Listen to the general: America doesn’t send soldiers to bully law-abiding protesters

An axiom of autocrats is that if you lose the military, you lose the country, which is why we don’t talk much about that in the United States.

The very notion of an autocrat in the White House is almost beyond comprehension in our democratic republic. It is the stuff of speculative fiction, as in Philip Roth’s brilliant “The Plot Against America.”

And it is understood that the military has no place in domestic politics.

Our armed forces belong to no president. They defend our nation “against all enemies, foreign or domestic,” as expressed in the Army oath of enlistment, with a clear understanding that no American exercising their constitutional rights is ever an enemy.

In the United States, the military stays out of it.

Maybe that’s why President Donald Trump finally did it on Monday — finally went too far for even many of his steadfast supporters — when he or his attorney general ordered the military to disperse, using force, a lawfully assembled group of protesters outside the White House.

Maybe that’s why Trump’s former secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, finally quit biting his tongue and excoriated the president for trashing the one value — nonintervention in domestic affairs — that the U.S. military holds most dear.

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis told The Atlantic. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Maybe that’s why retired Gen. John Allen, former commander of American forces in Afghanistan, also quit biting his tongue. In an essay on Wednesday in the journal Foreign Policy, he attacked Trump, too.

“It wasn’t enough that peaceful protesters had just been deprived of their first-amendment rights,” Allen wrote, referring to how Trump bullied away the protesters just to stand in front of a church for the cameras. “This photo-op sought to legitimize that abuse with a layer of religion.”

Maybe that’s why Trump’s current defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, broke with the president on Wednesday — as Trump stood there fuming — and said active-duty military troops have no business being sent out to control protests.

Active-duty forces should be used in law enforcement only “as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations,” Esper said. “We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act now.”

Esper came around to that view a little late. He was among those who walked with Trump to the church. But he reportedly got an earful about that from fellow soldiers, and he figured it out. Wannabe tinpot dictators might dig martial law, but it’s not the American way.

Maybe that’s why Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, released his own message to top military commanders on Wednesday. The American Constitution, he said, “gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.”

Maybe that’s why Trump’s support among the rank and file in the American military could be sliding, for all his saluting the troops and hugging the flag. A Military Times poll in December showed that 45% of military personnel held a “very unfavorable” view of him.

You can bet that Trump’s eagerness to sic soldiers on other law-abiding citizens, whose only beef is that they’re fed up with bad cops beating and killing African American men, is not sitting well with many of our nation’s soldiers, some 43% of whom are people of color.

Is this a final welcome turning point in Trump’s presidency? Are those who refuse to catch on finally catching on? We wouldn’t bet on it.

Some 58% of registered voters in a poll taken this week still said they would support the deployment of the military to control protests.

Our take on that depressing poll result is that Trump and his conscience-free enablers, such as Fox News, have done their usual excellent job of misinforming, conflating reality and brainwashing. They would have you believe that the great law-abiding majority of those who are protesting in cities across the country are, in truth, violent and dangerous.

If you believed that utter lie, you might want to call in the troops, too.

But Mattis and Allen stepped up this week. Esper and Milley discovered their backbones.

And many prominent religious leaders, we might add, expressed their disgust for Trump’s feeble attempts to appropriate the most powerful symbols of Christianity — churches, crosses and the Bible — for craven political gain.

Trump is all about the cynical appropriation of powerful symbols. He would have you believe he personally owns the First and Second Amendments, the American flag and the Bible.

And the military.

He would have you believe that every soldier and tank is his alone, to do with as he wishes.

How we dread whatever Trump might try next between now and Nov. 3.

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