.
  
  The guy is a fictional character in a TV show, and he is arguing that his military troops should not be used for police work.
The constitution is your oath, not the president. Acknowledge that this administration is a domestic threat and deal with it.
- The Praetorian Guard killed something like 13 emperors. Food for thought.
  
  Also installed its own. All power goes both ways.
  In any case, even in US history military has been used against US citizens too. Not many things can really be new.
  
  In their defense, they killed more terrible emperors than good ones.
  Pertinax though... I'll never forgive them for that. Who knows how the entire world would look now if he'd been emperor for a decade or more...
- Didn't you hear? Apparently if we vote for it, a domestic threat is allowed to just walk on in and do his thing.
  
  eyup. surprisingly voting for hitler gets you hitler. I was surprised pikachu as anybody about it.
Every person in the US military has a right to defy orders they see as inhumane or unethical
- It is not a right. It is a duty to disobey.
  
  Let's hope they know that and care. I'm sure it's a mixed bag
  
  Treatment of Whistleblowers makes this statement demonstrably false.
“There was real sensitivity about keeping federal troops away from the front lines,” said Ollivant, who was ordered in by President George H.W. Bush as rioters in central-south LA set fire to buildings, assaulted police and bystanders, pelted cars with rocks and smashed store windows in the aftermath of the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist. “They tried to keep us in support roles, backing up the police.”
Important to note the real reason they kept military and cops "from the front lines" is they kettled Black protestors into Koreatown and then just let the two groups of minorities to fight it out while cops, ambulances, and firefighters were forming a barrier to protect the white neighborhoods.
I stopped reading the article as soon as the author showed they didn't understand that. It's been over 30 years, if the author didn't know by now it's because they didn't bother to research what they're writing about.
- I think the senior military types will only talk about this stuff to journalists who have swallowed at least a little bit of American propaganda, but yeah thank you for getting the correct version of history out there
- I mean, both explanations can be right. The military leaders could have had severe objections about deploying domestically, because they are well versed in history and understand why that is simply not done here. However, they no doubt understood what the local police were doing, and also looked at that policy as permission to take a back seat and not get more involved in the controversy directly.
  
  What?
  The "controversy" was manufactured by authorities...
  There was no violence, no looting, no destruction until police attacked the protestors, then they drove them into another minority area after using violence to antagonize them...
  Like, this was 30 years ago, lots of people have investigated this by now.
  We knew it the year it happened
  “In April, for whatever reason, there was no government assistance in this area. For three days we tried to find police officers. There were none,” he said. “There were conscious efforts to move officers from this area to other areas.”
  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-09-12-me-298-story.html
  Cops are still doing it, when there's a peaceful protest they instigate violence so they can label protesters as violent looters and use that as an excuse to not listen to their demands.
  Everyone who was sent to LA to help with the riots then just stood at the border where "white neighborhoods" started instead of actually going to where the riot was knew what they were doing and why.
  It doesn't take a fucking genius to put it together. Yet the author and some commenters appear to be having a lot of difficulty...
I wonder how many people using social media today have gone back and actually watched the beating of Rodney King.
It is really horrifying. And VHS video recorders are the only reason the police were caught.
- There are countess stories like this one that never ended in riot's. One that comes to mind is Kelly Thomas a mentally I'll man, schizophrenic if I remember correctly. I remember Thomas cried out for his mother as they beat him to death.
  These atrocities sadly are commonplace here.
This is an important step in establishing a police state, which will be crucial for when trump doesn't want to end his term peacefully.
- He's got four years to shake any of the disloyalty out of military ranks. There is no reason at all to think he won't be president until he dies. The other side of that, of course, is that he's very old.
  I feel fairly certain he's accomplished the downfall of the US, but not at all certain he has the wherewithal to follow through. The real question will be how the general population handles the passing of the baton.
As I understand, they’re under no obligation whatsoever to obey jack shit from comrade trump if said jack shit involved orders to turn weapons on Americans on American soil.
And such a request should come with it an immediate impeachment hearing and a tribunal to determine how many years in prison he should get.
- Dude's already been impeached twice. What the hell does that shit even do? I remember it being a huge deal with Clinton and that didn't seem to change things either.
  
  impeached is like "tried in court"
  neither Clinton nor Trump was convicted, which would have meant removal from office.
  
