What’s Kept Prior Domestic Deployments From Catastrophe
[ad_1] Domestic deployment of active-duty U.S. military, as is now taking place in Los Angeles, is both rare and perilous. Not since the 1992 riots in that same city has the country seen such a use of the armed services.. But that was a one-off. The more relevant, and worrying, parallel may be the period from 1957 to the end of 1968, when military forces actively patrolled U.S. soil on eight separate occasions. Perhaps the recent deployment is just the beginning—not a one-off, but a wave. Those eight deployments resulted in just one fatality—a testament to remarkable restraint by the military. But many of the norms that fostered such restraint—bipartisan consensus, respect for institutional expertise, and well-planned rules of engagement—are today weaker, or gone altogether. What’s more, whereas U.S. marines were previously accompanied by Army military police trained in crowd control and de-escalation, they are now deployed alone, an unsettling break with past practice. African-American students attending Little Rock Central High School are escorted by troops. Bettmann / Getty. The 12 years spanning 1957 to …
