I've been very quiet for the last two weeks. Not entirely silent. I've replied to a few tweets, maybe commented on social media here or there. But for the most part I assumed that my role during the Black Lives Matter protests was to shut up, listen as much as possible, and amplify black voices wherever I could.
Trying to take that tack, I reached out to a black author I respect a great deal and asked him to write, well, this blogpost. However, he encouraged me to express my own thoughts, because too many people are scared to get involved in the messy, complicated discussion of race in America.
Well, so, this may not be very good, but it will at least take up that challenge honestly. I should also state unequivocally that the opinions presented in this piece are entirely my own as a private citizen and in no other capacity.
Two weeks ago yesterday I was terrified. Inconsolable, in fact. Donald Trump had just declared that the military would be moving into the cities to "dominate" the "battlespace." These are, of course, two words that have been picked apart by every pundit in the universe since then, so by now you've certainly felt the existential dread I felt that day. If I was slightly ahead of the curve in being shocked, it was only because of my day job.
For the past twenty years (my entire adult life, really) I have served in the military in one capacity or another - as an ROTC cadet, an Army officer, and a civilian employee of the Army and later the Navy. The first time I heard the words "Posse Comitatus" was as a seventeen-year-old college student in a military ethics class. Back then the shadows of the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the like loomed large.
For some of you, depending on your age, I suspect you may have first heard the strange legal term this month. But its meaning has never really changed. The military does not operate on American soil. The National Guard, in cases of emergencies, and under the oversight of state governors, occasionally. But the federal military? It's quite simply never supposed to happen, like Caesar crossing the Rubicon.
Of course, Caesar did cross the Rubicon and at the beginning of June it seemed that Trump would be casting his own die. Two weeks ago I was certain that Trump's latest outrage would also be the last and final outrage: the complete destruction of democracy in America. If the military was called upon to suppress the protests, and I was a part of this military, even in the minor, middling capacity that I am, didn't that make me complicit? If not merely complicit, perhaps a collaborator? Perhaps even a war criminal?
For the first time I seriously considered resigning my post in protest. And it was a terrifying idea. Would I toss my career of twelve years aside? Quit my job in the middle of the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression? Cast aside all of my current and future prospects and safety?
But to support a military coup? Even in the tiniest capacity? What would that make me? What would history say about me, let alone my own conscience?
In discussing this with my girlfriend, she asked me, "Well, aren't service members supposed to disobey illegal orders?"
To which the answer is...complicated. Yes, of course. When told to hold a gun to an enemy prisoner's head and threaten him for information, a Soldier is supposed to say, "Sir, I cannot comply with that order as it violates the Geneva Convention, the UCMJ, and the Army's code of ethics." But even in a cut-and-dried case like that some service members will falter. Allen West became famous, and was elected to congress, after committing just that war crime. And if, as is often the case, if it's much, much more complicated than this scenario, it may not always be clear what the correct and ethical thing to do is.
Frankly, as officers, a lot of times we were told that we would have to take responsibility if an order turned out to be illegal. Sometimes, since you told Private Snuffy to do something, you're responsible instead of Snuffy. This is why the military has courts and tribunals and more lawyers than you could imagine.
So, the short answer to this already overly long question, is that, yes, some service members would ignore the president's illegal orders. But some would also immediately feel that wrenching sense of their entire careers disappearing, the same way I did, and would decide, "Well, the commander-in-chief told me to do it, so it's on him, even if it is wrong." And, some, of course, will face no moral quandary at all, and will simply believe that the BLM deserve to be put down.
In Trump's America, the Justice Department tells us the true story of what happens when people disobey illegal orders. They just get fired and replaced with more compliant people. Which would also be in the back of the mind of anyone at the Pentagon considering disobeying Trump's "dominate the battlespace" orders.
In the recent Netflix show "Space Force" General Naird, in being faced with a moral question of whether to resign or not, says something like, "I know I'm not the best, but I also know I'm not the worst." This struck a chord with me, as it no doubt would with many service members and their DoD civilian counterparts. In short, maybe I should just roll over on this little issue, because I know I can still do good. Besides, if I don't follow illegal orders, my replacement surely will, right? And then the war crimes will still happen, but all I will have achieved is losing my career.
So, in a long and winding, roundabout sort of way, you understand the melancholy I found myself in two weeks ago. A lot of innocent heads were about to be smashed in. America was about to do what it has always done: make the black man bleed and blame him for it, like the abusive partner who says, "Why do you force me to hit you?" And I was on the wrong side of history. Some of those skulls about to be smashed in were going to be tallied on my eternal soul.
Everything in me screamed that despite all of Trump's outrages over the years, despite the resiliency we had, somehow, as a society, shown up until now, this was it. The last straw, the end of the Great Experiment, our version of the Reichstag Fire.
