Military as police causes great concern

L.A. and D.C. deployments are misguided; duty with ICE is outrageous

By William (Coty) Keller, Florida Veterans for Common Sense member

The president’s use of the military as a police force causes great concern. The misguided use of the military anywhere for domestic action is harmful to the nation and the armed forces. Sending active-duty military for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) duty is an illegal order that should rightfully be disobeyed.

David French, an Army vet, in a New York Times op-ed, Trump’s Domestic Deployments Are Dangerous. For the Military. writes that “Much of the commentary surrounding President Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., has centered on its impact on American democracy. Do we want to live in a republic that puts military boots on city streets at the whim of a politician, rather than in response to an extraordinary need?”

But French is just as concerned about the effect of these domestic deployments on the military itself. “He’s threatening to expand his campaign into blue cities in blue states where homicide rates are actually far lower than in many cities in red states…. In fact, a large number of the most dangerous cities in the nation are in red states. The military is America’s most-trusted government institution, and its tradition of nonpartisan service is indispensable to maintaining that trust. If the president uses the military against his domestic foes, he risks fracturing its bond with the American public and diminishing its ability to recruit young Americans from all our political factions.”

Three reasons

French lists three reasons these misguided deployment are a grave threat to one of America’s most indispensable institutions:

1. They will degrade military cohesion and morale, because they coerce members who are Democrats, independents and Republicans into a MAGA campaign that many would find outrageous.
2. They push the military beyond its training. National Guard units (much less active-duty troops) are not trained to police American streets. Even members of the military police are ill-suited for the task.
3. They can endanger national security by diluting readiness for the military’s true mission: deterring our nation’s formidable foreign enemies and defeating them in combat if deterrence fails.

ICE converted to secret police

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman writes, in ICEing the U.S. Economy, That ICE has been converted into a huge secret police force — what are we supposed to call an organization whose masked agents, bearing no identification, simply grab people off the street? Florida Veterans for Common Sense points out that ICE now wears combat gear and dresses in military fatigues. Who can tell the police from the service members? How long will it be before the public associates the military with political action? When that happens, respect for the military is eroded.

The image of soldiers, with guns drawn, storming a community in their own country sends the wrong message, says Marine veteran Alexander McCoy, according to the op-ed, the Orlando Marine wants active military off ICE duty. “That’s not what the military is for….It is for protecting America from external threats.” McCoy has organized a petition signing for veterans who oppose ICE assignments for military personnel. The petition says in part. “The more undistinguishable we become, the more the public begins to associate the military with political crackdowns and fear — not service and sacrifice.” The petition, at flvetsletter.com, was signed by over 600 Florida vets as of Sunday.

Disobey illegal orders

The most valuable lesson I learned while serving with the Navy in Vietnam is that we are bound to disobey illegal orders. Our commanding officer taught us this when our gunboat was ordered to obliterate a village that had been told to evacuate. When we arrived on the scene, all we could see were unarmed people- mostly women and children working the land, and livestock. The captain called Operation Seafloat on the radio and reported that we could not comply with the order. He then explained to the whole crew it was his duty not to act illegally.

It’s a terrible thing that the commander in chief has put active-duty people in a position where they are ordered to become part of the secret police. It’s bad for the nation, our national security and it’s harmful to the service members themselves. But it’s not surprising that the president, once again, sticks it to the military. As another Marine veteran, General John Kelly, has confirmed (Ex-chief of staff John Kelly confirms stories about Trump hating on veterans, POWs: ‘What was in it for them?), the president holds nothing but distain for service members. He calls us losers and suckers.

Coty Keller is a 21-year Navy vet with combat service in Vietnam and an apolitical career on six ships, two of which he was privileged to command. He also served as a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. https://ecopapak.org/

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