Soldiers returning home from Vietnam in the 1960s and ‘70s were vilified, sometimes spat upon at airports. How grossly immature our nation was in disparaging combatants who were simply doing their duty in a horrifically unjust war that was unjustly prosecuted by foolish politicians.
Thankfully, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction in the 1980s and ‘90s. Servicemen and women were once again respected if not venerated by Americans. If anything, such well-deserved high regard can go too far when, for example, service members and veterans are routinely used as props in marketing-fueled, faux patriotism moments at sporting events.
The painful truth is that we are now at risk of enormous backsliding in Americans’ perceptions of our troops. That’s because our beloved warriors, who lack police training and arrest powers, are being illegally and unconstitutionally deployed in American cities and placed in impossible, confrontational situations that are sure to backfire. Nothing good will ever come from turning a military against its own people. We're just asking for another Kent State ... or much worse.
As to the risk of our troops’ reputation being shredded beyond our shores, just listen to Retired U.S. Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ben Hodges' reaction (as reported today on Monocle Radio) to the deeply embarrassing and equally dangerous rants of the Secretary of Defense and his boss last week before flag and general officers at Quantico. “I was very concerned when I listened to what the Secretary of Defense was saying about no more stupid rules of engagement … somehow linking rules of engagement to being woke. That makes no sense. Anybody that has really been involved in combat understands that the rules of engagement are what helps keep us in compliance with the Geneva Conventions.” Of course, General, some people don't give a damn about the Geneva Conventions.
Taking issue with the pseudo-masculine tough talk evidenced last week in Quantico, General Hodges pointed to the risk of ugly Russification of U.S. troops. “We’ve never won a war and we’re never going to win a war by killing everybody on site. But that’s how he (SecDef) talked about it. Frankly, what he described is precisely what the Russian Army is. They do a bunch of push-ups, they have no rules of engagement, they have no respect for civilian life, and they kill everything that gets in front of them. That’s not who we want to be,” he said. You think?
The risk of illegally deploying untrained U.S. troops to jurisdictions that do not want or need them combined with tough-guy talk about lethality and disdain for rules of engagement will not go well. The painful results could take our troops and our country a generation from which to recover.
Image courtesy of NBC News.