Beware of Reckless Calls on the Military to Remove Trump

Beware of Reckless Calls on the Military to Remove Trump
President Donald Trump walks from Marine One at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, N.J., Aug. 9, 2020 (AP photo by Susan Walsh).

America needs a lot of things right now. It desperately needs leaders who can unify, not divide, its citizenry. It needs Congress to pass some form of pandemic relief bill, and it needed it yesterday. It needs a reprieve from the unrelenting toll taken on its soul by the coronavirus, a broken public health system, dysfunctional policing and entrenched inequality. Contrary, however, to the views espoused by some national security elites this week, what America does not need is for its military to solve the problem of President Donald Trump.

It is hard to know what exactly was in the hearts and minds of the editors at Defense One when they decided to publish an open letter Wednesday written by two retired Army officers calling on Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to forcibly remove Trump from the White House if he loses reelection in November and refuses to leave office before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, 2021. John Nagl and Paul Yingling, the two Iraq war veterans who wrote the letter, are smart guys who have served their country honorably in uniform and out for decades. More recently, Nagl, Yingling and Mike Jason, another retired Army officer, wrote a smart piece, also in Defense One, on the current debate within the Pentagon about renaming bases named after Confederate generals.

But whatever the motivations at Defense One in publishing another provocative dig at Trump by these two veterans, it was just plain irresponsible. With all due respect to Nagl and Yingling’s many years of service, countering a potential coup d’état with another coup d’état isn’t just a bad idea. At a time when America is so on edge, it is also extremely dangerous.

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
  • Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
  • The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
  • The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review