Trump relishes troops in American streets while shunning conflict overseas
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The seemingly disparate postures of recent days -- strongman at home, peace-seeker abroad -- speak to Trump's complicated relationship with the military. He has ordered more troops to Los Angeles and Washington than he currently has stationed in Syria and Iraq combined. He seems more willing at the moment to use the military against Americans than against Iranians. He celebrates a show of force on U.S. soil even as he denounces 'endless wars' outside its borders.
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Trump has always been a contradictory commander in chief, one unlike any other in American history. A graduate of a high school military academy, he never actually served in the armed forces, avoided being drafted for Vietnam thanks to a dubious bone spurs diagnosis, publicly denigrated Sen. John McCain's wartime heroism and was quoted privately dismissing veterans as 'suckers' and 'losers' (which he denied).
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Yet as president, Trump has used the military to serve his political goals. He surrounded himself with 'my generals' and purged those he deemed insufficiently loyal. He entertained a recommendation to impose a form of martial law to overturn the 2020 election that he lost. In recent days, he has given speeches at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, that sounded like campaign rallies.
Trump enjoys strong support among many active-duty service members and veterans who appreciate his vocal backing and admire his unvarnished bravado, according to polls and analysts. Yet some career officers said the president clearly does not understand the ethos of service or the nonpartisan tradition of the U.S. armed forces.
'As in all things Trumpian, there is a fundamental contradiction in how he looks at the military,' said James G. Stavridis, a retired Navy four-star admiral who served as NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe.
'He loves the uniforms and the pomp and circumstance, and the ability to apply direct power without boundaries,' Stavridis said. 'But he also thinks that those who serve in the military could be making a lot more money and gain more prestige in the civilian world, and I think he wonders what drives their sacrifice.'
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Trump and his aides have long insisted that he has deep respect for service members and contend that his eagerness to showcase hardware and troops marking the Army's 250th birthday -- and, in what they call a coincidence, his own 79th birthday -- demonstrates pride in the history and accomplishments of the U.S. armed forces.
'This parade will honor all of the military men and women who have bravely served our country, including those who made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedom,' Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. 'No event can fully capture our gratitude for those who have worn the uniform, but this grand parade will ensure our veterans and active-duty service members are recognized with the respect and magnificence they deserve.'
This is the day Trump has coveted for years. He wanted a similar display of military might for his first inauguration in 2017, and when that did not work out, he grew even more fixated on the idea later in the year when he visited France for its Bastille Day celebration. But military officers, including his second White House chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, resisted, convinced that it was not in keeping with American tradition and would instead evoke the kinds of displays favored in autocratic countries like Russia, North Korea and Iran.
Kelly concluded that Trump had a warped view of the military. The president grew frustrated that senior officers were not in his view loyal to him politically and personally. 'Why can't you be like the German generals?' he once asked, referring to Adolf Hitler's generals, according to Kelly. Once, during another trip to France, he skipped a visit to a cemetery for U.S. troops killed in World War I, saying it was 'filled with losers.' Trump denied both accounts.
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In the final year of his first term, he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to send active-duty troops into the streets of cities where protests against the murder of George Floyd had become violent, only to be rebuffed by Mark Esper, his defense secretary, and Gen. Mark Milley, his chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
After the 2020 election, retired Gen. Michael Flynn and other allies showed up at the Oval Office urging him to order the military to seize voting machines and rerun elections in states where he lost, an idea he considered but did not follow through on, knowing that Milley would resist.
Yet while he opted against using the military to reverse the election results, he did not use it to protect them. When a mob of his own supporters rampaged through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification of his defeat, Trump did not order the National Guard to respond, according to the bipartisan congressional investigation. Instead, the Pentagon eventually the Guard on its own authority.
In this second term, Kelly, Esper and Milley are all gone, and Trump feels freer to pursue his own instincts. In sending troops to Los Angeles, he federalized the California National Guard over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, the first time any president has done so since the civil rights era. Trump has vowed that he will do the same elsewhere around the country if protests merit it, raising the prospect of a wider military presence in American cities.
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To critics, Trump, who uses words like 'invasion' and 'occupation' to justify the troop deployment to Los Angeles, is manufacturing fake wars at home to suppress domestic dissent, heralding what some fear is a creeping military dictatorship. What is striking is that Trump does not seem to worry about giving that impression. He has done nothing to dispel it or reassure Americans that his use of the military against domestic unrest is a limited effort that should not concern them.
'They say, oh, that's not nice,' Trump said of his critics during his speech this past week at Fort Bragg. 'Well, if we didn't do it, there wouldn't be a Los Angeles.' He added: 'Under the Trump administration, this anarchy will not stand. We will not allow federal agents to be attacked, and we will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy. And that's what they are.'
Yet the demonstration of military might on American streets this past week feels jarring coming at the same time as a full-blown Middle East crisis in which the United States has taken a backseat. Trump has been trying to negotiate an agreement with Iran to end its nuclear program peacefully, only to be overtaken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who decided to take matters into his own hands with a ferocious bombardment.
Trump publicly complimented the Israelis on their success Friday but did not endorse further military action, instead reaching out to Iran to resume talks. Some Republican hawks expressed consternation that he would not be willing to more directly support Israel's military campaign.
'Trump is more focused on his birthday parade, or so it seems, than on helping Israel and the West to eliminate a serious nuclear threat,' said Charles M. Kupperman, who served as Trump's deputy national security adviser in his first term. 'Trump can keep mouthing 'peace through strength,' but just mouthing doesn't make it real, and words don't eliminate threats. Actions do.'
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