In the minds of most, military justice is synonymous with a Court Martial. If they think about military justice at all, they probably envision something out of Hollywood – Lieutenant Kaffee thundering away at Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men, or Lieutenant Greenwald eviscerating Captain Queeg on the stand in The Caine Mutiny. But only a tiny fraction of the allegations made against Service members are resolved at trial by Court Martial. In the vast majority of cases, accusations against a service member are both investigated and adjudicated administratively. And while the military characterizes administrative sanctions as not “punitive”, the fact is that they can have a ruinous impact both on your career and on your life afterward. If you find yourself the subject of any kind investigation or corrective action, it is imperative that you take it seriously and mount a vigorous defense from the beginning.

In some respects, disposing of a matter administratively as opposed to by Court Martial or non-judicial punishment benefits the Service member, since it doesn’t result in a criminal conviction and any corrective action taken cannot be punitive – the Service member cannot be sentenced to a term in jail. But it isn’t out of any sense of compassion that the military makes such extensive use administrative remedies. The Armed Services dispose of allegations administratively because it allows them to impose severe penalties on Servicemen and women at a much lower cost and, most importantly, with a much lower burden of proof. In a trial by Court Martial, the Government must prove the allegations against the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. But imposition of administrative sanctions, such as filing a letter of reprimand in a Service member’s personnel records or administratively separating a Soldier with an unfavorable characterization of service, the Government must only prove its case by a preponderance of the evidence – in other words, that the allegations are more likely true than not. Furthermore, only crimes may be punished at Court Martial. But the military can hold its personnel accountable by administrative means for all manner of errors in judgement or regulatory infractions.

Administrative action can have a devastating impact on your career. Allegations found to be substantiated by an IG or command investigation can delay or even stop promotions even if no further action is taken. Disciplinary action limited to a letter of reprimand can result in a reduction in grade upon your retirement if filed in your official personnel records. And it goes without saying that a poor performance evaluation can not only destroy your chances of promotion, but even result in early separation from the service.

If you find yourself facing any kind of investigation or inquiry into your conduct or performance, the best defense may be a good offense. Because it is always harder reverse the findings of an investigation after it is concluded, or to overturn any adverse administrative sanctions on appeal, it is imperative that you mount a vigorous defense from the beginning of the proceeding.

Effective February 16th, 2016, I will be joining SRIS Law Group in an Of Counsel capacity. If you are facing adverse administrative action, let my colleagues and I at SRIS Law Group help you today!

If you need help with an issue related to the UCMJ, do not hesitate to contact us. We understand that in a lot of instances, the UCMJ can have a significant impact on your life and how your career is a vital part of your life. Take any alleged violation of the UCMJ seriously and contact us for help. We have the support and help you need.

We have client meeting locations in Virginia & Maryland. If you need a military attorney in Virginia or Maryland, do not hesitate to contact us. Our firm will defend you not only in Virginia and Maryland, but throughout the US and the world if necessary.

 

 

I am an Army veteran with nearly 25 years of service.  I spent much of that time as an infantry officer, serving as an infantry platoon leader, as a rifle company commander, as an ROTC instructor, and as the head of a military advisory team embedded with a Kurdish Iraqi Army brigade.  I don’t claim to be Sergeant York or Audie Murphy. But I do understand small-unit infantry tactics, and I understand how firearms are employed in combat. I also understand the difference between combat and crime, including mass shootings like those that have plagued us recently. My experience in the infantry tells me that gun control proposals to ban firearms with so-called “military” features are misguided at best, cynical at worst, and accordingly I categorically oppose them.  This is why.

In his 6 December 2015 speech addressing the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, President Obama took the opportunity to float, yet again, a proposal that he has been pushing at least since his reelection campaign against Mitt Romney – a ban on so-called “assault” weapons, which President Obama, and others, characterize as “weapons of war,” and which he characterizes as a “commonsense gun safety” proposal. The President is hardly alone in supporting such a ban. Many other groups do as well, including the Brady Campaign. Given the visual similarity between civilian rifles popular today and their military counterparts, it is not surprising that this proposal would seem reasonable to many who are unfamiliar with firearms and unfamiliar with infantry tactics. But however intuitive it may seem at first glance, the fact is that the President’s proposal is not only not commonsense, it is actually rather arbitrary, and obviously so to anyone who cares to investigate the matter.

