>”I just cannot imagine the guys I know in the senior ranks of the military ordering tanks onto the streets of the US.”
Same here.
You’re saying they would disobey legal orders?
Because the military has made it very clear that anything this president tells them to do is a legal order. Nobody beneath the president can question the legality of the orders.
The war veterans, many of whom had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression, sought immediate cash payment of Service Certificates granted to them eight years earlier via the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. Each Service Certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment, plus compound interest. The problem was that the certificates (like bonds), matured twenty years from the date of original issuance, thus, under extant law, the Service Certificates could not be redeemed until 1945.
On July 28, U.S. Attorney General Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two veterans were killed. President Hoover then ordered the army to clear out the veterans. The infantry and cavalry were supported by six tanks, and commanded by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur. Major, later President, Dwight D. Eisenhower was his liaison with Washington police, and Major George Patton led the cavalry. The Bonus Army, their wives and children were driven out with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, an arsenical vomiting agent, and their shelters and belongings burned. Two more of the veterans, and an unknown number of babies and children, died (accounts range from one to "a number" of casualties).
It's been done before.
I’d like to agree, but I would pin my hopes more on the mid level commanders rather than many of the top Generals.
A lot of politics go into making General. Take Adm Mike Mullen for example. Backing the repeal of “Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell” against advice by the branches of the military.
Gen Powell was another political opportunist.
Some of the Generals would be sticking their fingers in the air trying to sense where the political winds are blowing rather than acting for the benefit of the country and to uphold their oath to the Constitution.
I never thought I would see tanks used against american citizens either until Waco...