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James N. Mattis, four-star general, USMC |
GUEST BLOG / By James N.
Mattis, retired USMC general who served at the 26th US Secretary of Defense.
“I
have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal
Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme
Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a
wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.
We
must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are
defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we
live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.
When
I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend
the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be
ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their
fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected
commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We
must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed
military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only
when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors.
Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a
conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society.
It
erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in
uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves
are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders
who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James
Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops,
or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign
ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for
combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to
unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are
equal before the law.
Instructions
given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion
reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and
Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon
that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our
politics.
Donald
Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American
people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are
witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are
witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can
unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This
will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow
citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our
children.
We
can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose
and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our
troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the
community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere
have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and
their country.
We
know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed
in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who
would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember
Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only
by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of
our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home
and abroad.
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