Axar.az presents an article, "War From Within” by John Samuel Tieman.

In early 1969, I joined the army in the shadow of the My Lai Massacre. At least 347 and up to 504 Vietnamese civilians, almost all women, children, and elderly men, were murdered by our soldiers. In 1968, Lieutenant William Calley, the leader of the platoon at My Lai, was found guilty of 22 murders. He probably murdered many more. He certainly ordered his men to kill civilians. Because of this, we recruits had impressed upon us – repeatedly – that no soldier is obliged to follow an illegal order.

In late September, President Trump addressed senior military leaders, who were hastily summoned from their stations all over the world to a meeting at the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia. Also addressing the military's top officers and enlisted personnel was Secretary Of War Pete Hegseth. Mr. Trump told the hundreds gathered that "together, we are reawakening the warrior spirit." The president spoke of his decision to rename the Defense Department to the Department of War. He spoke of the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine as well as a potential peace deal between Israel and Hamas. He told how his administration was committing $1 trillion in 2026 for military operations. The president also talked about deploying National Guard troops to several American cities that he says are crime-ridden. "We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military." He described crime and illegal immigration as part of "a war from within."

Trump actually said that, “the war from within”. The president is fixated on the Americans he believes have wronged or betrayed him. They are worse, he says, than foreign adversaries of the United States. “The crazy lunatics that we have — the fascists, the Marxists, the communists, the people that we have that are actually running the country,” Trump said at a rally. “Those people are more dangerous — the enemy from within — than Russia and China and other people.”

Now combine Pres. Trump's “war from within” with the remarks of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. He said, "We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war-fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement." No rules of engagement? The rules of engagement are standards of decency. From the medieval codes of chivalry to the Geneva Conventions, rules of engagement limit the danger to civilians, prisoners of war and others, as well as certain properties like world heritage sites and so forth. “We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.” That he would do this to political opponents, whom he deems enemies, this is both immoral and unspeakably cruel. I am reminded of lines by the great poet of Ghana, Atukwei Okai. “Between me and my God / There are only eleven commandments; / The eleventh says: Thou shalt not / Bury thy brother alive”.

Deploying the military within the United States is not unprecedented. One thinks of riots and natural disasters. This president, however, this is different. Donald Trump wants to punish political enemies. He has said this explicitly. The generals, admirals, and senior enlisted personnel at Quantico, to their credit, gave every indication that they won't enforce Trump's agenda. Their response was tepid. They are trained to respect civilian control of the military. But they take seriously their oaths to the Constitution. It's worth noting that their oath is to the Constitution and not to a man, to the democratic republic as a whole and not to the president specifically. Where they will draw the line, that's still in the future. But they will most certainly draw that line if they are given an illegal order. At least we hope so.

There is a certain ordinariness about people like Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth. Nice, even interesting for a short while. By themselves, however, they are disorganized thinkers, politically pedestrian, and, given enough power, destructive. In most circumstances, they'd be the forgettable know-it-all at the bar. They remind me of Calley. A friend of mine, Ralph, went to high school with “Rusty” Calley. He only vaguely remembered him. Our Founders were extraordinary. But if we lose our democracy, if we lose our republic, we will lose it to these ordinary people. I am reminded of T. S. Eliot. “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.“

In 1970, I was flying to somewhere in Vietnam – I don't remember where exactly – in a CH-47 helicopter. The door gunner points down to a village, and above the engines, he hollers, “That's My Lai.” As I said, the news of the My Lai Massacre had broken shortly before I joined the Army. Our soldiers killed hundreds of defenseless Vietnamese civilians. But what I saw that day was – there is only one word – ordinary. An ordinary village. Huts. Drainage ditch. That now famous drainage ditch in which so many were slaughtered. But just a ditch. Just an ordinary drainage ditch.