Who Would Support Deploying the Military to Domestic Protests? | Hacker News Reader

Who Would Support Deploying the Military to Domestic Protests?

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22 pointshn_acker41 comments

I believe that a total separation of "police" and "military" is necessary for democracy. The military has a job that they need to be good at, but it's not suppressing domestic protests.

So what do we do if the police has been defunded to the point that they cannot hope to keep people safe in protests? To save money, plus intentionally, because certain parties thought that the police is the biggest problem to their safety on the streets (which may even have been true for a while, but doesn't seem to be anymore)

Having been to protests, the police are the threat to the people there. defunding them would improve safety.

No one is trying to do this. You're describing a fantasy world.

In your head it's a nightmare, because you don't understand how society works.

Given that we just elected a serial liar, fascist fanboy, convicted rapist and a probable traitor, who can now absolve himself of all crimes, you are way too optimistic. I think we've just turned a corner into a very, very dark place.

For the past several years there was a movement in the US called "Defund The Police" whose whole premise was the police did more harm than good to minority communities.

There was a sentiment that defunding was a last resort for regaining public accountability of the police. It never happened.

Yes it did: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/us/dallas-police-defund.h...

There is a loophole in the US but AFAIK it is not abused. On several occasions I had breakfast with a bunch of "cops" that were actually active duty and reservist army. Their police patches were from all over the US and they wore high rank and high tenure patches on their sleeves. Every year they train as civilian police in the event of a major disaster that requires the federal government - DoD to take control and coordination of the police. This is done in coordination with the police departments their uniforms represent.

> I believe that a total separation of "police" and "military" is necessary for democracy.

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people." — Commander Adama, Battlestar Galactica

* https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/14/6002211/battlestar-gala...

For what it is worth, the British army was deployed in the streets of Northern Ireland and killed not a few people. They probably had the support of the majority of the rest of the UK.

And of course, in the USA the National Guard killed several students non-violently protesting (actually looking on) at Kent State in Ohio - listen to the Neil Young song.

Also inspired a resistance movement that now arguably has more support than the Crown itself in Northern Ireland.

Not at all that I want to get into this, but I do think things have calmed down a lot in NI and will probably lead to peaceful reunification eventually. Just my uninformed opinion.

Are they planning to censor the internet and confiscate guns? Security checkpoints and searches at state lines? It never stops once it gets going.

It would be hilarious if the Republican Party going full fascist turned out to be the ones who tried confiscating everyone's guns..

It would start with confiscating criminals' guns. Then we'd criminalize certain political groups for "domestic terrorism", e.g. protesting the cop city in Atlanta. Then we would criminalize giving aid and comfort to these groups. Then the state would have carte blanche to confiscate guns for any political opposition.

The reason California has gun control is governor Reagan didn't like black leftists carrying arms.

Key excerpts:

> The U.S. public was overwhelmingly supportive of deploying the military to contain protests that might turn violent. In our hypothetical scenarios, between 60 and 75 percent of the public approved of deploying the military, while just 15 to 25 percent disapproved. This support, moreover, was consistent across party—similarly large majorities of Democrats and Republicans supported deploying the military.

...

> Even in a Jan. 6-type scenario with an election on the line, U.S. voters were just as likely to favor deploying the military against protesters of their own party as protesters of the opposing party.

...

> Our surveys, however, show that military officers are overwhelmingly opposed to deploying military forces into domestic unrest. In our scenarios, just 25 percent of the military approved of military deployments while 72 percent disapproved. The majority of these officers favored aggressive responses to protests—for example, sending in riot police armed with assault rifles and body armor—but felt it was inappropriate to deploy the military.

Control of the military transfers at noon Jan 6.

20th, I think?

Yes, that’s right

A little disturbing we’re asking ourselves this question, or rationalizing why it won’t happen.

Pundits always forget that the number one reason for the state is to enforce the monopoly on violence.

People want order rather than chaos

This predates democracy by millennia.

Thus if there is widespread chaos and disorder, people usually want the state to step in and restore order using all its resources.

That's why police are generally for though. Or even the national guard. Outside of MPs, the military generally isn't trained to serve the people they are put in place to restrain -- hence a lot of issues overseas when military attempts to do this. Domestically they'd have FAR less slack for any mistakes.

The National Guard is a branch of the military though, unlike the police.

"Monopoly on violence" always sounds scary, but the alternative is what... A duopoly on violence? It's worth reading Njal's Saga from Iceland. They had a government with no monopoly on violence, and the saga is essentially about an endless blood feud.

Short of eliminating violence altogether, restricting it to one institution, that is democratically controlled, may be the best that we can hope for. Only a single "owner" of violence has a chance of keeping it at bay.

