It is not the job of the Joint Chiefs’ job to remove Trump from office if he does not leave.

Two retired Army officers have written an open letter to Generation Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urging him in principle to reach a military coup if President Donald Trump loses the next election, but tries to seize power on Jan. 20. to stay.

“If Donald Trump refuses to step down when his constitutional term expires,” they wrote for Defense One, a widely read national security site, “the U.S. military must remove him by force, and you must give that order. . “

The authors, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, both served as lieutenant colonels during the war in Iraq and gained some notoriety, as notorious, as outspoken critics of the more hidden traditions of the military, particularly failure. of the most creative officers – a tendency that helped change their essays on the subject. Like many reporters, I have known them both for a long time; Nagl was a main character in, and a source for, one of my books, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War.

However, their letter to Milley brings a terrible idea – and more than that unnecessary. It reflects a dangerous romanticization of the Grand General about Horseback as the savior of democracy – and a surprising misunderstanding of the just relationship between civilian and military authority (surprising because both Nagl and Yingling are scientists on the subject).

Fears that Trump will refuse to step down, even if he loses the election, have been circulating for more than a year now. I addressed the fear in a June 1 column, claiming that Trump can join want to to lock himself in the Oval Office, but “he would not get away with it.” At 12 o’clock on January 20, 2021, wherever Trump can choose to plant himself, only a small retinue of security guards will leave him, the nuclear launch codes will change, his cabinet secretaries and ambassadors will lose all authority, and the entire U.S. military institution will swear by former President Donald Trump to greet President Joe Biden. “The principle of civilian control has been hammered into American officers since the time they were cadets,” I wrote, “and the 20^th Amendment to the Constitution states, ‘The terms of the President and Vice-President end at noon on the 20th^th January ‘- no ifs, ands or buts.’

The Secret Service will escort Mr. Trump out of the office. If a mob of Trump’s favorite sheriffs and militias block the doors and surround the White House – if, in a short time, a few tanks have to roll onto Pennsylvania Avenue to restore order, then it will be Biden, the duly elected and sworn commander a boss, who gives the order.

That’s what Nagl and Yingling are getting wrong. ‘As the senior military officer of the United States,’ they write, Milley would oppose ‘two options’ – to ‘give unequivocal orders that support US military to support the constitutional transfer of power’ or ‘silence’ remain ‘and thus’ be’ involved in a coup. ”

First, even if this was the role of the Army, it would not be Milley’s. Under the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serves as the president’s chief military adviser. He (or perhaps, once, she) has no power to give orders or orders to members of the army. That is the sole duty of the personnel of the military services (army, navy, air force, marines) and their fighter commanders. In other words, Nagl and Yingling sent their letter to the wrong address.

Second, this is not the role of the army. No military officer is authorized or required to do what Nagl and Yingling tell Milley to do. In every military operation, the duty of all servants and women in an armed conflict as a crisis is to follow legal orders. If Trump had given her order to defend his extended term in office, that would have been an unjustified order. If Biden had ordered her to leave the grounds of the White House and escort Trump and his associates out of the building (in the highly unlikely event that the Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and other police officers could not do so), then so be it. be a legal order.

The point is that it is not Milley, but rather Biden, the supreme civic authority, who would issue such an order. If Nagl and Yingling were right in characterizing Trump’s refusal to resign as “America’s greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War,” the crisis would be exacerbated – the nature and strength of American democracy in doubt – if it could only be regulated by military intervention.

Make no mistake: Trump will try to steal these elections if he can, by suppressing the vote, confiscating e-mail votes, and praying for Vladimir Putin to be interested again (this time a little stronger, pozhaluysta). But this is not the scenario that Nagl and Yingling (and other caregivers) explain. They look for Trump to refuse to leave office after voters cast their ballots and Biden is booked into office. This would of course be unusual. But the system is set up to handle this scenario without a four-star general taking control. And if the system proves impossible, if Milley has to take his letter from Nagl and Yingling to heart, then the country is on the verge of a crash, one way or another.

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