Trump believes the US army has got his back. He’s about to get a surprise – and I know why

Protesters have to be protected, writes Robert Fisk – but the question is by whom? And from whom? Like in the Middle East, soldiers are key

Donald Trump has threatened to send in the military to restore ‘law and order’ over recent protests (Getty)

There’s only one thing that ultimately matters when a government, a prime minister or a president goes on the warpath: not what his generals and ex-generals think – but will his army go along with it?

Yes of course, this rule always applies in the Middle East – where the army either appoints the president, becomes part of the presidential elite or fights because the alternative to the president is even worse. Kings and princes don’t count in the Arab world because they are the army. Take a look through the CVs of Israel’s prime ministers and it’s much the same story. But what matters is that it always comes back to the soldiers.

In America, the people elect the president. So let’s forget the generals and ex-generals who are now obsessing us. The only serving general who might have been a threat to his president was Douglas MacArthur – and that was because he mistook his own ambition for God. Right now, it’s no big deal that the Pentagon is wringing its moral hands over Donald Trump’s potential use of the army – or air force, who knows? – against the American people. It didn’t study its ethical rule book very hard until now, enabling the president, for example, to betray the Kurds.

That’s why today – in Trump’s latest widescreen animated movie – I search every piece of footage for the faces of America’s National Guard and enlisted personnel. In 2017, 16 per cent of all enlisted men and women in the US military were black. Sixteen per cent were Hispanic. Are they now going to go into the “battlespace” to shoot down black protesters? I have my doubts. When I talked to American soldiers in Iraq, I always found black troops were politically smart, quicker to see the Middle East from the Iraqis’ point of view – just as I have, almost without exception, found that ethnic-minority Americans I have spoken to infinitely more sympathetic to the Palestinians – and far less worried about offending Israel by talking about injustice.

In the National Guard units, a lot of black soldiers I met in Iraq had joined up to help get a college education – not to go off on a presidential Bush blinder to Iraq. I don’t think they’re going to be any keener to assault those who are protesting the death of a black man at the hands of the cops in Minnesota. The cops? Well, we’ll come to that in a moment.

Back to the top soldiers for now. Sure, we’ve heard from General Jim Mattis and read his moral ethics lecture to Trump. Trump is a threat to the constitution. As Mattis has just discovered. But this was the esteemed and moral general who brushed off the US bombing of a wedding party in eastern Iraq in 2004 after 42 civilians had been killed, including 11 women and 14 children.

Mattis denied it, said he hadn’t seen the pictures, and anyway, “bad things happen in wars”. Well, now it’s Mattis to the rescue, standing up for his former comrades who are being ordered to “violate” the rights of their fellow citizens, an act which erodes the “moral ground” between soldiers and their own society.

We got the same lecture from Admiral Mike Mullen, a more worthy man to be sure, but also in retirement. How dare Trump co-opt the US military for political purposes? He was sickened, he said, by the sight of National Guardsmen, clearing Trump’s way to a photo-op. And he’s only just discovered that Trump is a crackpot? Even General Mark Milley – still (so far) the chairman of the joint chiefs – toddled along in his general’s uniform after Trump for the photo-op but is now reminding his lads and lassies of the “values” of the constitution. Mark Esper – still, just, the defence secretary – has rejected Trump’s use of troops.

But generals tend to keep their mouths shut when they’re serving officers. They want to keep the humus off their shirt until retirement. Then – pensions under the belt – it’s time to wash off the political dirt by condemning their presidents. Milley – still, as I say, clinging on as a real general – didn’t exactly turn on his boss. Esper, who has less reason to expect to keep his role – civilian anyway – is probably brushing the crumbs off his jacket before taking a more lucrative role in a think tank, as a lobbyist, or work for a defence contractor. He’s done all three in the past. He regrets the stuff about the “battlespace”. I bet he does. That’s what the military used to call the 2004 battle of Fallujah, which in turn was described as the biggest battle since Hue in south Vietnam.

But the Vietnam War ended not because the presidents and generals threw in the towel but because their soldiers wouldn’t fight anymore. And in the end, it will be up to the National Guard – and their enlisted colleagues if Trump can manage to drag them in – to make their own decisions about joining the “battlespace” against their own people.

So what of the police? It doesn’t matter how many cops flaunt themselves on the streets. I’ve always found that the more exotic their costumes, the more sadistic they become – take a look at the Robocop apparel on the streets of US cities today. I do wonder why so many of the pictures of US police brutality remind me of the Israeli police and their cruel treatment of the Palestinians. But I also remember Amnesty’s intriguing report of four years ago which listed how police officials from Baltimore, Florida, New Jersey, California, Arizona, New York, Georgia – you name it – had all travelled for training in crowd control, use of force and surveillance to... Israel.

Given the list of human rights violations laid against Israel’s police authorities, were these really the right people to be training America’s cops – no doubt some of them on the streets of the US today – in how to treat civilian protests? Have not prosecution cases against security personnel in Israel turned out to be rather odd? The Israeli soldier, for example, who got 18 months imprisonment for shooting dead a wounded Palestinian in 2016, a soldier who was supported after his arrest – Trump-like – by Benjamin Netanyahu, who called for the convicted man to be pardoned. Maybe it’s time for the US to train all its own police personnel instead of relying on a military satellite in the Middle East. But the cops won’t decide the future.

And in America, the ultimate decision-makers in this current tragic drama are not (I fear) going to be the black community and all their brave supporters – they will, I’m much afraid, continue to be the victims of the decision-makers.

And the men and women who will change history are definitely not going to be the media, who’ve been beaten up by cops around the world for decades. Media executives are going to have to be a lot braver than the ex-generals if they want to stand up for their staff in the US. When AP can bleep out the vile obscenities of policemen assaulting one of their camera crews – and this is what happened – it creates a fascinating and quite absurd mutuality of innocence. The cops are flagrantly assaulting the innocent journalists – but the cops, too, must be made to abide by family values and thus have their expletives deleted.

Nope. It is going to be the soldiers who make the final decision. Yes, you can look at dictatorships. Who protects Sisi (with America’s help)? Who were the ultimate protectors of Assad (with Russia’s help)? But who will protect Trump if his movie dictatorship starts to take on corporeal form? If he decides, for example, to claim that this year’s elections – if they go against him – are a fraud, and that he must stay in the White House… I suspect a lot of folk in the Pentagon are discussing exactly this problem.

Peaceful protestors will then have to be protected. By whom? And from whom?