WASHINGTON — In an abrupt reversal, Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday overturned an earlier Pentagon decision to send a couple of hundred active-duty soldiers home from the Washington, D.C., region, amid growing tensions with the White House over the military response to the protests.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told The Associated Press that he was told about the reversal after Esper attended a meeting at the White House, and after other internal Pentagon discussions. It is unclear if Esper met with President Donald Trump. McCarthy said he believes the change was based on ensuring there is enough military support in the region to respond to any protest problems if needed.
McCarthy said he received notice of the Pentagon order to send about 200 soldiers with the 82nd Airborne’s immediate response force home just after 10 a.m. Wednesday. Hours later, the Pentagon notified him that Esper had reversed the decision. Esper is the final authority on deployment decisions, but other military officials, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also participate in the decision-making.
The move to keep the troops in the region, however, comes as Pentagon leaders continue to insist they do not want to use active-duty forces to help quell the protests. Earlier in the day, Esper had tamped down threats from Trump about sending troops to “dominate” the streets, telling reporters at a Pentagon news conference that he opposes using military forces for law enforcement in containing the current street protests.
Active-duty troops should be used in the U.S. “only in the most urgent and dire of situations,” He said, adding, “We are not in one of those situations now.”
“It is our intent at this point not to bring in active forces, we don’t think we need them at this point,” McCarthy said. “But it’s prudent to have the reserve capability in the queue, on a short string.”
Former Secretary Mattis, a retired Marine general, lambasted Trump and Esper in an essay Wednesday in The Atlantic for their consideration of using the active-duty military in law enforcement — and for the use of the National Guard in clearing out a largely peaceful protest near the White House on Monday evening.
“We must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate,'” Mattis wrote, referencing quotes by Esper and Trump respectively. “Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict–a false conflict–between the military and civilian society.”
Writing in his essay, Mattis — who was born in Pullman and graduated from Richland High School and Central Washington University — called the scene an “abuse of executive authority.” The retired general quit the Trump administration in December 2018 after months of conflict with the president as Trump announced he was unilaterally withdrawing American troops from Syria.
The AP reported earlier Wednesday that the 82nd Airborne soldiers would be the first to leave and would be returning home to Fort Bragg, N.C. The remainder of the active-duty troops, who have all been kept at military bases outside the city in northern Virginia and Maryland, would get pulled home in the coming days if conditions allowed.
But then the Pentagon changed its plans.
“It’s a dynamic situation,” said McCarthy, adding that the 82nd Airborne troops “will stay over an additional 24 hours and it is our intent — we’re trying to withdraw them and get them back home.”