The crux of Hobbes' Leviathan since 1651

> People want order rather than chaos

No, people want safety. But it's easier to enforce "order," so there's a bit of a bait and switch.

the JCS reaction from the last time this was an urgent issue: https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/CJCS%20Memo%20to%20...

(although note that JCS is advisory; it was Esper's call back then — someone should get the incoming SecDef's opinion!)

The US populace has no direct experience of this. I suspect a few actual deployments will change these attitudes, but I have no idea in what way.

I think they do if I'm not mistaken. The National Guard was deployed to quell student protests at Kent and ended up killing 4 students.

https://www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy

Man this sounds like today doesn't it....

>Ohio Governor James Rhodes flew to Kent on Sunday morning, and his mood was anything but calm. At a press conference, he issued a provocative statement calling campus protestors the worst type of people in America and stating that every force of law would be used to deal with them.

Yes the population does have direct experience, except for those born after Jan 2021.

Somewhat selective list here. Four of those happened in my lifetime, and I have direct experience with two of them because I lived in Los Angeles at the time.

https://www.military.com/military-life/6-times-military-was-...

Longer list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...

The Federal government/President can commandeer the state militias (National Guard). Aside from the four branches of the Federal military, the Federal government has multiple agencies/forces with significant armed personnel and firepower available to them: Coast Guard, FBI, USCIS, Secret Service, IRS, etc.

Is this some AI generated drivel? Or are you intentionally denigrating the Coast Guard? They are a branch of the military. In fact there are six now with the establishment of the Space Force.

Also, yes, the National Guard was deployed on 1/6, but your own comment distinguishes the National Guard from the "military" proper, which is the subject of TFA.

The Dept of Defense has three Executive Departments: Army, Navy, Air Force. The Marine Corps, a distinct branch of the military forces, comes under the executive direction of the Dept. of the Navy. The Coast Guard got moved to Dept. of Homeland Security in 2002, but can transfer to the Dept. of the Navy during times of war.

The Space Force does not have armed forces (yet). Nor do NOAA or the Public Health Service, the other uniformed services under Federal control. I didn't list them because they would probably not get deployed with weapons against American civilians.

The Joint Chiefs Of Staff consists of the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and National Guard. The Coast Guard (since 2002) comes under DHS, which sits on the National Security Council with the Joint Chiefs, but is not administered by the Joint Chiefs/Pentagon except in times of war. So the word "military" in reference to US Federal armed forces can mean several different things.

The FBI and ATF fall under the Dept. of Justice, not technically a military force, but as we saw at Waco (to give the most well-known and large-scale example), the FBI and ATF both have quite a bit of firepower at their disposal and do get deployed against American civilians.

The OP asked about deploying the military but did not define what they meant -- the core armed military forces commanded from the Pentagon (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps)? National Guard? Any other armed Federal forces such as the FBI, ATF, and USCIS? National Park Service officers? Local police agencies commandeered in a crisis as happened Jan 6? I did not attempt to read the OP's mind. I think I clearly expanded on that and offered both a limited definition (the four armed forces that have a named department in the DoD) and the broader list of armed agencies under Federal control, the biggest of which is DHS, which includes the Coast Guard and USCIS, both uniformed and armed forces that may or may not qualify as "military" depending on one's understanding of that term.

You could simply ask what I meant without engaging in ad hominem attacks, calling my comment drivel, or insinuating that I "intentionally denigrated" the Coast Guard when I did no such thing. You could interpret the distinction I made with the Coast Guard as pedantry, irrelevant, disrespectful, or maybe infer than I have some experience with the Coast Guard and wanted to clearly place them in the structure of the US Armed Forces, colloquially called "the military," although the Coast Guard does not define itself as a military force except in times of war. You can refer to the official US Coast Guard web site's About page for their own definition, which places the Coast Guard in the US Armed Forces, but as a protective and rescue service, not a military force that gets deployed against other nations, or US civilians.

Since you attacked me personally I will mention that in my own family I have serving and retired members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard. That includes parents, grandparents, siblings, and one of my own children.

1992 LA riots had something like 1000-2000 natl guard

And was one of several events that helped inflame antigovernment sentiment through the 90s.

I've heard the US military is much better trained than most police so they might end up killing fewer protesters. Of course they'd still kill some and people don't understand counterfactuals so it doesn't matter.

The military isn't known for training less lethal methods and crowd control. They're trained to "kill people and break things" as Limbaugh put it. Bad idea.

> The military’s professional norms are a check against a potential abuse of power.

Right. And norms might be a bulwark for six months or two years, and then they'll crumple against relentless assault. It's the same progression we've already seen play out in many areas of government with Trump's first term.

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