Scholars are warning about what others are celebrating as a necessary corrective to a commander in chief gone wrong.
The generals are speaking up.
Over the past three days, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and all of the service chiefs, have issued messages to their troops — on racism, the Constitution, and the role of the military in America — that are starkly at odds with the language of the elected president of the United States.
Their implicit differences with the commander in chief have been joined by explicit condemnation by several prominent retired four-stars, including Trump’s first defense secretary. On Wednesday, Jim Mattis excoriated the president over his handling of the crisis convulsing the nation following the death of George Floyd. Three other prominent retired generals — former Joint Chiefs chairmen Mike Mullen and Martin Dempsey, and retired Marine general John Allen — issued their own public missives condemning the militarized response to the protests and unrest.
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But some scholars of the appropriate relationship between civilian and military leadership in U.S. governance and society — known colloquially as “civ-mil relations” — said the weight being placed on the judgment of former uniformed military leaders is as dangerous as the use of uniformed officers to police civil unrest and lawful protest on American soil.
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Article URL : https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2020/06/generals-are-speaking-good-thing/165923/?oref=defenseone_today_nl