Opinion editors at the New York Times are facing calls to resign over publishing an op-ed by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton making a case for deploying the military to quell the riots that have broken out across the US.
Published on Wednesday and titled “Send in the troops,” Cotton’s op-ed argued that the police and even the National Guard couldn’t quite provide an “overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers” and that the US military should be used for the purpose.
Times subscribers – current and former – condemned the op-ed and swore to boycott the paper going forward.
Publishing Cotton's “abhorrent op-ed is unacceptable, and there should be resignations,” declared writer Thor Benson.
Journalist Yashar Ali actually tagged the opinion editors and demanded they “resign or provide a detailed accounting to the public of how you weren't involved in the publication of that awful op-ed,” threatening to use his “enormous privilege” to compel them.
Columnist Wahajat Ali (no relation) denounced Cotton’s essay as a “vision of fascist America” and anyone who refused to recognize it as the future of the Republican Party as “willfully ignorant and naive.”
There were some who defended the paper for publishing Cotton, however, if only as an educational example of “modern conservatism” – to be ritually denounced by the righteous, it went without saying.
Another reader commented that this was Cotton’s second op-ed in the Times since January – when he made a case for killing Iranian General Qassem Soleimani – and called the senator “perhaps the most unhinged neoconservative warmonger in all of Congress.”
Responding to the backlash, the Times’ editorial page editor James Bennet said that while he understands that many of the readers can find Cotton’s argument “painful, even dangerous,” he believes that it is why it warrants debate. “Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy,” he tweeted. Bennet added that the Times has published a flurry of op-eds in support of the protests.
Cotton’s fondness for military solutions may be driven by personal experience – he served in the US Army as an infantry officer and was deployed in both Iraq and Afghanistan before retiring to run for Congress in 2013 – but he also used an example close to home to make his case. In 1957, he wrote, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, to force Governor Orval Faubus, “a racist Democrat,” to desegregate schools.
He also included what might be read as a dig at President Donald Trump – whom he did not mention by name – by saying that while law enforcement can uphold public order in normal times, more is needed right now, “even if many politicians prefer to wring their hands while the country burns.”
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