Hi
Has the US Armed Forces ever come close to mutiny against their Commender-In_Chief? Could it happen?
I look forward to your feedback
Has the US Armed Forces ever come close to mutiny against their Commender-In_Chief? Could it happen?
Vs the commander-in-chief?
Unlikely the grunts would be concerned about high strategy.
In the field, different story.
A short history of mutinies in the US military
There were also the Townsville mutiny in 1942.
There was a reported agreement between joint chiefs during the Nixon administration that if one was were ordered to imitate a first strike by Nixon when drunk or in a fit of rage they would not act without consultation with the others.Drunk in charge (part two) | Extracts | guardian.co.uk Books
That’d a long way short of a coup d’état.
Americans have always preferred to let civilians rather than the military take pot shots at their head of state.
The Business Plot, aimed at the overthrow of FDR, comes to mind. Contemporaries dismissed the idea that there was such a plan as baloney, but probably there was, in fact, some scheming going on, though still far from being put into practice. More of a veterans’ ploy than of the active military, though.
MacArthur came close to rebelling against Truman over the issue of ending the world in nuclear fire. Truman was against it.
More seriously: MacArthur was in charge of American forces in the Korean War, and thought we ought to deliver a knockout blow to China, which had been active on the North Korean side. This involved serious talk about exactly who had authority to use nuclear weapons in combat, and the fact everyone got a bit nervous when MacArthur tried to provoke the Chinese into attacking an American ship.
Yeah I’m under the impression the business plot was as real as the CIA being behind 9/11. Lots and lots of conjecture but absolutely no hard evidence and in fact the heresay evidence seems to contradict each other.
It happened once in 1776, and again in 1860.
1860 yes, since members of the U.S. military (including Robert E. Lee) defected to the rebellious South. There were mutinies in Connecticut and Pennsylvania in 1780-81 by Continental troops, but what happened in 1776?
We almost had a massive mutiny in the 1960s, but it was thwarted by Kirk Douglas.
not sure if this is a whoosh due to the other examples you stated. 1776 rebellion against George III.
The question in the OP is about the US Armed Forces, not the British Armed Forces.
In 1775-1776 some colony militias resigned from British service and joined the rebellion. However, most of the commanding officers of the Continental Army, including George Washington, were not in active service at the time. And they mutinied in order to become US Forces.
The closest thing America’s ever had to a classic military coup was the Newburgh conspiracy of 1783. There was no President at the time so Congress was the equivalent of the Commander-in-Chief; the civilian authority that the armed forces were supposed to obey.
A group of officers felt that Congress was doing a bad job running the war and the country. They planned on denouncing Congress and declaring George Washington was the ruler of the country. Basically it would have been a military dictatorship.
The plan fell apart when Washington himself showed up an officers’ meeting and denounced the plan. He told everyone present that they owed their loyalty to Congress.
Is there an issue where troops are more loyal to their general than to the united states?
As was mentioned there is the rebellion of 1860. And the revolutionary war.
But if a general said ‘we’re going against the government’ are the troops going to do that?
Also we’ve got 5 (6, is space force a real thing?) branches of the military now. Granted the army is the main one for a land invasion force. But would a bunch of people age 18-25 be loyal enough to their general to go against the government as a whole?
With the civil war, the south created their own government with conscription. This would be different, just a general leading his troops to the capital.
There were one or two plots to assassinate George Washington while he was leading the Continental Army, weren’t there? Washington dealt with them pretty harshly, I recall reading.
Nit Pick. 3 branches. Army, Navy, and Air Force. The 4th branch in war would be the Merchant Marine. No they do not become part of the Navy. They were part of the Maritime service department.
There are six branches, the Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Air Force, and Space Force.
The Merchant Marine is not a separate branch. In war it acts as an auxiliary to the Navy.
So does the Coast Guard.
Thank you. More truth to show that America is the only country to actually use nukes on another nation. They always try to get more justification to use it again. That’s what they do with North Korea. They constantly try to provoke North Korea into doing something foolish just so the US can be justified to invade. Nobody else seems to know this whenever they keep holding joint military drills with South Korea near North Korea waters. They also do this with joint military exercises with Japan near North Korean waters. Always provoke provoke provoke… This is why the US should not be allowed to dictated who gets to have nukes or not. If you have them, then so should North Korea or China. If you want to denuclearize, please be the first to do so and lead the way. Then I’d expect every other nation to do so also. But to tell North Korea and vilify them for their nuke program while the US has hundreds and has actually used it…sorry, the US has to lead by example and denuclearize first before telling someone else to.
It’s also funny when they condemn North Korea when they conduct nuke tests in their own country/land. It’s not like NK is testing nukes on some poor natives islands like the US did to the Marshall Islands aka Bikini Islands. How dare they preach about anti-nuclear sentiments to nations when they themselves literally uprooted a nation and people off their home lands so the US could conduct nuke tests and destroy their paradise and gave those that remained horrific radiation diseases that still affect them today.
[Moderating]
cornflakes2, none of that is relevant to the OP, nor, in fact, to the General Questions forum. This is not the forum for debating politics. This is an official Warning.
the Coast Guard is not part of DoD
That’s not the question. The question was the number of services the U.S. has.
The DoD includes them.
The Coast Guard itself affirms that status.
The Space Force is not considered an armed force or a military service but it is a branch of the military.
Would you consider the rebels in the Whiskey Rebellion to be “US Armed Forces”? They were militia forces and veterans, but the US standing army at that time was quite small, so they were the typical armed force of their time.
I believe that if you looked at a list of current existing countries, and then ticked off the ones that have had military coups d’etat, it’s a majority of those countries. The detailed answer would require speculation that best belongs in the Great Debates forum. However, the basic answer to the basic question is yes.