Military vs Civilian Firearms

Before going further, it might be useful to point out what makes a gun a military firearm.  In modern warfare, the sine qua non of the military battle rifle is selective fire – that is, the ability to fire more than one round with each pull of the trigger.  This is the single, essential feature that makes a military firearm more useful in combat than its civilian counterpart.  The National Firearms Act calls these weapons “machineguns”, and they have been heavily regulated since 1934, and even more strictly controlled since 1986. The first true “assault rifle” is often said to have been the Wehrmacht’s STG 44, and it is to this rifle that the term itself was first applied – the Germans called the rifle the “Sturmgewehr” which translates roughly to “assault rifle.” Like all battle rifles today, the Sturmgewehr was a select fire weapon.  Selective fire has been a standard feature on individual battle rifles in the U.S. military since the U.S. Army began introduction of the M14 rifle in 1959, and in Russia since the introduction of the Kalashnikov family of rifles in 1949. Select fire rifles can be either fully automatic, meaning that on automatic mode the rifle will continue to fire as long as the trigger is depressed (like the M16A1), or burst, meaning that they fire a set number of rounds with each pull of the trigger on burst mode (like the M16A2, which fired a three round burst). The AR15 and AK series rifles popular with civilian shooters today are not select fire weapons.

Whether burst or full auto, selective fire serves one function in combat – to gain fire superiority over an enemy force. Fire superiority is achieved when the enemy has been suppressed – which is to say, when one side is placing such a high volume of fire into the enemy’s general vicinity that the enemy is forced to seek cover and is thereby prevented from returning effective fire (they may still shoot back, but not very well).

Thus, it isn’t necessarily the casualty producing effect that gives fully automatic fire its greatest combat value, but rather its impact on behavior –that is, the effect of impelling the enemy to hide rather than returning well-aimed fire, thus degrading his combat effectiveness.

But selective fire – the single essential element of a military battle rifle today – is not the feature that gun control advocates are talking about when they propose an “assault” weapons ban, as this feature has been effectively (even if not completely) banned since 1986. Instead, they are focusing on other features that are just as useful for sport shooting or other civilian applications as they are in combat shooting.  More importantly, as discussed below, the features they want to ban are irrelevant in the context of crime – even mass or spree shootings.

The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and Senator Feinstein’s 2013 Revival

The purported rationale for banning firearms with military features was succinctly put in a 1999 Justice Department study, where it was stated that weapons with certain features were banned under the 1994 Assault Weapons ban because they “appeared useful in military and criminal applications but that were deemed unnecessary in shooting sports”[1] (emphasis added).  In other words, advocates of banning “assault” style weapons proceed on the assumption that any feature useful in combat is also useful in crime, but is not useful sport shooting; also implicit in this quote is the further assumption, that sport shooting is the only legitimate shooting application – which would apparently deem personal self-defense as a non-legitimate application.  The phrasing “appeared useful” and “deemed unnecessary” speak volumes, in that it implicitly concedes that the architects of the 1994 assault weapons ban made no effort to verify what they intuitively believed – that civilian firearms resembling military firearms are more dangerous to the public than firearms bearing a more traditional “sporting” configuration.

As a former infantry officer who has a good grasp of small unit tactics and understands how to employ firearms in combat, I can state without hesitation that the assumptions which underpinned the former assault weapons ban and current proposals to revive the same are not valid.   Here’s why:

The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban proscribed semi-automatic firearms that could accept a detachable magazine that had two or more of the following features (Senator Feinstein’s 2013 reprise would have narrowed it to one): A folding or telescoping stock; a pistol grip that protrudes beneath the firing action; a bayonet mount; a flash hider or a threaded barrel designed to accommodate one; or a grenade launcher. Senator Feinstein’s 2013 bill added another feature, the barrel shroud (basically, handguards covering the barrel).[2]

Only two of these features are actually strictly military in application: The bayonet mount and the grenade launcher. The risk of any serious crime epidemic involving either of these features is effectively zero. Neither has ever been used in a crime in the United States, at least in modern times, so far as I am aware. In fact, bayonet fighting is so rare even in combat that the U.S. Army discontinued bayonet training in Basic Training in 2010[3], and the last country still extensively using muzzle launched grenades (so far as I am aware) was the former Yugoslavia – and a grenade launcher without the grenades is useless anyway. Thus, of the five enumerated features that were proscribed, the ban on two of them was simply absurd.