Then something unexpected happened.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Army General Mark Milley, was videotaped in Trump's entourage during the now infamous moments when peaceful protesters were gassed and cleared out of Lafayette Park ahead of curfew so the president could show off a picture of himself holding an upside-down Bible aloft over his head. (Never, incidentally, did I think I would write anything like that sentence.)
The CJCS is the top uniformed military officer in the country, subordinate only to the Secretary of Defense and the president. Now, Tolstoy might have argued with me, but I think future generations may never know how close we came, within a hair's breadth, perhaps, of total immolation two weeks ago, save for one man's embarrassment. We may also never know if GEN Milley would have made the same decisions he made next had he not been videotaped strolling around the wreckage of Washington, D.C. that day. I'd like to believe he would have, that he needn't have been embarrassed into it. But I guess there's no knowing a man's heart, or would-have-beens.
In any case, what happened next was extraordinary. I received an e-mail from GEN Milley, distributed to the entire military of the United States, stating, in essence, that diversity is our strength, the military does not and will not act on American soil, and be not afraid.
But I still was, of course. Because Milley could be sacked as easily as FBI Director Comey or Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Ukrainian attache LTC Alexander Vindman or the five inspectors general in the last two months, or the lawyers on the Michael Flynn case, or...well, the list kind of goes on. It's been like a Saturday Night Massacre every day for the past three and a half years.
A few days passed. The protests continued but the rioting had quietened down. I remember initially hearing people saying that the BLM protests had been entirely peaceful but that right-wing infiltrators had stepped in to start riots, shoot at police, and break shit in order to illegitimize the peaceful protests. I remembered doubting that initially. Surely not everyone is perfect, right? That doesn't mean that there's a Proud Boy hiding and chuckling every time a brick gets thrown.
But, whether it was criminals, false flag agitators, or just bad actors within the movement who caused the strife, the protests started cleaning themselves up. And as they self-policed, it seemed harder and harder to justify the uniformed police bashing in heads. And Trump's water carriers in the conservative media started to look even more foolish than usual as they cried for the blood of...well, Americans with signs.
Then I received an e-mail from a high-ranking admiral. Not quite as high-ranking as GEN Milley, of course, but, then again, nobody is. And her letter said, in essence...diversity is our strength, the military does not and will not act on American soil, and be not afraid.
That caught my eye. I remembered commenting on it to my girlfriend at the time. After twenty years interacting with the military in one capacity or another, I can tell you exactly what kind of e-mails a nobody like me gets from admirals and generals. They fall into three broad categories:
1.) Happy Thanksgiving. Stay safe and don't eat too much turkey this weekend. If you get drunk, call a cab.
2.) Hi, I'm so-and-so. Glad to join you./Bye, it was nice working with you.
3.) The command has accomplished some massive, obscure goal you probably didn't even know about because you're busy doing your day-to-day job. Kudos!
So, to get two e-mails from leadership in less than a week about current events is...unprecedented, to say the least, in my experience. The military, in fact, prides itself on its apolitical nature. Honestly, although nothing very pointed appeared in either letter, the subtext was jarringly direct.
Then the walls started tumbling down. People in positions of authority (save the president, of course) started...actually listening to the protesters. With the video tape of a Minneapolis police officer leaning on George Floyd's neck for nine solid minutes, it was hard to argue that he wasn't a straight-up murderer or that the three officers who assisted him were complicit. They were charged, and Floyd's murderer's charges were elevated. A few sheriffs and peace officers started kneeling and marching with the protesters instead of antagonizing them. In small ways, mayors and governors across the country made small concessions to the bare humanity of their constituents, filling the gaping chasm of leadership left, as always, by the White House.
I won't say that the small changes coming from the mayoral mansions are not political and calculated. Of course they are. In every negotiation there comes the desire to trade as little as possible in exchange for as much as possible. So I have no doubt every leader in America is trying to placate the protesters rather than seek meaningful change. But if this leads to meaningful change, if society continues to hold their feet to the fire, if the protests don't let up, and leaders are reminded of what the people are capable of, and what they're capable of stopping, perhaps we will have meaningful change instead of some tokens exchanged in bad faith.
Then I got another e-mail from an admiral further own the chain. Then another. As I said, I have never received an even semi-political message from the leadership in the past. To receive so many, reminding us all of our duty, the oaths we took to the Constitution, it seemed like a sea change. While the criticism of the president was nothing even remotely like explicit, the message was still clear: the military will not go marching into any American cities. That last bastion of non-partisan service may still exist, unco-opted by this nightmarish administration.
So, I don't see a bright and shining future of certainty and Star Trek-level cooperation. But I see signs, surprising signs, small in some cases, shocking in others, promising in some, that democracy may not be dead. That is was up to black Americans to bring us to this point is, in some ways ironic, but in truth not the least bit surprising. The black community has always borne our nation's greatest burdens, often unacknowledged, often uncompensated. To acknowledge their sacrifice, now, at last, perhaps much too late, is the least the rest of us can do, even as they continue to march and protest and throw their bodies in front of the batons in defense of all our rights.
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