Scores of retired military and defense leaders are
denouncing President Donald Trump and accusing him of using the U.S. Armed
Forces to undermine the rights of Americans protesting police brutality and the
killing of George Floyd.
The condemnation Friday came in an op-ed in The
Washington Post, signed by 89 former defense officials, and in a letter in
support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, signed by 55 retired
military leaders. It comes days after law enforcement officers used tear gas
and deployed flash bangs to disperse a peaceful protest near White House
shortly before Trump walked to the area to pose with a Bible in front of a
damaged church.
The Post op-ed accuses Trump of betraying his oath of
office “by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the
rights of their fellow Americans.” The op-ed was signed by a mix of Republicans
and Democrats, including former defense secretaries Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel,
Ash Carter and William Cohen; former national intelligence director James
Clapper; former CIA director Michael Hayden; and former Navy secretaries Sean
O'Keefe, Ray Mabus and Richard Danzig.
Separately, Trump's former defense secretary James Mattis, a
retired Marine general, and John Allen, a retired four-star general in the
Marine Corps, have also denounced Trump's behavior over the protests. Mattis
wrote, “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to
support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that
same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional
rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the
elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
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