One of my life’s greatest regrets is that I didn’t join the Army sooner. I was commissioned at age 37, late for the military, and I didn’t exactly impress my officer basic course instructors with my physical prowess. But I made it through, and I spent eight years in the reserves, with active-duty deployments to Iraq and South Korea.
I love this country, I believed in our missions, and I felt great purpose playing my very small part as an Army judge advocate. But what makes me miss my service — and what makes me regret that I didn’t join when I was younger — is the people.
No one will call the Army perfect. Part of my role was military justice, and I saw many soldiers at their worst. Until you encounter an Army unit up close and under fire, though, you don’t truly appreciate the default character, courage and discipline of the average American soldier.
But the military I love is under threat — from its own commander in chief.
Much of the commentary surrounding President Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles and now Washington, D.C., has centered on its impact on American democracy. Do we want to live in a republic that puts military boots on city streets at the whim of a politician, rather than in response to an extraordinary need?
Yet I’m just as concerned about the effect of Trump’s deployments on the military itself. He isn’t just deploying America’s military into the streets; he’s deploying it into the American culture war. And he’s threatening to expand his campaign into blue cities in blue states where homicide rates are actually far lower than in many cities in red states — such as my beloved Memphis, where I spent countless hours as a kid. In fact, a large number of the most dangerous cities in the nation are in red states.
The military is America’s most-trusted government institution, and its tradition of nonpartisan service is indispensable to maintaining that trust. If the president uses the military against his domestic foes, he risks fracturing its bond with the American public and diminishing its ability to recruit young Americans from all of our political factions.
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The post Trump’s Domestic Deployments Are Dangerous. For the Military. appeared first on New York Times.
