We preferred to look at it the other way around.
Has the US Armed Forces ever come close to mutiny against their Commender-In_Chief? Could it happen?
Mutiny against the CinC has no meaning unless you use it in the context of a segment of the standing army officers attempting a coup. The Whiskey Rebellion doesn’t come close, nor do any of the other suggestions in the thread.
Could it happen here in the U.S.? In the sense that anything can happen, yes. In the sense of whether it is even remotely plausible, no.
No. Our oath was to the Constitution. Not to a General, or even a President for that matter.
Two other incidents of note, both unfortunately resulting from poor treatment of black troops:
You don’t feel the Newburgh conspiracy was an attempted coup?
Coast guard used to be part of dept. of Transportation in peace time. Now after 9/11 it’s part of Dept. of Homeland security during peace but can be transferred to the Navy at any time.
It was more like a discussion of an attempted coup. Even if you dismiss the fact that the U.S. didn’t exist at the time and there was no CinC, which would otherwise disqualify it out of hand, the question of whether the coup ever came “close” (OP’s word) needs to be answered. The fact that it was easily pushed aside and that no overt action was taken beyond the mailing of two anonymous letters says to me that it was more grumbling than a serious revolution.
But I know that some of my relatives have been fairly unhappy about the behavior of the President in the past (where the President sought to demand personal loyalty), and if push came to shove might have supported the constitution rather than the President.
So then the question would be: “would the commander-in-chief ever come close to declaring a dictatorship?”. Which is a very political question that I don’t want anybody to try to answer in this thread.
Now, you see, this sort of answer isn’t very useful, because if you’re contemplating mutiny, then oaths really don’t matter much, do they?
When it gets to the point of debating your personal loyalty to a General, or a President, versus your loyalty to an oath, well, a lot of people will decide to go with the personal loyalty. That this hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Even being able to ask the question opens up the possibility of either answer.
The U.S. was declared to be a nation in 1776, seven years earlier, and Washington had been named CINC by Congress the year before that.
I find it unlikely to the point of “not going to happen” that a lot of people would go with personal loyalty to a General if he/she stated “Let’s overthrow the President”
And yet, we date the start of the United States of America from 1789. And Washington is considered our first president despite all those all trick questions making him the ninth president because he was preceded by eight Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled.
The modern meaning of Commander-in-Chief coincides with being the President of the United States of America, a non-member of the military symbolizing civilian control over the armed forces. It cannot be back-assigned to 1783 under the poor, misbegotten Articles of Confederation, which provided for no President as we understand the position today and whose CinC was a purely military title. I must also raise the question that if the “U.S. was declared to be a nation in 1776” as you say, how it is that the AoC didn’t come into being until 1781?
The fact behind my words is that, for every purpose I can think of, the U.S.A. is considered to have formed on March 4, 1789 and every history and precedent starts there. The years 1776-1789 are legally “without form, and void” to quote anonymous.
I’ve never heard anyone consider the start of “the United States of America” to be any date other than 4 July 1776. Washington was our first President because before that, we didn’t have a President (presidents of Congress, yes, but not a President of the nation).
Try again. From the first line of the US Space Force fact sheet on their website:
The “Mission” paragraph:
I’d say that “organizing space forces to present to our Combatant Commands” points out pretty clearly that it’s both military and armed, or at least is intended to be.
Along with that, US Space Command (USSPACECOM) is one of the eleven Unified Combatant Commands (along with USCENTCOM, USSTRATCOM and USSSOCOM, which you may have heard of), and is headed by the commanding general of the Space Force.
All signs point toward it being, or intended to be a real honest to God armed service along the lines of the Air Force, Army, Marines or Navy.
Good luck getting anyone who wants to be a real-life “Space Cadet”.
You say that… but the Air Force Academy just graduated 86 of them.
I have never in my life heard of it being dated from any year other than 1776. If by “we” you mean you, well, that’s your opinion, but it would appear everyone else disagrees, including the government of the United States.
I was quoting a DoD website. If the Space Force website says something else, they need to talk to one another and settle on one definition.
As I said earlier, the years before 1789 have no legal force. Obviously, American history predates the establishment of the formal country we now recognize, but the institutions they created have no continuity with the present. The DoI is not a legal document, no matter what its value is as a historical document.
Then why did we celebrate the Bicentennial in 1976?:dubious:
Absolutely no one dates the start of the United States from 1789. That’s merely the date of the ratification of the second US Constitution. The first, the Articles of Confederation, was approved by the Second Continental Congress in 1777. The articles were ratified and came into effect in 1781.
Article 1 of the Articles of Confederation:
The country itself recognizes its foundation as July 4, 1776. I suppose if you wanted to quibble you could say 1777 or 1781, but certainly not 1789.