WASHINGTON (AP) – Leaders of the four major U.S. military services have spoken out against racism and extremism after last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Their comments on Twitter and in longer written statements made no mention of President Donald Trump’s responses to the incident.
Military officers are trained to avoid politics. They traditionally see it as their duty to emphasize to troops core values such as racial equality and tolerance. The man accused of ramming his car into a crowd of counterprotesters during the violence in Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, had enlisted in the Army and began basic training in 2015 but was released from active duty four months later for what the Army described only as “a failure to meet training standards.”
The Navy’s top officer, Adm. John Richardson, was the first of the military chiefs to respond to Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville. That evening he took to Twitter to say the events there were “unacceptable and mustn’t be tolerated.”
In a fuller version of his statement, Richardson called the events “shameful.”