The three remaining features – the pistol grip, telescoping or folding stocks, and flash-hiders/barrels threaded to accommodate them (four if you count the barrel shrouds in the 2013 proposal) – are commonly used on contemporary battle rifles, but they are not strictly military features. These are ergonomic improvements over the ancient traditional rifle configuration, each designed to make the weapon more comfortable and convenient for the shooter to use, and therefore more accurate and more pleasant to shoot. These benefits apply to all shooting applications, not just military ones (and, contrary to the assumption, they are in fact used in sporting applications. AR-15 rifles are widely used in match / competition shooting, and for hunting – contrary to popular belief). More important to our discussion, however, is this:  While these features do make a firearm more effective in both combat and in sporting applications, they are irrelevant in the vast bulk of criminal scenarios.

The claim above likely seems paradoxical, until one examines the nature of combat, as juxtaposed against the nature of crime. For purposes of this discussion, I define combat, as relevant to a discussion about small arms, this way:

Military combat is a phenomenon wherein a group of armed combatants engage in  collective fire and maneuver in a coordinated manner against an opposing armed force that is presumed to be capable of offering meaningful resistance.

The ergonomic features that proponents of an “assault” weapons ban view as “military” in nature are valuable in combat. By making the firearm more comfortable and more convenient to use, they offer the potential to improve the individual Soldier’s marksmanship. Not dramatically, usually, but to a small degree.  But in a situation as fiercely competitive as infantry combat, a small advantage enjoyed by a number of Soldiers individually can have enough of an impact cumulatively to influence the outcome of the battle.

“Assault” weapons ban advocates will be quick to argue that this same small advantage enjoyed by a Soldier in combat makes the weapon more dangerous in civilian hands.  But this argument is fatally flawed because it is founded upon an invalid assumption: that crime and combat are somehow similar phenomena.  They are not. Whereas combat employing small arms involves opposing armed groups, crime, including mass shootings, involves something else altogether:

Violent crime, as it involves small arms, is a phenomenon wherein one or more assailants attack an unprepared victim or group of victims, who are presumed to be unarmed and unable to offer meaningful resistance.[4]

It should be obvious from these definitions that ordinarily a criminal act – including a mass shooting – is entirely different than a small unit combat action.  I alluded above to the concept of fire superiority. In dismounted infantry combat, this is achieved by directing a high volume of automatic or burst fire at the enemy’s position.  But in a crime, fire superiority is achieved by the mere brandishing of a firearm of any kind. When a criminal wields a firearm he almost always does so against a target or targets he believes to be unarmed. By introducing a firearm into the situation, the criminal tips the balance of power so heavily against the unarmed victims that any marginal advantage garnered through such ergonomic features as pistol grips, adjustable stocks and flash hiders is overwhelmed by and subsumed into the huge disparity of power between the armed assailant and the unarmed victim created by the mere presence of any firearm. In this scenario, one doesn’t even need a semi-automatic firearm to wreak havoc, much less one with supposedly “military” features. A bolt action rifle or revolver would be as effective (this is true even given the factor of reloading, as devices are readily available to facilitate rapid reloading of these types of arms). And remember what I wrote above – that the main value in automatic suppressive fire is in its impact on the enemy’s behavior rather than its casualty producing effect; in a criminal assault, the psychological impact is even more paralyzing, as unarmed victims are usually neither physically nor psychologically capable of doing anything more than hiding or running away, which in turn may further expose them to the criminal’s fire.

