Some troops have drawn equivalencies between the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and last year’s protests for racial justice during recent stand-downs to address extremism, worrying the military’s top enlisted leader.
In a Thursday briefing with reporters at the Pentagon, Ramón “CZ” Colón-López, the senior enlisted adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that some troops have asked, when the Jan. 6 riot is brought up, “How come you’re not looking at the situation that was going on in Seattle prior to that?”
There is a nuanced distinction between a mob storming the Capitol to prevent the counting of the electoral college votes and thus regime change, and “mostly peaceful” protests which morph into violence where United States Courthouses come under siege, but only at night. But not everyone sees the nuance as a sufficient line in the sand to explain why one is bad and the other is Seattle.
Colón-López said the confusion some younger troops have expressed shows why the training sessions on extremism are needed.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the stand-down Feb. 5 and gave units across the military 60 days to discuss extremism in the ranks with troops.
The military’s policies are clear, he said: Troops are not to advocate for, or participate in, supremacist, extremist or criminal gang doctrine, ideology or causes.
There can be no doubt that the military must be apolitical, and certainly “extremism” is bad because it’s “extreme.” But then, it’s a bit vague, so what is this extremism, this “ideology or causes” in which troops are not to advocate or participate in?
And he drew a distinction between those who lawfully exercised their First Amendment rights to protest during last summer’s protests in support of racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement, and those who “latched on” to the protests to loot, destroy property and commit other crimes.
But sometimes, he said, younger troops see messages on TV that blur the lines between the two, and “we needed to educate them” on the difference.
“No, that’s not what that meant,” Colón-López said. “There were people advocating [against] social injustice, racial injustice and everything else, and it is the right of citizens.”
As Colón-López expressly noted, the military was “called to respond after the Capitol attacks, but was not called up to support law enforcement during the Seattle protests.” So if the military is ordered to respond, then it’s bad, but if it’s not ordered to respond, then it’s good?
“What I am committed to is to make sure that our people understand right from wrong,” he said. “That our people … are well-educated to be able to carry on, in an honorable fashion. And if they hear somebody saying the wrong things, that they’re quick to go ahead and correct them … without being confrontational.”
What exactly differentiates people “saying the wrong things” such that soldiers are under a duty to be “quick to go ahead and correct them…without being confrontational”?
Teaching people the difference between exercising their constitutional right to peacefully protest as opposed to engaging in violence is surely a worthwhile endeavor, but maintaining an apolitical military requires more than empty platitudes. Is “right from wrong” a matter of respecting people’s rights, which in itself is a somewhat controversial endeavor these days, or picking which ideology is the good one and training them to “correct” people who say “the wrong things.”
What are those wrong things of which Colón-López speaks? What business is it of the military to decide who is saying the wrong things and who is not? It could well mean that the military should be intolerant of racism in its ranks, which is certainly a good thing even if it implicates questions about whether racism is determined by a rational person or an Ivy League sociology professor.
What is the message here? Does it work? Is the military telling its troops to be apolitical or the right political? Is this a comprehensible message for soldiers? For anyone?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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Every good soldier or sailor knows that the smart thing is to stay away from protests and stay out of politics. Particular care needs to be taken where the President (or potential President) is involved because they are in the Chain of Command, and criticizing the Chain of Command is specifically prohibited.
Now I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not exactly sure how attempting to interfere in Constitutionally mandated processes that select the President conflates with this, but it sure feels like it.
When I was a senior enlisted leader, “Don’t do anything stupid” used to work.
Colon-Lopez just fell into a classic troop trap. From the chain of command’s perspective (at least I hope so), Portland and DC are functionally the same: crimes occurring due to inflamed political passions. When the troops say one set of circumstances is being treated differently than another, what they’re really saying is “I am afraid the chain of command isn’t going to treat me fairly because I am (white/republican/a furry/whatever)”. Colon-Lopez missed it, and made things worse.
This whole thing is simple: “Troops, orders: violations of criminal codes and the UCMJ are still offences regardless of context. Save your excuses for the judge. Orders end.”
The problem with orders is that they tend to work better when they aren’t in inherent conflict. More vague words don’t necessarily make orders any more clear.
There are reasons “support and defend the Constitution” comes before “obey the orders of those appointed over me” in the Oath of Enlistment.
This is one of them.
