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Ret. Gen. John Allen Says Donald Trump Could Cause 'Civil Military Crisis'
Topic Started: Aug 1 2016, 11:43 AM (159 Views)
Dem4life

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ret-gen-john-allen-donald-trump-credibility/story?id=41021091
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Dem4life

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen said that if Republican nominee Donald Trump becomes president and follows through on some of the things he’s said on the campaign trail, the U.S. could face a “civil military crisis, the like of which we’ve not seen in this country.”

"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," Allen told told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."

In the past, Trump has supported the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques, and has said the military should kill the families of alleged terrorists.

"He's talked about needing to torture. He's talked about needing to murder the families of alleged terrorists," Allen said. "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."

Were Trump to order such things, Allen said, he would be ordering illegal actions.

"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,” Allen said.

Allen also bristled at Trump's criticism of him as a "failed general" which came after Allen endorsed Hillary Clinton in a speech at the Democratic National Convention.

"He has no credibility to criticize me or my record or anything I have done," Allen said. "If he'd spent a minute in the deserts of Afghanistan or in the deserts of Iraq, I might listen to what he has to say."

:unitedstates: :unitedstates: :unitedstates:
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George Aligator
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After years and years of Republican political alliance with the military (think of the disgraceful treatment of Bill Clinton on a Navy carrier) the boot is now on the other foot. The US military has been smashed and somewhat discredited (Abu Ghraib etc.) in Iraq rather along the lines of what happened because of the Vietnam disaster. Now it is the Democrats milking political support from the generals rather than the Republicans.

The issue of "illegal orders" is a real one but very, very rarely comes up through UCMJ (think Mai Lai) because it is a disaster to morale either way. Where the principle can be invoked is at the level of SECDEF and JCS, where it would cause a real crisis leading to either impeachment of the president or mass resignations of top brass. Neither is likely to come up because in the infinitely unlikely event that Trump becomes president, the red phone in his office will be quietly disonnected.
Conservatism is a social disease
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