Given the irrelevance in crime of the ergonomic features some seek to ban, as demonstrated above, firearms bans based upon these features are simply arbitrary and capricious.  However, advocates of “assault” weapons bans would point to another feature – detachable, “high capacity” magazines.[5] Intuitively this would seem to be the gun control advocate’s strongest point of attack.  But the fact is that a shooter can change magazines very quickly – faster than most people can respond. And, as with the ergonomic features described above, magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds (or 5, or whatever number is selected) have legitimate uses in civilian shooting applications.

Given these factors, even those few crimes actually committed with so-called “assault” weapons could just as easily have been executed with other weapons, such as semi-automatic pistols. Maybe even more effectively in some instances, given that pistols can be more easily concealed and that the smaller size and weight of both their ammunition and magazines would allow a killer to carry more rounds.

Conclusion:

I believe in liberty.  If you come to me with a proposal that would curtail my liberty – or that of anyone else – in any respect, it had better be soundly reasoned and the benefit must demonstrably outweigh the cost.  Sensationalized spree shootings notwithstanding, only a tiny fraction of all homicides are committed with rifles of any kind – and so-called “assault” weapons are only one type of rifle. In 2011, of the 12,644 homicides and 6,996 gun homicides for which the gun type is specified, as reported by the FBI[6], only 323 were recorded as having been committed with rifles – 4.5% of the total for which the type of firearm was specified.  The FBI statistics include a category of “Firearm, type not stated.”  Assuming that the proportion of these homicides involving rifles is the same as the proportion where the type of firearm is known would give us a total of 395 homicides using rifles – about 4.6% of total firearms homicides and about 3% of all homicides total.  According to the same statistics, the number of homicides involving rifles is less than the number of people killed by beatings with hands and fists (728), blunt objects (496), or knives/cutting instruments (1,694).  And it will not do to argue that at least banning so-called “assault” rifles would have prevented the 3% of murders attributed to them: first, because the 3% figure includes all rifles of every type and not just rifles that resemble military weapons, and second because it is obvious that many, most, or even all of those who used rifles to murder would just have resorted to another firearm had the rifle not been available.   In summary, the ban on so-called “assault” weapons would have no discernable impact on crime, high-profile mass-killings notwithstanding (which, after all, could just as well easily have been perpetrated with other types of guns or, in the case of the San Bernardino terror attack, with explosives). Given the absence of any discernable impact on crime, curtailing my liberty by denying me access to a popular type of firearm that I deem useful for lawful purposes is not warranted and not something I am not prepared to tolerate.

[1] Roth, Jeffrey A. and Christopher S. Koper, Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994–96, National Institute of Justice Research Brief, March 1999.

[2] See http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons-ban-summary

[3] “One less skill for soldiers to master at boot camp: bayonet training”, Christian Science Monitor online, 10 September 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2010/0928/One-less-skill-for-soldiers-to-master-at-boot-camp-bayonet-training

[4] Obviously, there are exceptions, as where criminals shoot police officers. But as with other gun crime, these attacks are rarely carried out with so-called “assault” rifles, sensational exceptions notwithstanding, and most are ambushes wherein the officer is attacked by surprise and where the type of firearm is not particularly relevant, because it is the element of surprise, not the ergonomic features of the arm, upon which the criminal relies. We may take it as a given that if the engagement with police lasts more than a few seconds or minutes at most, the assailant will be overwhelmed and subdued in due course.

[5] Of course, what constitutes “high capacity” is subject to debate. The AR-15 as originally offered to the public for sale as a sporting weapon in 1964 came with a 20 round magazine – much more than the limit gun control advocates view as “high capacity.”

[6] See https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2015/08/oregon_national_guard_member_h.html

FROM THE OREGONIAN, August 22nd, 2015:

“An Oregon Army National Guard member from Roseburg was one of three Americans who stopped a gunman who opened fire Friday aboard a high-speed train passing through Belgium.

The guard member, 22-year-old Alek Skarlatos, had wrapped up a tour in Afghanistan in July and was spending a month in Europe with friends, his stepmother Karen Skarlatos told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Friday night.

