Should the US Military be deployed to support the Police during protests? An Army Veteran’s point of view.
I am a Veteran. I am a US Army Veteran, having served in a combat role during Operation Enduring Freedom. As a Veteran, I have something to say…
Right now in this very moment, the debate is raging on how to deal with protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis Police Officer. We have been hearing a lot over the last week, about how the police should or should not act during protests, as well as how they should act if the protests become riots or descend into civil chaos. The debate also includes the topic of whether or not the US Military should be used to help local and state police during the protests to “maintain order,” and why that is, or isn’t, a good idea. Or, a legal and allowable “option.”
Fortunately, as of now, the vast majority of those joining the protests are exercising their Constitutional rights to peacefully assemble, to protest, and to be heard. While there are certainly many occurrences of violence, police being attacked and targeted, people being hurt, looting, and significant destruction happening on the streets, it has not been the norm — especially when considered in light of how many people are protesting, all across the country. Regardless of what anyone’s viewpoints are on any given topic or their political stance I think we can all agree, that these rights to assemble and protest are essential to our democracy. And without debating semantics or particulars, I think it’s fair to say that a “protest” does not inherently equal a “riot.” Those are two very different things.
With that in mind, I am not saying anything new, or anything that has not been said hundreds of times over the last week. My intent is not to debate the lines between protestor and rioter, or at what does a protest degrade into a situation where people loot, break the law, riot, attack the Police, and so on. The goal is not to debate all the other nuances and ingredients of the situation at hand. Instead, this is a simple and easy approach, to focus on one hotly debated point right now: should, and can, the military be called in, as has been suggested by President Trump and other political leaders, to help assist local law enforcement. And why, or why not.
Much has been said about this idea over the last several days. Without a doubt, it has become a hotly debated point by people on all sides. Senator Tom Cotton, a US Army Veteran from Arkansas, published an opinion piece in The New York Times arguing in favor of using the military, here, to help quell the protests around the country. Retired US Marine Corps General James Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense, shared his view as to why we should not use the military, in The Atlantic, here.
The answer to the question of should the US Military be deployed to help support the police right now, is no. A definite, and very clear, NO.
But why? Why should we care? Why is this topic such a heated debate in the media, social media, amongst all of us as American citizens? Without a lot of legalese or a technical deep dive, Constitutional debate, and partisan bickering, allow me to tell you why, from a former Soldier, in the most simple of ways…
Those of us who have served or who do currently serve in combat roles in the military have one goal: break things. Yep, that pretty much sums it up: break things. Lots of things. And do so with overwhelming force. As Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors, our job is pretty clear: destroy the enemy.
Police, on the other hand, have no such mission, and no such role. We say that people in the military “serve,” and that policemen also “serve.” However, those two kinds of service are two very different things, with very different missions and approaches. Now of course, there are times when the police must use violence against violence, and to stop bad people in our communities and neighborhoods from doing bad things or hurting good people. It happens every day. The first job of a policeman, however, is not to destroy anything.
In addition, without diving into the Insurrection Act, and Posse Comitatus here in this moment, the differences in the roles and missions must be understood, if any debate or decision making is to be had; good or bad, or for better or worse. It is the differences, and not the similarities between police and the military, that make this such a clear and definitive answer. It’s easy to fall into the thinking that the military is the “stronger big brother” to the police, or that the police is the “military light.” In some countries, that is the case (we have even tried doing that in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it doesn’t work very well).
In the United States, that has never been the case. It’s easy to fall into the line of thinking that “the police have guns, and the military has more and bigger guns. The police are trained to chase bad guys, and the military is trained to kill bad guys. The police serve and protect, and the military serves and protects. Law Enforcement falls under the Executive Branch, and the military falls under the Executive Branch,” and so on; we could find dozens of parallels and still mistakingly conclude that the military can and should handle local and state-level police matters. (And to that point, we should probably consider to stop using our military and combat troops to police anything, anywhere in the world; it’s a very hard thing to do, because that’s not what we do.)
At the risk of really geeking out, allow me to make an easy-to-understand pop culture reference to illustrate this point… One of the most simple, and most articulate explanations of why the military and police should be kept separate, is from the science fiction TV show, Battlestar Galactica. This is perhaps an easy we can break this down to understand the “why.”
In a very interesting and thoughtful episode, marines are used in a law enforcement role during an emergency, to guard a batch of criminals who decide to rebel and then start a riot. In a not-entirely-unjustified response, the marines react with a strong use of force. That said, their heavy response, in the way that they were trained to do, is also not without tragedy and consequence. One of the main characters in the show, is Admiral Adama (played by Edward James Olmos), the most senior military commander in the story. After the event is over and everyone is measuring and debating the end result, he says:
“There’s a reason you separate the military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
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