Biden Tells Army To Fight Domestic Enemies

Plus, Sinwar explains core of Israel-Arab conflict

President Biden yesterday gave the commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

He reminded the graduating class of the oath they took when they entered, to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” 

A press pool report said the president emphasized the word “and.”

“Nothing is guaranteed about our democracy in America. Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it. Now is your turn,” Biden said.

The website of the U.S. Army Center of Military History has the history of the various army oaths. The “foreign and domestic” language arrived in 1959 amid high Cold War concern about domestic Communism. From 1884 onward there had been a reference to “foreign or domestic.” The “foreign and domestic” phrase came into the oath for members of Congress during the Civil War.

Biden did not say which domestic enemies he meant to unleash the army on. There’s a definition of “treason” in the Constitution but not much guidance in terms of defining domestic enemies.

My guess is that Biden did not mean the anti-Israel protesters on college campuses and in some cities who, as the Middle East Media Research Institute recently noted, have been defacing war memorials and statues of American heroes. He probably didn’t mean, either, the Chinese Communist and Iranian operatives in America that prosecutors have been targeting in recent years with some success. He doesn’t mean the illegal immigrants flowing into America via Mexico from China, Turkey, and other unknown places.

He probably does mean Donald Trump and his “MAGA Republican” supporters. Biden has repeatedly and publicly described them as threats to democracy itself.

Biden at West Point, May 25, 2024. Screengrab from White House video.

Am I the only one who finds this sort of speechifying a little concerning?

When Senator Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, wrote his New York Times opinion piece in 2020, “Send in the Troops,” about using the military to restore order amid rioting and looting, it prompted a backlash that toppled James Bennet from his job as editorial page editor of the Times.

Likewise, when President Trump talks about using the military to enforce immigration law, the left gets very worked up. “Trump Wants to Use the Military Against His Domestic Enemies. Congress Must Act,” is the headline over a November 2023 commentary from the Brennan Center for Justice. “Our nation is faced with the prospect of a president willing to use the United States military as his own personal domestic police force. The danger that this would pose to democracy cannot be overstated, but it can — and must — be averted,” the commentary says.

What’s the guidebook for distinguishing which domestic enemies it’s okay to mobilize the military against? Is the standard that it’s okay if Biden does the mobilizing, but not okay if Senator Cotton or President Trump does the mobilizing? That seems inconsistent.

I found the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, extremely disturbing and the use of the National Guard as part of the response to be appropriate and justified. That said, for Biden, in an election year, to show up at West Point graduation and tell the future army officers that they might be needed against domestic enemies seems like the sort of thing that if Trump did it, everyone would be up in arms about “norms” and pushing the envelope and the new authoritarianism. 

Maybe I’m paranoid and reading too much into a simple line encouraging the graduates to defend the Constitution and democracy. Or maybe Biden, if he wants to come off as genuine rather than a phony in running as the pro-democracy candidate in the election, should be a little more careful in choosing his words rather than risk the perception he’s preparing to mobilize the military against his political opponents by defining those political opponents as “enemies.”