American divisiveness has reached the point of 6 Democrat legislators advising soldiers to consider refusing orders. Israel had reached that point when it learned the hard way that when the enemy attacks, there are no political points to gain. Opinion.
National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom died on Thanksgiving after being attacked in Washington DC just blocks from the White House. As dangerous rhetoric against service members reaches a crescendo, it is not hard to connect the dots between incitement and her death.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the justice department “will do everything in our power to seek the death penalty” against the Afghani suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal. But she directed equal ire at “progressive left idiots” for fueling hatred towards National Guard troops.
In what seems like a macabre expression of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the violence comes only a week after Republican officials warned of potential peril following the release of a video by six Democratic lawmakers urging American service members to "refuse illegal orders”. Two Democratic senators and four Democratic representatives with military and intelligence backgrounds released a video calling on military members to ignore orders from President Trump and senior military leaders if they think those directives violate the law.
The six Democrats did not cite any particular order as unlawful. However, the message was a not-so-subtle jab at Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to fight crime in Democratic run cities, whose soft on crime policies have allowed crime to overrun their communities and terrorize their citizens.
Trump branded the Democratic lawmakers as “traitors” who are guilty of “seditious behavior”. And White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “to suggest and encourage that active-duty service members defy the chain of command is a very dangerous thing for sitting members of Congress to do, and they should be held accountable.”
This should also apply to left-wing groups like Win Without War, which describes itself as a “diverse network of activists and national organizations working for progressive foreign policy”. It launched a billboard campaign in high-crime cities where President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard, encouraging them to refuse “unlawful orders.”
It is early days in the aftermath of Beckstrom’s death, and the lines between vilification of the National Guard and incitement of American troops blur. But one thing is clear - advising military members to defy “illegal” orders where there are none demonstrates much more than political strategy. It demonstrates an unparalleled act of political insubordination. Vice President JD Vance wrote, "If the president hasn't issued illegal orders, them [sic] members of Congress telling the military to defy the president is by definition illegal."
Somehow, no one remembers Democrats suggesting refusal of orders after Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal that killed 13 American servicemembers.
All this plays out in eerie similarity to events in Israel preceding October 7. At the height of the judicial reform conflict that threatened to rip Israeli society in two, thousands of Israeli army reservists and more than 1000 Israeli air force pilots announced that they would refuse to serve if Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reforms go through. It was an also unprecedented move.
A near civil war played out through protests in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv at the time, with leftist protestors at times violently resisting the reform of Israel’s corrupt judicial system. We all know how tragically it ended. An unnerving sensation accompanies the recollection of then Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s televised speech about Israel being “on a path of collapse, fragmentation, and disappearance.”
The Hamas massacre not only shattered Israel but shattered the resolve of any Israeli soldier, pilot or reservist to disobey orders. It was a devastating lesson in real life about the dangers of putting politics ahead of security.
Like in Israel before October 7, blatant political maneuvering by Democrats can have far reaching ramifications in a country that is similarly experiencing a violent divide. With Charlie Kirk’s assassination in the rearview mirror, Americans are looking at the rift in their country in utter dismay.
Last month, a poll by The New York Times and Siena University found that 64 percent of registered voters think the country’s sharp divisions cannot solve political problems, a huge jump up from 42 percent in 2020.
This rupture would be bad enough if each side’s cause were valid. At the very least, that would present a redeemable state of affairs. But how can one side of a country reconcile itself to the other side, which believes American soldiers should defy orders that protect American citizens from criminal harm?
This can only be chalked up to an extreme symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which has robbed so many Democrats of their sanity, much in the same way Bibi Derangement Syndrome led Israeli soldiers on the left to refuse orders to protect Israeli citizens. Indeed, War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s response to the mutinous Democratic video was succinct - "Stage 4 TDS" (Trump Derangement Syndrome).
One need not agree with everything Trump says or does to recognize the damage these six lawmakers have incurred and the perils they have unleashed. As with most of Trump’s decisions, the role of the National Guard in protecting Americans in crime ridden cities is being played out in Congress and in the courts, as extremist Democrats battle Republicans in litigious fashion while common sense takes a back seat. That is where political decisions should be relegated, notwithstanding the scourge of judicial overreach born of political maneuvering.
While Israelis are now arguing over who should lead a commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre, America should learn from its many grim lessons. Chief among them is a recognition of the vulnerability derived from division.
Israel’s enemies exploited Israel’s infighting, which led to the Jewish state fighting for its very existence. Likewise, the current schism in America is not lost on America’s enemies. China, Russia, Iran and Islamist terrorists are watching. They too know that a house divided cannot stand.