Gen. John Allen, a four-star General and formerly President Obama’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, told This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that “we would be facing a civil military crisis, the likes of which we have not seen in this country before,” if Donald Trump carried out some of his campaign promises as president.
“He’s talked about needing to torture. He’s talked about needing to murder the families of alleged terrorists. He’s talked about carpet-bombing ISIL. Who do you think is going to get carpet-bombed when all of that occurs? It’ll be innocent families,” Gen. John Allen (Ret.) said, before Stephanopoulos asked him about the consequences of Trump asking military leaders to break the law.
John Allen, who spoke recently in support of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency at the Democratic National Convention, isn’t the first to note that Trump may be unfit to lead the military.
In July of last year, Rear Admiral John Hutson, who once served as the Navy’s top lawyer, told the Daily Beast, “Personally, I hope no one will be called upon to serve under a President T… I can’t bring myself to type the words.”
In December, the website ran a brief profile of Pentagon officials who anonymously said they would refuse to serve in a Trump administration.
In February, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden told Bill Maher, of Trump’s comments on “waterboarding and a whole lot more” and killing terrorists’ families, “if he were to order that once in government, the American armed forces would refuse to act.”
In March, a group of 121 “GOP National Security Leaders” signed a letter denouncing Trump’s proposals and behavior, including his “embrace of the expansive use of torture,” “anti-Muslim rhetoric,” and “admiration for foreign dictators such as Vladimir Putin.” The letter said Trump’s “insistence that close allies such as Japan must pay vast sums for protection is the sentiment of a racketeer.”
Trump called John Allen a “failed general” in response to his DNC speech — one assumes for the continued existence of the Islamic State. Responding to criticism that military leaders ought to stay neutral in partisan elections, John Allen told Stephanopoulos, “I’ve agonized over this decision over and over again … I wanted to make sure it was very clear that I supported this particular candidate, Hillary Clinton, to be the president and the commander-in-chief and I decried these comments that put us on a potential track for a civil military crisis the like of which we have never seen in this country.”
Photo and Video: ABC/ Media Matters for America.
