Three retired U.S. Army generals with a total of five stars on their (combined) shoulders and with a total of nearly one century of active military duty (98 years to be exact) have penned an op-ed in the Washington Post warning Americans about the “potential for lethal chaos inside our military, which would put all Americans at severe risk” in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
“In short,” they write, “We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time.”
They point to potential signs already here in our armed forces:
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.
Even more worrying, they write, is the fact that the commanding general of the Oklahoma National Guard, Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, recently refused to obey President Biden’s order that Oklahoma National Guard members be vaccinated against the coronavirus, claiming that “while the Oklahoma Guard is not federally mobilized, his commander in chief is the Republican governor of the state, not the president.”
The generals warn against the potential total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan lines with competing commander in chiefs (a reelected Biden versus Trump “or anther Trumpian figure”) and “rogue units organizing among themselves to support the ‘rightful’ commander in chief…”
Under such a scenario it is not outlandish, the generals continue, to conceive a military breakdown that could lead to civil war and could place our national security at risk.
The three generals urge our elected officials and other leaders, our Defense Department and the military to take immediate steps to prevent such disaster from occurring:
• Those who inspired the insurrection must be urgently held to account by the whole of Congress and the Justice Department.
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The Defense Department should war-game the next potential post-election insurrection or coup attempt to identify weak spots. It must then conduct a top-down debrief of its findings and begin putting in place safeguards to prevent breakdowns not just in the military, but also in any agency that works hand in hand with the military.
• The military “should immediately order a civics review for all members — uniformed and civilian — on the Constitution and electoral integrity…a review of the laws of war and how to identify and deal with illegal orders… reinforce ‘unity of command’…[make every] service member…understand whom to take orders from during a worst-case scenario…identify, isolate and remove potential mutineers; guard against efforts by propagandists who use misinformation to subvert the chain of command…”
“The military and lawmakers have been gifted hindsight to prevent another insurrection from happening in 2024 — but they will succeed only if they take decisive action now,” they conclude.
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The three generals are: Paul D. Eaton, a retired U.S. Army major general and a senior adviser to VoteVets; Antonio M. Taguba, a retired Army major general, with 34 years of active duty service, and Steven M. Anderson, a retired brigadier general who served in the U.S. Army for 31 years.