It is only comprehensible as telling them to be silent unless they are advocating the political view of the current administration. It is out of keeping with our military traditions, which have never required personal loyalty to a given politician or party. It is also out of keeping with the First Amendment, which does not contain a blanket exclusion of “extremist” or “supremacist” speech from its protections.
But if they’re ordered to “correct” people who say the wrong things, should they disobey?
As a member of the military, you are allowed to, encouraged to, disobey unlawful orders. At least when I was in back in the late 70’s, that was true.
But then, I guess it depends on what soldiers, sailors and airmen are being taught in basic training.
When we’re knee-deep in ideological and rhetorical vagaries, what constitutes an unlawful order might not be easy to determine. Are soldiers supposed to be nuanced arbiters of First Amendment rights?
That has always been the problem, especially in draft days. No green kid from the stix is going to be confident enough to tell some officer that an order isn’t lawful and refuse to follow it on that basis.
They were more concerned with staying alive at the time.
The military is over-filled with barracks room lawyers who love to argue all these issues. It’s what you would expect from very young bored adults.
The training summary I’ve seen is:
A superior’s order is presumed to be lawful and is disobeyed at the subordinate’s peril. To sustain the presumption, the order must relate to military duty, it must not conflict with the statutory or constitutional rights of the person receiving the order, and it must be a specific mandate to do or not to do a specific act. In sum, an order is presumed lawful if it has a valid military purpose and is a clear, specific, narrowly drawn mandate.
It’s amazing how bizarrely this can be interpreted.
Kibitzing is easy. UCMJ is hard.
Weren’t they talking about Seattle and the CHAZ, where the rule of law, government power, and civil order (along with all the rights of citizens that went with them) were effectively suspended for several weeks, as they declared independence from America? And the warlord that took control shot at least two black kids and killed at least one because they were suspected of being outsiders come in to wreck the CHAZ?
A different situation from the nightly Portland courthouse protests. Given that one of the federal government’s earliest tests was the refusal to obey excise tax collectors leading to the Whiskey Rebellion, you’d imagine maintaining civil order against a force which declares independence, exercises physical control over public territory, institutes its own rules in disregard of those of the sovereign, and uses violence to do so, is precisely the sort of event that the military is supposed to suppress. Maybe Colon-Lopez meant that there is a First Amendment right to secede from the U.S., so long as you’re founding the Anti-Racist Republic of BIPOC Peoples; but something along the lines of the Confederacy, or a Christian fundamentalist enclave? No.
Is there a reason you feel the need to “explain’ CHAZ? Did I fail to discuss it enough here that you have to take up the slack?
4 leg riots good, 2 leg riots bad
You devolved pretty rapidly into your old hand-wringing and bitching about any possible law whatever that deals with ideas. This is pretty simple. The military is full of conservatives and stupid ones to boot. The basic message here is if you back a fascist takeover of this country you’re going to wind up in a cell. Sedition is sedition, and even dipshit jarheads can understand that. Even if you can’t.
You should consider enlisting and making the jarheads smart like you.
Judging by his grasp of the political affiliations and mental capacities of military members, Jay strikes me as officer material.
Ouch.
Double ouch.
There were two enlisted FT’s (Fire Control Technicians) aboard my last ship. One was ABD in Physics, the other had a Masters of Science in Physics.
The problem outlined in the post is that no one is defining extremism in a coherent way so that the military can tell what is sedition.
The troops question is, ‘BLM riots attacked federal buildings, too. Why isn’t that just as bad?’
Jarheads, like anyone else, need a distinction differentiating the BLM riots from the Capitol riot. There are several low-hanging ones possible. SHG referenced this in his first full paragraph. But no one in the military chain of command is stating any of the distinctions.
And saying ‘Don’t back a fascist takeover’ probably isn’t sufficient guidance.
I would suggest they’ve gone a step beyond failing to state cognizable distinctions, and deliberately muddled any distinctions in the minds of soldiers.
“Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die.”
― Lord Tennyson Alfred
The primary objective of basic military training is the process of resocialization. In short, it is necessary to drive individualism and ego out of the boots and replace these characteristics with unit cohesion and an esprit-de-corps.
Veterans will remember, we were not taught to change our values, we were taught to keep them to ourselves and focus on the mission. And to focus on the mission, we must function as part of a unit. Interestingly, the only bright line about this direction I received was: Enlisted don’t talk to the media. Ever.
