What happens when “President Trump” gives an illegal order to the military?
The prospect of a Donald Trump presidency is a horror show on so many levels it can be hard to keep track. But amid all the well-deserved attention to Trump’s appalling response to a Gold Star family and his failure to realize that the Russians already are in Ukraine - a warning was largely overlooked.
The warning came from retired Gen. John Allen. He spoke on ABC’s This Week. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:
ALLEN: [Trump has] talked about needing to torture. He's talked about needing to murder the families of alleged terrorists. He's talked about carpet-bombing ISIL. Who do you think is going to carpet-bombed when all that occurs? It's going to be innocent families.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me stop you right there.
If indeed Mr. Trump did become president, how would the military respond to those kinds of orders, if indeed he followed through on some of the things he has said in this campaign?
ALLEN: That's a great question, George. And I think we would be facing a civil military crisis, the like of which we've not seen in this country before. [Emphasis added.]
You know, from the moment that those of us who are commissioned -- and of course all of our enlisted troops as well -- assume the mantle of our responsibility in uniform, when we swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, which is a document and a set of principles and it supports the rule of law, one of those is to ensure that we do not obey illegal orders.
It's an inherent responsibility in who we are. And so what we need to do is ensure that we don't create an environment that puts us on a track conceivably where the United States military finds itself in a civil military crisis with a commander-in-chief who would have us do illegal things.
And my hope would be that the conversation would occur quietly in the Oval Office or somewhere else to advise him not to continue along this track.
But, George, that's a major issue that we're facing here, the potential for a civil military crisis where the military could be ordered to conduct illegal activities.