He was on the Amsterdam-to-Paris train with a group, including childhood friends Anthony Sadler, a senior at Sacramento State University, and Spencer Stone, a member of the U.S. Air Force, Sadler told the Associated Press.

“We heard a gunshot, and we heard glass breaking behind us, and saw a train employee sprint past us down the aisle,” Sadler said from France, describing the drama. Then, they saw a gunman entering the train car with an automatic rifle, he said.

• More reading: “He said he and his friend took down a terrorist” 

“As he was cocking it to shoot it, Alek just yells, ‘Spencer, go!’ And Spencer runs down the aisle,” Sadler said. “Spencer makes first contact, he tackles the guy, Alek wrestles the gun away from him, and the gunman pulls out a box cutter and slices Spencer a few times. And the three of us beat him until he was unconscious.”

Alek Skarlatos

Another passenger helped tie the gunman up, and Stone then helped another passenger who had been wounded in the throat and losing blood, Sadler said.

“The gunman never said a word,” he added.

The suspect is a 26-year-old Moroccan, according to Sliman Hamzi, an official with the Alliance police union. CNN, citing an unnamed European official, said the attacker had been on the radar of European counterterrorism agencies for his radical jihadist views.

The Americans were widely praised for their bravery. The White House issued a statement saying that President Barack Obama was briefed on the shooting, and said, “While the investigation into the attack is in its early stages, it is clear that their heroic actions may have prevented a far worse tragedy.”

Maj. Stephen Bomar, an Oregon Military Department spokesman, would confirm only that one of the Americans was attached to Oregon National Guard’s 41st Infantry Brigade Combat team but declined to name him.

“It’s fantastic that no matter who it was, someone stepped up to stop such a horrific event,” Bomar said. “We’re absolutely proud that it happened to be someone from the Oregon Army National Guard.”

Stone, who the stepmother said is stationed in the Azores Islands off Portugal, is expected to recover. She said her stepson called home soon after the incident to let the family know he was all right.

“It’s been an emotional time for all of us,” she said from her Roseburg home. “Even though Alek is strong and brave, this could have gone either way. We’re thankful it turned out the way it did and just so very proud.”

Alek Skarlatos has been with the Oregon Army National Guard for three years and is a graduate of Roseburg High School, his stepmother said. The 22-year-old had been in Germany for about 10 days with other friends when he met up with Stone in Amsterdam earlier this week and the two were part of a group that boarded the train to France.

Alex Skarlatos and Spencer grew up together in California and kept in touch even after Alek moved to Roseberg when he was 13 to live with her and his father.

‘I’ve always said that I felt I could trust putting my life in Alek’s hands,” Karen Skarlatos said. “I honestly can’t say I’m surprised that he knew what to do when faced with that kind of situation. It’s just who he is.'”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

— Everton Bailey Jr.

In August 2013 Fairfax County, Virginia police shot John Geer in his doorway, with his hands up, left him to bleed to death where they shot him down for an hour before even trying to render aid, then stonewalled his family for two years, and even now have provided no meaningful information on the incident, even after agreeing to a huge settlement.

Now the police in Alexandria, Virginia have burst in on a man in a military-style raid to deal with a suspected two-bit vagrancy or trespassing charge. And when it turns out that Tom Horton – the victim of the raid – was where he was supposed to be, they glibly and smugly dismissed the error and defended their gross over reaction as perfectly acceptable and, indeed, unremarkable. Nothing to see here, folks. 

I am heartily sick of this abuse and I am heartily sick of the hypocrisy on this topic. So many politicians and commentators – and, I suspect, many in Fairfax County – are scandalized by the fact that I might have a rifle with a bayonet lug or some other ostensibly military feature on it in  my gun safe, but they sit quiet as a mouse after police burst in on Alex Horton in his own (temporary) residence, guns drawn, in a paramilitary raid; they feel a slow-burning rage at the fact that I can (and do) legally carry a firearm most places I go in Fairfax County, but they say nothing after a police officer guns down poor John Geer at his own home, effectively executing him for the “crime” of throwing a temper tantrum earlier in the day without harming or threatening to harm anyone – and then lies about it, claiming that Geer had made a sudden movement toward his waistband, when all the other witnesses said Geer’s hands were up. 

It would only have required one tragic mistake for infantry combat veteran Tom Horton to lose his life in a hideous reenactment of Colonel Troutman’s searing indictment of Sheriff Teasle in First Blood: “Vagrancy wasn’t it? That’s gonna look real good on his grave stone in Arlington ….  Killed for vagrancy in Jerkwater, USA” (or, as would have been more accurate in Horton’s case, for suspected vagrancy). Just like it only took one tragic error for John Geer to be executed for disorderly conduct on his own property. 

Commentators and politicians railed about U.S. night raids in Afghanistan, an actual war-zone, seeking out actual combatants, but they say nothing about the thousands of paramilitary assaults on our own citizens for the purposes of serving arrest warrants or executing search warrants – and not always search warrants on hardened criminals for weapons and drugs (see the Wisconsin John Doe investigations – now mercifully ended).

My State Senator, Dave Marsden, sponsored an effort to curb the abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the last legislative session. I was sorry to read in April 15^th Daily Press that he had “backed off the effort,” punting it to the State Crime Commission for a study.  My question for him, and for every Fairfax County politician, is this: how many innocent poor people are going to have their property seized by the Commonwealth before you do something about it?  And – how many Virginians are going to have to endure unnecessary infantry attacks on their homes, before you do something about THAT? 

If you’re bothered about the bayonet lug on my AR-15, but you have not addressed THESE problems, your priorities are sorely misplaced.

 

The 29 June 2015 edition of Army Times contains an interesting piece on the 1^st Stryker Brigade Combat Team (BCT) at Fort Carson, CO.  The BCT Commander there has implemented a policy prohibiting his Soldiers from wearing the combat patches, earned during previous combat deployments, during field training. He says that the purpose is to “promote a unified Army culture,” and his spokesman justified it on the grounds that the prohibition has allowed the Striker Brigade to train “more efficiently.”  Personally, I find both of these statements preposterous, and I suspect that this little tidbit, from later in the article, reveals the real impetus behind the policy: “[the spokesman] said he and [the commander] had similar experiences previously, such as in the 75^th Ranger Regiment…” In other words, the BCT commander is forcing this policy on the Soldiers of his brigade for no better reason than that it happens to be what he is accustomed to from a time when he was in a very different kind of unit, and  which he prefers.

The BCT commander’s policy is probably galling to many of the seasoned veterans in his brigade. And while I wholeheartedly sympathize with their frustration and deplore the policy as misguided at best, in isolation it would be of little importance.  Unfortunately, however, his attitude seems emblematic of a larger problem of the leadership culture of the Army today, a problem that I call the commoditization of Soldiers: which is to say, the tendency of the Army to view Soldiers (and prospective Soldiers) as nothing but interchangeable assets, any one of which that deviates too far from prescribed tolerances, can be consigned to the scrap heap.

While I certainly applaud the BCT’s aim of promoting “a unified Army culture,” I am incredulous that he believes that he has to suppress, even temporarily, the individual accomplishments of his Soldiers to do so.  Does he really believe that the morale and cohesion of his BCT is so tenuous that it cannot coexist with one of the very few, very highly constrained and regulated expressions of individual pride that the Army allows a Soldier in uniform – the recognition of former combat experience? And if he does believe that, is he really so oblivious to the workings of the human heart as to be unaware of the resentment that his policy will foster in the minds of many? Or, as is more likely the case, is the brigade commander just so egocentric that he finds any expression of pride by one of his Soldiers in a previous unit irksome, and is happy to have an excuse to suppress it, if even temporarily and even at the cost of trampling on the feelings of his combat veterans? Perhaps I overstate the case, but I find 1^st Stryker BCT’s combat patch policy to be an affront to the American spirit and antithetical to the American tradition of citizens taking up the arms of the Republic of their own accord while retaining their status as free and independent men and women.

Unfortunately, the commander of the 1^st Stryker BCT is hardly the only officer to feel the impulse toward excessive uniformity and intolerance for any deviation from the norm. I am reminded of an exchange of e-mails between a very senior General Officer on the Army staff and the leadership of the Army National Guard a couple of years ago, on the topic of direct commissions.  It happens that at the time of this exchange a program had existed for several years under which Soldiers of the USAR and ARNG meeting certain criteria could apply for direct appointment to 2^nd Lieutenant, vice the usual route of going to Officer Candidate School (OCS).  It seems that this senior GO had gotten the impression somehow that a huge percentage of ARNG lieutenants – something like 20% if memory serves – had been directly commissioned instead of going through ROTC or OCS.  Appalled, he wrote an e-mail to the leadership of the ARNG objecting to such a large portion of new officers commissioning without any pre-commissioning training.  It turned out, though, that the GO’s data was grossly incorrect, having been generated by members of the Army Staff using an exceedingly defective database query.  But when notified of the error, and that the actual number of ARNG direct appointments was actually less than 2%, the GO doubled down, resending the exact same e-mail to the ARNG leadership, substituting the less than 2% figure for the previous 20-odd percent figure.  Now, I hold no particular brief for the RC Direct Commission policy – it matters to me little one way or the other whether it stays or goes. But what I do find remarkable is that in the mind of one of the top GOs on the Army staff, 2% of ARNG officers directly commissioned was just as unacceptable as 20%. In other words, he found it intolerable that ANYONE be commissioned via any route other than the usual manner. While I can’t speak to the way the USAR implemented the program, I can attest that direct commissions were approved sparingly in the ARNG, generally only for seasoned NCOs with strong track records of leadership in key positions such as squad leader or platoon sergeant, multiple outstanding NCOERs in a variety duty positions, and – often –combat experience. But this General was not open to any of that; what mattered to him was that every officer undergoes the exact same pre-commissioning experience (or, rather, one of the three usual routes) irrespective of the individual qualifications of the Soldier. The exceptional candidate was apparently inconceivable to him.

The Army is increasingly less capable of evaluating individual people on their individual circumstances, and has become worryingly prone to slavish application of ruthless screening criteria, without ever really considering an individual’s circumstances.  Anyone who doubts me need look no further than the Army’s applicant screening at MEPS.  Any civil infraction, however minor, and any contact with mental health professionals whatsoever (save for grief counseling) is exceedingly likely to derail an aspiring Soldier’s career before it even begins.  Likewise for a dizzying array of medical conditions and defects, many of which would not seem to any ordinary person as being particularly problematic for military service (one of my favorites being too many callouses on the feet of a farm girl, related to me by a former recruiter friend of mine). Another anecdote reveals just how driven the Army is to suppress any deviation from the established norm:  On one occasion several years ago I was at lunch in the Pentagon, at the basement food court near the Metro entrance, with a senior officer in the ARNG G1 and a Colonel who was working on a panel looking to reduce the risk of suicide in the Army. He revealed to us that the panel had actually considered proposing a policy making a history of having been abused as a child a disqualification for entry into the Army on the ground that they purportedly have higher rates of certain problems than other people.  I was aghast that any responsible officer in the Army would even consider victimizing a young person anew by denying them entry, for no other reason that the person had been victimized previously.  Happily this proposal was discarded, not on the grounds of the self-evident injustice of it, but because it would have too many false negatives (that is, most kids who are abused don’t have problems when they grow up, even if they are more likely than others to have them). But the fact that such proposal could be seriously discussed by responsible people speaks volumes in itself about the state of the Army.

When I was a cadet at West Point and later a young officer, the Army looked very different to me. At that time I felt that the Army was an institution that invested in people, that protected people, that made them better.  I believed that if I served the Army loyally, the Army would in turn do well by me.  And it did do well by me.  I have always been grateful for all the Army gave me, doubtful as it may be that I always deserved it.  But I wonder whether the Army is the same today.  I look at this great institution now and I see an organization that asks the young people of America to risk all for it, but that will risk nothing for them in return.  And it is this risk-aversion that ultimately drives the Army’s remorseless insistence upon unhealthy forms of uniformity.  The Army establishes standards of conduct, medical fitness, training and appearance for its own protection and then overcompensates in their application, ruthlessly screening out God knows how many perfectly suitable young men and women, lest in a lapse of lenity some hapless soul should get through and inflict embarrassment on the institution. A similar dynamic applies to those already in Service. Time was – or so it seemed to me – that growth and rehabilitation were possible in the Army. That one might have a lapse today, but if found to have potential for growth, one might be afforded the opportunity to live it down and continue to serve. Not so now; in today’s Army any lapse can be relied upon to result in career-destroying consequences, irrespective of the Soldier’s potential for rehabilitation. To a certain extent, loyalty has become a one-way street in the Army, and that one way is “up.” The Army expects loyal service from its Soldiers, and self-sacrifice, and the willingness to risk everything – but it will risk nothing for those Soldiers in return – not even a tiny bit of its precious reputation. Soldiers are expected, as individuals, to give their loyalty to the Army.  Loyalty means nothing if not the commitment to accept risk on behalf of, to endure hardship for, and overlook the foibles of the beloved, even when our beloved might be a little embarrassing – and this Soldiers do for our great Army every day and, rightly so.  But ask yourself, candidly: Does the Army do for individual Soldiers what it asks Soldiers do for it?

And loyalty isn’t the only value that flows in one direction in today’s Army. The other, I am sad to say, is tolerance. At this point (if not before) many of my readers (especially those of flag rank) will scarcely be able to contain their rage as they howl out their vehement objections (this once happened to me literally, and not just figuratively, with the very same GO referenced above, when I had the temerity to point out to him the plain and obvious fact that the Army was treating ARNG officers differently than others in certain aspects of the promotion system – but that’s a story for another day…). My detractors will point out the many efforts the Army has taken to take care of military families, to reduce suicide, to help Soldiers deal PTSD and other forms of stress, to promote racial, ethnic, and gender tolerance, and innumerable other beneficent efforts on behalf of Soldiers and their families.  And so the Army has done all this, and quite rightly so.  But in response, I offer the poetic language of our Lord: “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” – for as the insightful reader will already have discerned, each of the expressions of loyalty and toleration enumerated above are directed towards groups: “Families”, “Victims”, racial groups, religious groups, gender groups.  Not one of them is directed toward toleration of the foibles of individual people, or loyalty on a personal basis.  The Army makes much about toleration and respect for distinct demographic groups, and quite correctly asks Soldiers to do the same. But what does the Army do Soldiers individually?  By way of answer, I offer an anecdote related by a retired NCO friend of mine, after visiting with some Active Duty Soldiers overseas.  As my readers will well know, the Army has long engaged in a concerted effort to encourage Soldiers to seek mental health treatment if they need it, and has sought to foster a climate of toleration for those who feel they need such help.  And this is all to the good. But my friend found a reality far different from the ideal when visiting these Soldiers.  The verdict of these young men was simple: open your mouth about any emotional or mental problems stemming from your combat tours, and find yourself yanked out of your leadership position and relegated to perpetual CQ duty. Not what I call loyalty and tolerance.

It seems to me that the Army is of two minds in what it wants as Soldiers.  I’m sure that subjectively the Army aspires to the kinds of loyalty and toleration that I hint at here; it respects the tradition of the citizen Soldier, and it’s leadership doctrine certainly values the idea of developing people and helping them overcome their shortcomings and growing into better Soldiers. The Army even conducted a study a number of years ago into how folks who entered the Service with various types of waivers performed – and found that these Soldiers outperformed others in some important respects.  But subjective intent matters a lot less than objective action. Objectively, the Army’s behaviors indicate that the institution wants, not freeborn men and women raised in an imperfect world, with all the intendant flaws and blemishes that come with that. Rather, the Army, through its objective actions, shows that what it wants is something akin to Clone Troopers:  Perfectly uniform, perfectly loyal, perfectly trained, and perfectly reliable automatons. It wants fantastical supermen with the discipline of the Roman Legions, the loyalty of huskies running  the Iditarod, the ingenuity of Indiana Jones, and the rectitude of Mr. Spock. What the Army wants, in short, is troops with everything that makes the American Soldier great, without any of the faults that make him human.  In other words, it wants the impossible.