Why appeals to the military to remove Trump from office if he refuses to step down are misguided and dangerous. By Fred Kaplan Aug 12, 2020 1:47 PM ...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 circle the White House—if, in short, a few tanks need to roll down Pennsylvania Avenue to restore order, then it will be Biden, the duly elected and sworn-in commander in chief, who gives the order. First, even if this were the military’s role, 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 principal military adviser to the president. He (or perhaps, someday, she) has no power to command, or issue orders, to any members of the armed forces. That is the duty solely of the chiefs of staff of the military services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines) and their combatant commanders. In other words, Nagl and Yingling sent their letter to the wrong address. Second, this is not the military’s role. No military officer is empowered or obligated to do what Nagl and Yingling are telling Milley to do. In any military operation, the duty of all servicemen and women in an armed conflict or crisis is to obey lawful orders. If Trump ordered them to defend his extended tenure in office, that would be an unlawful order. If Biden ordered them to clear the White House grounds and escort Trump and his co-conspirators out of the building (in the extremely unlikely event that the Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and other police forces were unable to do so), then that would be a lawful order. The point is it is not Milley but rather Biden, the top civilian authority, who would issue such an order. If Nagl and Yingling are right in characterizing Trump’s refusal to step down as “America’s greatest Constitutional crisis since the Civil War,” the crisis would be exacerbated—the nature and strength of American democracy would be called into question—if it could be settled only by military intervention... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/trump-military-civil-military-coup.html wrbtrader