Former Major in the Marine Corps Reserve Congressman Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) believes President Donald Trump is ‘denigrating’ the military by deploying them to Los Angeles.
“[It] is not only unnecessary and illegal,” but further Auchincloss said, “It is also unfair to the Marines themselves.”
Auchincloss commanded infantry at Twentynine Palms, where these Marines are stationed, and knows how difficult it is to have to “adopt tactics against their training” and “have to wrestle with the lawfulness of this executive order.”
“These 700 Marines belong to the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. That’s an infantry unit — not military police, not logistics, not communications,” he said. “Infantry in Twentynine Palms are training at the Marine Corps’ premier live-fire base to destroy the enemy.”
The congressman added, “Their tactics are geared to locate, close with, and destroy the People’s Liberation Army or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not Angelenos.”
“With this training, the population is treated in accordance with the law of armed conflict, not the Bill of Rights,” Auchincloss said. “It is combat, not crowd control. Property, public or private, is collateral damage.”
Calling the move “wholly unacceptable in an American city,” the democrat from Massachusetts believes Trump is putting the deployed in a “Catch-22. What is a 25-year-old officer to do when the orders of the president do not support and defend the Constitution?”
“These young officers are not a check and balance on the president, like I am,” Auchincloss said. “They are under his command. He is demoralizing and denigrating their units and their service.”
“This deployment is not just bad for the police. It’s bad for the Marines, too,” Auchincloss added, “They did not sweat and bleed in training to be used as political props.”
In closing, Auchincloss said, “As this president grasps for every political advantage, he is attacking not just the Constitution but also the morale and mission of one of this country’s greatest institutions, the United States Marines.”