Why Are Civ-Mil People Freaking Out Again?

 Less than six months ago, I wrote about Trump's purge of senior officers from the US military for the sins of being African-American, women, and/or not sufficiently obsequious.  There have been many civ-mil moments since then that have been alarming, degrading the norms that govern the often challenging relationship between civilians and the armed forces.  I won't list them all here, but it has not been a good six months.  Today, we have yet another major challenge to how democracies are supposed to manage their militaries--the deployment of the national guard and "maybe" regular forces to Washington, DC to fight crime.  Yes, to fight crime.  Again, why is this so bad:

1. Most obviously, this is completely unnecessary.  Crime is down in DC.  Indeed, if Trump was worried about crime, he'd be sending the national guard and the regular forces into red cities.
2. It breaks a huge red line: using the National Guard for ordinary law enforcement.  The National Guard, as opposed to the regular military, is often used domestically--for responding to natural disasters, for dealing with large/sustained protests, etc.  When was the last time the NG was used to deal with theft and murder and bullying of random DOGE schmucks?
3. It makes the US military become not a national institution but a partisan one, as it ends up serving the needs not of the country of the whims of one guy.  The GOP is already lining up behind Trump on this.
4. One key non-obvious part of good civil-military relations is not to put the military into spots where it is damned if it does and damned if it does not.  If the military voices objections to this (or to being sent to fight the Mexican cartels), then they are seen as too woke and must be tamed.  If they don't voice objections, they will be seen as complicit.  Again, Michael Robinson's panoptic take on this is very instructive--if things are moving radically around the military, even if the military stands still, it is seen as moving towards one party and away from another. 
5. It sets the stage for Trump to use the military against his political opponents, say, Texan Democrats who are resisting the revisions of electoral maps.  In his speech justifying this unjustified act, he mentioned that NYC, Baltimore, and other Blue cities will be next.  This is notabout crime, but about undermining the elected leadership of blue cities.
6. By eroding the norms, Trump is getting the media and the military and the public to be accustomed to these outrageous deployments.  The NG and Marines should never have been sent to LA as there was no emergency there.  But now he is doing it again and again, numbing people to the autocracy that the US has become.
7.  To repeat number 7 from the previous list: Once you politicize the military, it becomes very hard to undo.  Let's say the GOP loses the 2028 election and leaves power peacefully (we can dream, right?).  The new President does what?  Fire all Trump appointees in the military?  That is pretty partisan--the replacements will be seen as lackeys to the Dems even if they are not.  Once the military is deeply into partisan politics, it simply will be hard to take it out of partisan politics.
8. DC is not a random place but the capital, where folks like to go to register their displeasure at the government.  Will protestors be able to freely assemble in a city where the National Guard is engaged in law enforcement?  Probably not.

Let me know if I have missed any other reasons why this is awful. 

So, yeah, I have to use the same Simpsons meme: 

 

*  I should note that Trump is doing me a favor--I am in the middle of a large grant effort with a great team of people.  The one thing we don't really have to do is justify why it is important to study civil-military relations right now.