In my writing, I try and explore the
ideas and concepts that shape our society and world. Though I’m not always
successful, I try to direct my ramblings away from individuals and party. As a
politically independent voter, unaffiliated with any one party, I find grappling
with the concepts and philosophies that shape our world more satisfying since
neither party accurately represents how I feel. But today I must set that aside
to speak to something directly; something that I feel cannot go unaddressed.
In a meeting with our highest
military leaders the president said, “We should use some of these dangerous
cities as training grounds for our military.”
As a veteran of twenty-two years of commissioned
service in the Regular Army, with multiple combat tours, I find this statement
appalling. It goes against everything I was ever taught about being a soldier,
an officer, a leader, and a citizen.
Our citizens and cities are not, I
repeat not, training aids for the military. For our president and commander in
chief to say such a thing astounds me. The practice of deploying troops into a
city, without the request of civilian authorities, to engage in some nebulous
version of law-enforcement goes against our cultural norms and is legally
tenuous at best. Now to say that these deployments should be considered some
sort of training exercise is beyond the pale of normality.
Training is where you practice,
where you make mistakes, and where you hone the skills needed to win wars and
survive on the battlefield. To think of subjecting our citizenry to such a
chaotic environment baffles me. Our fellow citizens are not some sort of
training aid that we can use indiscriminately. If we want to train, then use
the appropriate training environment, one in which mistakes do not result in
casualties and property destruction. For our president to make such an
off-handed callous remark not only astounds, it also alarms.
Soldiers, NCOs, and Officers all
take an oath to follow the “lawful” orders of the president. Earlier in that
oath is a line that reads, “…to protect and defend the Constitution of the
United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” For the president,
the commander in chief, to so casually put the military into a position fraught
with legal and moral conflict is unconscionable. Continually sending troops
into cities puts soldiers and the citizenry into positions of potential
conflict for no reason. Such conflicts would potentially pit friends against
friends, fathers against sons or daughters, and neighbor against neighbor. In a
society already struggling to bridge seemingly impossible chasms, such deployments exacerbate the struggle to find common ground and solve difficult problems. The statement
reveals a casual disregard for the very people the President has sworn to
protect and a lack of understanding about the role and purpose of the military.
Our military exists to defeat the
enemy on the battlefield, and contrary to what our President and Secretary of Defense
say, they are quite good at it. Our military is neither a prop designed to
elicit an effect from an audience, nor is it a pseudo police force or shock
troops designed to put down an imagined insider attack. Troops are not trained
in law-enforcement.
Law-enforcement is a difficult and
at times very dangerous line of work. It takes special men and women to engage
in this type of duty. Law-enforcement takes subtle skills in engaging the
population while separating them from criminal elements. If we believe that our
cities are dangerous places, a fact which current data does not necessarily
support, then we should hire, train, and deploy more law-enforcement officers.
We should also spend more money on those social services which help reduce crime
through education and job training. We do not need knee jerk responses to difficult
and convoluted problems.
Deploying troops may sound good to
certain elements of the President’s base, but it does nothing to solve the long-term
problems that we face. Additionally, it increases the divide our nation
currently grapples with. Instead of posturing, we need leadership that rolls up
its sleeves and engages in the difficult work of solving problems in ways that
bring people together.
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