It’s decision-time for Mark Esper
In remarks on Tuesday to NBC-News, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said, “I didn’t know where I was going.”
Esper was talking of his walk from the White House with Donald Trump to St. John’s Church — “the church of presidents” — on the edge of Lafayette Park for a presidential photo opportunity. The president was snapped standing in front of the church holding a Bible, which a few moments before had been plucked from daughter Ivanka’s ultra-expensive handbag.
The walk on Monday was shadowed by the presence of mounted police and National Guard troops. At the direction of Attorney General William Barr, federal personnel had just cleared the park and surrounding streets of American citizens.
These citizens, many of whom were young and white, were peacefully, loudly, and raucously protesting the death of a fellow citizen who was black at the hands of Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officers days earlier.
In discussing the episode with NBC, Secretary Esper added, “I wanted to see how much damage actually happened.”
The secretary, who, as we know, hails from Uniontown and graduated from Laurel Highlands High School, did not make clear exactly what damage he was talking about. Damage to the park? Damage to the police? Damage to the protesters? Damage to the church itself?
Perhaps, though it’s doubtful, he was talking about the damage that was done by the president of the United States to American democracy.
The short stroll from the White House grounds to the porch of St. John’s punched a hole in 200 plus years of our history.
We’ve had incompetent chief executives in the past. But no president, until this one, has ever set out to willfully tear at the fabric of democracy itself; and no president, not even Richard Nixon, has ever sought so assiduously to divide Americans as this one has.
The George Floyd-Minneapolis police crisis, even more than the pandemic, has laid bare just what kind of man currently resides at the White House. Donald Trump is needy and narcissistic, but that’s not the worst of it. He is close to being a fascist. We know he’s a strongman wannabe, so maybe it’s fair to say he’s a fascist already. Some people have said he is.
He’s certainly no democrat.
Back in the summer of 1932, when Army troops, under the command of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur, overran Washington, D.C., protesters — in that instance, World War I “bonus” marchers — the Washington News editorialized, “If the Army must be called out to make war on unarmed citizens, this is no longer America.”
The fact that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, was along on the stroll to St. John’s was bad enough. Then he compounded the error of his ways by walking the streets of D.C. later that night to greet National Guard troops; he was dressed in battlefield camouflage.
All the while Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Army chief of staff Gen. James C. McConville were at a FBI command post. They were overseeing operations, including the use of military helicopters deployed to intimate lawful First Amendment protesters by hovering close to the ground, just over their heads.
It was pretty shameful. All of it. Including the introduction, even on a standby basis, of 82nd Airborne regular Army troops.
Lafayette Park is not Tiananmen Square and the American government is not — or should not be — a Constitution-free zone.
We are suppose to be a nation of laws. We are suppose to be a vibrant, just, compassionate, smart, free speech, redress of grievances, equal-opportunity, civilian democracy.
We certainly haven’t been acting like one.
Donald Trump is said to be angry at Mark Esper. The secretary’s “I didn’t know where I was going” statement did not go down well at the White House.
Good for the secretary, though it’s hard to wash away that walk.
It’s trite but true: George Marshall of Uniontown, the father of the modern American military, would have resigned before dishonoring his oath of office. As a youth in Uniontown, Marshall “got a thorough grounding in the American heritage,” as the great American historian and biographer Forrest Pogue has said.
In the middle of World War II, Time magazine lauded Marshall as its Man of the Year. “In general’s uniform, he stood for the civilian substance of this democratic society,” Time said.
As a native of Uniontown and occupying the same office that Marshall was the first to fill, Mark Esper faces an enormous challenge. He’ll either go along with the president, get fired, or resign. The first and last choices are up to him.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.