After Donald Trump insisted at Thursday’s GOP debate that the military would follow his orders, even if they were illegal, former candidate Jim Gilmore warned that this would be the “surest path to dictatorship.”
“Last evening, the Republican presidential debate careened off inadvertently into a serious policy question: the president’s authority over the U.S. military,” said Gilmore, who is an Army veteran and former governor of Virginia. “In the debate the question was asked whether the military would obey an illegal order given by the president. Donald Trump responded that the military would not refuse his orders even if they consider those orders illegal.”
“The illegal use of the military is the surest path to dictatorship, particularly in this time of frustration and cynicism,” Gilmore said in a statement Friday.
Trump, the Republican front-runner, has said that he wants U.S. military to kill the families of Islamic terrorists to defeat the Islamic State. He has also advocated tactics “worse” than waterboarding, a form a torture.
In Thursday’s Fox News debate in Detroit, moderator Bret Baier confronted Trump on the legality of such commands, explaining that the killing terrorists’ families is illegal and that the military is trained to turn down and refuse illegal orders.
“They won’t refuse. They’re not gonna refuse me. … If I say do it, they’re going to do it,” Trump said.
As an Army veteran, Gilmore backed Baier’s claim that U.S. troops are instilled with the duty to not follow illegal orders.
“The training I received in the U.S. Army emphasized that any soldier has a duty to refuse to follow an illegal order,” Gilmore said.
“The real challenge comes when the soldier is unclear as to whether an order is illegal or not. If that occurs, the military will obey orders,” Gilmore said. “For that reason, an American president must be grounded in the values, ethics and law of our country to prevent what would be his enormously dangerous misuse of the military.”
Gilmore insisted that the remaining candidates promise not abuse their power if elected to the White House.
“As a former presidential candidate dedicated to a Republican victory in 2016, I insist that all of our remaining candidates promise not to abuse their power as commander-in-chief of the U.S. military,” Gilmore said.
On Friday, Trump walked back his stance on torture, telling the Wall Street Journal that he would use only “legal power” to stop these terrorist enemies, adding that he understands that the United States is bound by laws and treaties.
