Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Wednesday that he does not support invoking the Insurrection Act to take greater government control of the response to civil unrest across the United States, potentially putting him at odds with President Donald Trump.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Esper made his first direct public comments about the killing of George Floyd, a black man whose death in police custody on May 25 has ignited nationwide protests.
“Racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it,” he said, calling Floyd’s death a “horrible crime.”
Esper spoke as National Guard forces moved out across the country to assist state leaders in managing the upheaval, fanning fears among some of a heavy-handed or militarized response. The president has suggested that he might invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that would allow him to direct National Guard or active-duty forces over state leaders’ wishes, if governors don’t act decisively.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, has brought active-duty units, including an infantry battalion from the Army’s Immediate Response Force, to the Washington D.C. area to remain on standby, and pulled in other states’ National Guard forces to assist in the nation’s capital.
Esper on Wednesday said active-duty forces should be a last resort.
“The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations,” Esper said. “We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”
After Esper delivered his remarks, a defense official rejected the notion that there was any disagreement between the secretary and Trump on the issue.
“The secretary’s comments clearly match the president’s view that these forces should only be used in dire circumstances and that fortunately due to the president’s efforts to get governors and mayors to step up their efforts we’re not in one of those situations right now,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss Esper’s comments.
Esper spoke as scrutiny intensifies over several steps in the last week, including remarks in which he appeared to characterize American cities or protesters as a “battlespace” that must be dominated and his presence with Trump outside the White House on Monday shortly after authorities employed force to clear peaceful protesters from the area.
The incidents prompted an unusual spate of public criticism from former Pentagon leaders, including former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and former Special Operations Command commander Tony Thomas, who warned against the domestic use of military aggression and politicization of the military.
On Tuesday evening, James Miller, who served as a top policy official under President Barack Obama, announced his resignation from the Defense Science Board over what he depicted as Esper’s failure to stand up to the president’s willingness to use force against protesters.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also faced criticism for appearing at the White House event on Monday and for walking nearby streets in his combat fatigues.
In an interview with NBC on Tuesday, Esper said he didn’t know when he left the White House following a meeting on Monday that the president was going to make remarks outside St. John’s, a historic church that was set on fire the previous day.
Esper said he thought instead that he was going to inspect a vandalized bathroom and talk to National Guard troops staged in the area.
On Wednesday, Esper gave a different account, saying he was aware the president was going to inspect damage in the area around the White House, including St. John’s, but that he did not know that authorities had shortly before employed rubber bullets and other nonlethal weapons or that Trump planned to appear before the press.
Democrats in Congress and the mayor of Washington D.C. have criticized the forcible clearing of the area before Trump’s appearance, in which he held up a Bible before the cameras.
Esper, asked if he regretted participating in the event, did not answer directly. But he said he tries to stay out of events that “appear political,” adding that “sometimes I’m successful at doing that and sometimes I’m not as successful.”
Esper also defended his use of the term battlespace during a White House call with governors early in the week, an audio except of which was published by The Washington Post.
“I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal,” he told governors. “We need to dominate the battlespace.”
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Esper characterized the term as military jargon for area in which troops operate and said it was not intended to depict protesting Americans as an adversary or suggest a harsh response.
“In retrospect, I would use different wording so as not to distract from the more important matters at hand or allow some to suggest that we are militarizing the issue,” he said.
Referring to Milley, he said fatigues are the appropriate uniform for a service member to wear at the government command center set up to monitor the protests, which he and Milley had scheduled to visit.
After Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Esper directed the military’s service chiefs not to address the issue until he had, even though some – with more than 200,000 black service members on active duty – were interested in doing so.
Esper, asked why it took so long, said that it’s a “fair question” and referred back to his desire to keep the Defense Department out of politics.
“Remaining apolitical means that there are times to speak up, and times not to,” he said.
But Esper said that as it became clear that “this was becoming a very combustible national issue,” he determined that he needed to address it. “Given the dynamics, I wanted to lead by crafting my own statement for the department first,” he said, referring to a memo that he sent to U.S. troops on Tuesday night.
Esper said he wants to give other senior leaders space to address the issue in their own way, “expressing our outrage at what happened and expressing our commitment to the Constitution and expressing our commitment as an institution to end racism and hatred in all its forms.”
While Esper said the military had “more often than not” been a leader on diversity, military leaders remain predominantly white and male and recent studies have indicated the problems that people of color and women face in advancing to the highest ranks. Critics have also cited cases of white nationalism in the military and the numerous Army bases across the South named after Confederate generals.
Esper also said he had personally instructed the Army to launch an investigation into an incident on Monday in which a Lakota medevac helicopter, flown by the District of Columbia National Guard, conducted a low-flying show of force in downtown Washington.
(c) 2020, The Washington Post · Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan
{Matzav.com}