  Bypass Congress court martial him and chuck him in Leavenworth, Gitmo, or some gods forsaken blacksite in Alaska.
Hopefully the US military will honor and protect the US Constitution. If key officers drank the shitty Orang Kool-Aid, then the USA will have become FUBAR (Fucked-up Beyond All Repair).
- There are definitely hawks in the upper echelons of military power, but I've never met one who didn't hold the ideals of the United States as sacred.
  I believe they will stand against tyranny. At first.
  Then they will be replaced, made examples of, forced into retirement, and violently removed. If history is any indication.
  I'm no military or historical expert, but I do believe if we're counting on our military to save the country it is already lost.
  
  Well then, the US is facing what the Germans went through in the late 1920's to 30 Jan 1933.
Wasn’t that literally the last thing Julius Caesar did immediately before declaring himself emperor for life?
- No.
  
  Pompey and his allies induced the Senate to demand Caesar give up his provinces and armies in the opening days of 49 BC. Caesar refused and instead marched on Rome.
  Source: Wikipedia
  Addendum:
  The civil war ultimately led to Caesar's becoming dictator for life (dictator perpetuo). Caesar had been appointed to a governorshipover a region that ranged from southern Gaulto Illyricum. As his term of governorship ended, the Senate ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome. As it was illegal to bring armies into the northern border of which was marked by the river Rubicon, his crossing the river under arms amounted to insurrection, treason, and a declaration of war on the state. According to some authors, he uttered the phrase iacta alea est ("the die is cast") before crossing.
  Source: Wikipedia
The country is fucked, isn't it? We're cooked?
- Deep fried, even
- End of the line yes. This is no longer something that is recoverable within a single generation. There's some hope that our grandchildren or thereabouts can put things right, but I'm halfway through (40's) and I fully expect every year after this to get objectively worse until I die.
- Yes. The US's peak has come and gone.
When military coup? Asking for a friend.
- I seriously wonder whether this is the real reason they are putting so much effort into keeping the Classified Documents case report totally secret, without even disclosing it to Congress.
  As absurd as the thought that the US military would rise up and depose a duly elected President is, ask yourself under what circumstances might it happen? Perhaps it would happen if it came out that there was incontrovertible proof that duly elected President sold that military's secrets to foreign parties (or, worse yet, freely gave them away in exchange for compliments, and plauditudes.) And that two (possibly all three) branches of government refuse to do anything about it.
  It's not the most absurd conspiracy theory I've heard.
- Not until after they purge the "woke" and "DEI" generals first and install their loyalists. Then the executive and military can operate as one.
On the plus side, it would be the first time in several decades the military is deployed in a terrorist rogue state
- But aimed at the wrong people.
  
  Some things never change.
  
  We got oil and unbombed children.
I hope Trump is dumb enough to spend years hollowing the military out instead of doing the easy things. All he has to do in red states is convince the governors to use their National Guard. If they're under state orders there's no legal conflict. And in blue states he could start giving badges to the Proud Boys or whoever, (literally anyone willing to do his bidding) and set them loose as federal agents.
What the old officer corps is really afraid of here is the destruction of military norms and institutions.
- There's also the police that are basically ready to go now. I wonder how ham the military would let the police and brown shirts go before stepping in. I'm guessing very very ham.
  
  Yup, they'd make temporary on base housing available to soldiers who normally live off base to keep them away from the police in that case. But for the most part the attitude would be, "not my lane, not my problem."
  Also, just to be clear, that temporary housing would be permanent. In the best tradition of governments everywhere.

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