This while folks are still protesting in the streets, folks are dying from the Pandemic (yes, that is still around) and the economy is still struggling.......
In Union There Is Strength
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment