2024 - America's Night of the Long Knives?

 

Three retired US generals have taken to the Washington Post to warn of a potential coup in 2024. A number of today's serving generals, they fear, could go rogue.

The signs of potential turmoil in our armed forces are there. On Jan. 6, a disturbing number of veterans and active-duty members of the military took part in the attack on the Capitol. More than 1 in 10 of those charged in the attacks had a service record. A group of 124 retired military officials, under the name “Flag Officers 4 America,” released a letter echoing Donald Trump’s false attacks on the legitimacy of our elections.

Recently, and perhaps more worrying, Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, the commanding general of the Oklahoma National Guard, refused an order from President Biden mandating that all National Guard members be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Mancino claimed that while the Oklahoma Guard is not federally mobilized, his commander in chief is the Republican governor of the state, not the president.

The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines — from the top of the chain to squad level — is significant should another insurrection occur. The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the “rightful” commander in chief cannot be dismissed.

Imagine competing commanders in chief — a newly reelected Biden giving orders, versus Trump (or another Trumpian figure) issuing orders as the head of a shadow government. Worse, imagine politicians at the state and federal levels illegally installing a losing candidate as president.

The generals' prescription.

First, everything must be done to prevent another insurrection. Not a single leader who inspired it has been held to account. Our elected officials and those who enforce the law — including the Justice Department, the House select committee and the whole of Congress — must show more urgency.

But the military cannot wait for elected officials to act. The Pentagon should immediately order a civics review for all members — uniformed and civilian — on the Constitution and electoral integrity. There must also be a review of the laws of war and how to identify and deal with illegal orders. And it must reinforce “unity of command” to make perfectly clear to every member of the Defense Department whom they answer to. No service member should say they didn’t understand whom to take orders from during a worst-case scenario.

In addition, all military branches must undertake more intensive intelligence work at all installations. The goal should be to identify, isolate and remove potential mutineers; guard against efforts by propagandists who use misinformation to subvert the chain of command; and understand how that and other misinformation spreads across the ranks after it is introduced by propagandists.

I wish I could dismiss this as fearmongering but I think there is real reason for concern.  The United States as a democratic republic is no longer a sure thing.  

Political analysts, scholars and close observers of government are explicitly raising the possibility that the polarized American electoral system has come to the point at which a return to traditional democratic norms will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

It is fair to say that, at both state and federal levels, today's Republicans have little use for democracy and work to subvert it where possible whether through voter suppression, gerrymandering or other means while the US Supreme Court, now stacked with reliably fringe justices, looks the other way.

An electoral coup d'etat, a constitutional coup d'etat, a military coup d'etat all, at this point, seem possible. Coups are something we once associated with retrograde states, banana republics.  Now the prospect haunts America.

Could the generals go rogue? Back in 2015, Seymour Hersch, of My Lai fame, wrote that the chiefs of staff thwarted Obama to help keep Assad in power in Syria seeing the dictator as a useful counterfoil to ISIS. 

But the telling moment came prior to the Biden inauguration when each member of America's Joint Chiefs of Staff responded to the sacking of the Capitol Building on January 6.

Top military officials prefer to stay out of anything tinged with politics. For one to say something after last week’s event would be noteworthy and rare enough. For all eight Joint Chiefs to speak out together — in a “message to the Joint Force,” no less — shows just how perilous they deem this moment to be.

“The violent riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process,” the letter signed by all the Joint Chiefs reads. “We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that were inconsistent with the rule of law. The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection.”

While that may be a general statement about the insurrection meant more for the public, the next section was clearly meant for the troops they help lead.

“As Service Members, we must embody the values and ideals of the Nation. We support and defend the Constitution,” they wrote. “Any act to disrupt the Constitutional process is not only against our traditions, values, and oath; it is against the law.”

It's not so much the writing of the letter. It's the fact that the Joint Chiefs thought such a thing needed to be written and made public that's troubling. It's an admission that they doubted the loyalty of some of the flag rank officers under their command, mutineers with gold braid. They saw unrest in their ranks and needed to deal with it publicly. 

Once this was the stuff of people such as Gaddafi or Pinochet, Franco or Amin. Things change.