Otherwise, the fact that they think incredibly stupid shit like: ‘Why were we ordered to protect this but not protect that?’ might leak out into the wild and give a bunch of civilians the false impression that such a question, coming from an enlisted soldier, is of any meaning or import beyond its impact on operational readiness.
This would be interesting, if it weren’t for the fact that it was the officers who ran to media sources and reported what the enlisted soldiers were saying. Hard to build “esprit de corps” if your CO or whoever reports to the media what’s happening at the trainings.
Both the substance of what was said, and the fact that it was said, suggest that the military is putting on a performance for the sake of the public to show that they’re cleaning up their racist image and teaching the farmboys how to behave in woke company.
Maybe it’s a performance. Or maybe the military understands 30% of their team are black and brown-skinned Americans, and racism in the ranks is a bigger threat to operational readiness than a few idiots fearing they aren’t being treated fairly because of which orders they were given.
You assume black and brown people aren’t just as interested in clear orders as anyone else. Why do you think so little of black and brown soldiers?
Heh. In your delusion, it’s only white soldiers who take issue with people looting, burning buildings and trying to storm a courthouse? You are such a racial dilettante.
I often wonder whether woke folks know any actual black people, and that they’re just regular people with normal hopes and concerns.
Hadn’t really considered this, but probably true. Still, dispiriting that the military now has to go through the sort of PR theater, where the upper ranks throw frontliners under the bus, to please woke people on Twitter or Reddit in the same way big corporations like Google or Apple only started to do five years ago.
They are no less concerned about image than any other governmental institution. Defund the Marines really isn’t that much of a stretch.
The military always goes through PR theater. It is endless. My favorite memory was learning about sexual harassment after Tailhook.
You should read the original article again because…Ah, you know what? I’ll save you some time. The SEAC is not an officer. Not that it has any impact on my point.
Heh, they gave it to the non-officer officer to do the dirty work, and that makes it better?
Doublethink is the duty of every citizen. Why should the military be exempted? This riot is good, that riot is bad, because big sister says so, end of story.
..and these are the soldiers you’re putting up against “the big nation with a lot of people between Russia and Myanmar,” ? Good luck with that….
It seems the grunts have a better grasp of social justice than the people in charge, but I’m sure a few classes will teach them Socialism is right.
The questions service members are asking are so they can get after the intent, which, based on the questions is not clear.
Troops need consistent easy to follow standards or it is hard to exercise UCMJ. For example, “riots are always bad” or “anyone who joins any group that calls for the destruction of the nation are violating UCMJ”. If standards are one sided Service Members will challenge nonjudicial punishment (which is the most likely level of charge) and likely be found not guilty by local commanders. They would also most likely be found innocent during a court marshal (panels especially senior enlisted ones hate inconsistency).
To Jakes point, service members are not trained to “do or die” when it comes to this type of training. That quote’s intent (and the reason to break them down) is to create the ability for violent actions during missions quickly which saves SM lives. It is not for what could be perceived as political indoctrination. The military swears an oath to the Constitution for a reason. Historically both sides understood this was in the best interest of the nation and all the political sides. People that think one sidedness is good should ask themselves “if this kind of training becomes the norm what is wrong with the next Republican president doing it?”
Beyond those reasons there is a practical reason to not make the troops feel this is politically one sided. Most troops are conservative, lean that direction or are classically liberal on most issues. This is regardless of the Service members race and gender, and especially in combat arms and SOF (minus senior officers who lean left). The military would make a serious error if those service members decide they want to leave en masse or to not encourage their family to join (who are a large percentage of recruits) over an issue as trivial as unequal guidance. In my opinion its easier to just be consistent. The fact that training so far looks to not be, is not good.
All a sailor of mine has ever asked for is clear, unambiguous direction. Preferably consistent, but clear and unambiguous will do.
Do you think the Carl Jung ‘Duality of Man’ defense would work in 2021?
“All I’ve ever asked of my Marines is for them to obey my orders they way the would the word of God.” Totally Jungian.
For some reason I’m reminded of the “Little rock nine”
After the Arkansas national guard making a mockery of the law by refusing to perform even the most minimal of duty and in fact paling around with obvious racists…. President Eisenhower sent in the 101st airborne.
It’s really quite moving to read and see ( YT) how the 101st with no hesitation fixed their bayonets put them to the throats of the mob and marched them away. Im not naive enough to think all of these soldiers believed In what they were doing but they did it anyway.