COMMENTARY

Rep. Slotkin: Why top military leaders don't want to deploy troops at home

Elissa Slotkin
A cadre of law enforcement including Park Police, Metro Police Department and D.C. National Guard face off with protesters across barriers in Lafayette Square just in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. on June 1, 2020.

The right to peacefully protest is at the core of our democracy. That right has seldom been more important than now, amid the exhaustion and despair at the killing of George Floyd and the systemic racism and brutality his death represents. As I talked this week with community leaders, spoke with those cleaning up downtown Lansing on Monday, and watched events across the nation unfold, it was clear we are anguished and fed up and must demand change.

At the same time, I am worried about the violence taking place in some cities. Destruction of property is a crime and does not further the cause of justice. It will be increasingly important to differentiate between peaceful protests and violent looting in the coming days and weeks.  

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We also must acknowledge that we are at a crossroads as a country. What transpires over the next week will say something about our nation. As an Army wife and the step-mom of a serving soldier, I was particularly pained by the president’s threat to deploy active duty troops in American cities. The thought of using active duty military forces, sworn to defend our freedoms, to suppress the exercise of those freedoms cuts against our founding principles. And while I’m relieved that Defense Secretary Mark Esper has belatedly spoken out against such deployments, it’s unclear whether his views will carry the day.

I’ve worked alongside the military my entire career, from Baghdad to the White House Situation Room to the Pentagon and now in Congress. Everyone who has had that privilege knows that our service members are passionate and committed, diverse and dedicated. And apolitical, in spirit and by law. 

But our nation’s founders erected barriers to the use of standing military forces for domestic purposes.They had been oppressed by the British military and feared that large standing armies would turn their new democracy into a garrison state. So it was chilling to hear Esper describe American cities as “battlespace” to “dominate,” and to hear the President say he would put General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s senior most uniformed adviser in our foreign wars, in charge of responding to events on U.S. soil.

It was even more concerning to hear the President harken back to an 1807 insurrection law and threaten that if governors didn’t “dominate the streets” he would deploy “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers” whether governors approved or not.

Then came the images on Monday night of military police clearing an unarmed, peaceful protest with pepper spray and flash-bang grenades so that the president, the defense secretary, the attorney general, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his military fatigues, could walk across the street to be photographed by the media. Later, military helicopters, including a military medical helicopter, flew nearly level with third-floor rooftops as a show of force against unarmed protestors. Those images seem to confirm that the President was willing to use our armed forces to further his political objectives, and to weaponize one sacred American institution against another. 

No one should want to see the military become a political cudgel serving any president’s narrow interests. If American citizens see the military as a political tool, it will do significant harm to the perception of our military as an institution, and therefore to its ability to defend our nation. As we have heard from General Mattis, our former defense secretary, and so many other retired senior military leaders in recent days, our service members must not be turned against our own people and the values they swore to defend.

I am relieved that Defense Secretary Esper has now spoken against the idea of deploying active duty military troops, apparently in defiance of the President. I was also happy to speak by phone with General Milley, someone I worked with when I served at the Pentagon, and hear that he does not believe it is time for such deployments. But saying you disagree is different from disobeying a direct order. The jury is still out on what our senior-most defense officials will do on that, if history comes calling for them.

That’s why the days ahead are so very important. My hope is that we will look back on the threats and scenes of this past week as a moment when we looked out over the cliff, but walked our way back. We are at a moment of inflection, and I urge our senior military leaders to uphold the freedoms that they took an oath to defend. 

Elissa Slotkin represents Michigan's 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.