Opinion |
Declaring war on the American people, a government chomping at the bit

Trump’s war against “the enemy within” is grounded in lies. Meanwhile, military leaders told to "go along or get out".

by Peter Montgomery
OtherWords

A recent gathering at the Pentagon was extraordinary. Not in a good way.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered hundreds of generals and other officers to leave their posts all over the world. He demanded loyalty to the new “culture” he’s imposing on the armed forces. His message: go along or get out.

Hegseth railed against safeguards that protect service members from abuse and hold people accountable for wrongdoing. He mocked “stupid” and “politically correct” rules of engagement. “You kill people and break things for a living,” he said.

“We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy,” Hegseth said.

These comments became far more alarming when President Donald Trump took the stage and made it clear who he sees as the enemy. Trump told military leaders that he’s sending them to war against “the enemy within.”

U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status, and children have been among those detained in increasingly brazen and aggressive encounters...

So the “punishing violence” that Hegseth demands is to be deployed against people here at home. More specifically, Trump said the military should use American cities as “training grounds,” saying, “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

Here’s what that war looked like in Chicago recently: federal agents rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter onto an apartment building in the middle of the night, border patrol agents breaking into apartments and allegedly zip-tying young children (though DHS denies they were zip-tied), detaining American citizens, and leaving people’s apartments and belongings trashed.

It wasn’t an isolated incident. The Washington Post reported that “U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status, and children have been among those detained in increasingly brazen and aggressive encounters which pop up daily across neighborhoods in the city of 2.7 million and its many suburbs.”

Trump’s war against “the enemy within” is grounded in lies.

Deployment of the military against American citizens is a frightening abuse of power...

The president and his colleagues have been falsely claiming that Portland, Oregon, is “war-ravaged” and “burning to the ground.” That claim was apparently based on a five-year-old video the president saw on Fox TV. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden responded by posting a current video of people peacefully enjoying a beautiful fall day in Portland.

The Trump team’s lying would be laughable if it weren’t propaganda with a deadly purpose.

Fortunately, a federal judge — a Trump appointee — blocked Trump’s plans to federalize National Guard troops and send them into Portland, saying there are no conditions on the ground that could justify it. For defending the rule of law, the judge was savagely criticized by the White House.

On top of all of this, Trump has repeatedly violated the foundational military tradition of nonpartisanship. Speaking to cadets at a recent event honoring the Navy’s 250th anniversary, Trump declared, “We have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats.” As one commenter noted, Trump basically told the Navy to view half of the country as the enemy.

That’s dangerous. And it’s un-American.

People sometimes interpret Trump’s unhinged rhetoric as a strategy to distract people from other stories. It’s worse than that.

I’m sure the president would like people to ignore that he shut down the federal government to preserve tax cuts for the richest 1 percent while forcing millions of families to face huge increases for health insurance or lose their coverage completely.

But Trump’s “enemy within” is more than a distraction. It is even more than a violent threat against millions of our fellow Americans. It’s promotion for a war the president is already waging — one that’s been denounced by retired generals and veterans.

The unjustifiable deployment of the military against American citizens is a frightening abuse of power that should alarm Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. The Constitution can protect all of us only if we defend the Constitution.