Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey has once again condemned President Donald Trump’s ‘inflammatory’ threats to use active duty military troops in response to George Floyd protests.
Dempsey on Sunday warned that the president’s threats have strained Americans’ relationship with the US military.
‘My generation of military leaders, who entered right after the Vietnam War, spent the majority of our careers, whether it was 20 years, 30 years or 40 years, in my case, trying to rebuild our relationship with the American people,’ he told ABC’s This Week.
‘I felt it important to try to keep that relationship sound and solid. Inflammatory language can be an impediment to that.’
Martin Dempsey, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, condemned President Donald Trump’s ‘inflammatory’ threats to use active duty military troops in response to George Floyd protests
Dempsey charged that the president’s threats have strained Americans’ relationship with the US military. National Guardsmen are seen at the Lincoln Memorial on June 2
Dempsey, who served as President Barack Obama’s top military adviser, first criticized Trump’s response to protesters last week, after the president threatened to deploy ‘thousands of thousands’ of soldiers to cities across the nation.
‘America is not a battleground. Our fellow citizens are not the enemy,’ he tweeted.
He is one of several former high-ranking military officials to speak out against Trump, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general.
Last week President Trump threatened to deploy ‘thousands of thousands’ of soldiers to respond to protests in cities across the US
‘[Trump is] given a lot of authority by our Constitution and the laws that interpret it,’ Dempsey said Sunday.
‘I thought, given the state of the unrest, and the risk that we would put the active duty military in a position where its relationship with the American people would be adversely affected, that I should say so.’
Dempsey also commented on Trump’s photo-op with a Bible outside St John’s Church last Monday, which took place after law enforcement forcibly removed protesters using tear gas.
The general called photo-ops ‘some of the most awkward moments we have in that civil-military relationship’.
He said he took Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Gen Mark Milley, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘at their word’ when they claimed they did not know what Trump had planned for the St John’s visit.
‘The relationship between the president’s principal military adviser and the president himself has to be one of trust and confidence,’ Dempsey said.
‘I think that this moment will make it a little harder.’
Dempsey (pictured in 2015) is one of several former high-ranking military officials to speak out against Trump’s response to George Floyd protests
Protesters are seen running from tear gas deployed to clear the street before Trump’s photo-op at St John’s Church on June 1
Dempsey also voiced support for the protests that broke out across the nation after George Floyd, a black man, was killed when a white Minneapolis cop knelt on his neck during an arrest on May 25.
He compared the goals of the protesters to the unfinished work of the soldiers who died under his command in the Army.
Dempsey described how he keeps a box of 132 cards at his desk, one for each lost soldier, to remind him of their sacrifice.
‘I never let myself forget that in the remainder of my career and to this day, because they couldn’t fulfill their potential, I had to make sure that I did the best to fulfill mine, and whatever that meant, and to make a difference in people’s lives,’ he said.
‘That’s what these protests, by the way, it seems to me, are all about. Trying to allow people to actually fulfill their potential, one of the great promises of living in this country.’
‘We absolutely need to be very careful about how the military is used in that circumstance,’ he added.