Exploring the Oath of Enlistment

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

There are three parts to the Oath. In the first, you swear to defend the Constitution. In the second, you swear allegiance to it. In the third you swear to participate in the military according to regulations and the UCMJ. Looking at these three parts from back to front, the obedience part is irrelevant. UCMJ applies where it applies and doesn't where it doesn't. The military has its own mechanisms for enforcing its laws and regulations- you don't have to take an oath to be bound by and under the control of those mechanisms. Placing that part in the Oath is more a strong way of showing recruits an important part of the commitment they are making. Seriously- is a soldier under arrest and facing a court-martial honorably fulfilling his Oath by submitting to that? Can he get out of it by simply renouncing his Oath? It makes no sense. As to discharged veterans and, in most circumstances, Reserve Component members, UCMJ doesn't even apply to them (see Article 2). If allowing it to continue not applying to them counts as constantly fulfilling their Oath, then good for them.

The second part, swearing allegiance to the Constitution, is slightly less dumb. Citizens simply owe allegiance to their country, and the United States, as a nation, is an artificial construction. It was created by the Declaration of Independence and is defined by the Constitution. Allegiance to the U.S. is allegiance to the Constitution, plain and simple. Civilians who have never taken this oath can be convicted of treason because of that allegiance. For citizens joining the military, this part is again just a reminder of what they're doing. For non-citizens who enlist, it is a critical requirement to bring them to the same level of obligation to the Constitution that citizens have.

The first part of the Oath is the most important, the only one that isn't already taken care of by other means (at least for citizens). It's important enough to look at again:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

The rest of the Oath is simply restating the obvious, but this is its heart- to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies. This part of the Oath is the crux of the argument about serving or betraying the country.

IVAW members in general are regularly accused of treason because of differing opinions of just what it means to "support and defend the Constitution." Apparently, lots of people seem to think it involves everyone blindly adhering to the directives of the Bush administration, a group of people who only violate the Constitution on days that end in "y." That just doesn't make any sense to me. Look at the main problem, at least when calling IVAW members traitors: Iraq. Does opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq signal a refusal to defend the Constitution? Not at all. Iraq was never a threat to us, but invading and occupying Iraq has made us weaker for no good reason. Again, for no good reason. If there were a good reason, then this whole mess would have legitimacy and opposition to it would be crippled. Without a good reason, it's bad for the country. To defend the country, we have to oppose the war.

I love this plate.

It was an occupying force that killed Christ.

It's been six weeks since Easter, but I've been wanting to share the perspective of the sermon I heard. We all know the story of Jesus: how God came to live as a man in the world He created. My minister decided to describe Christ's life in today's terms. It doesn't make us (as Americans) look good. For those of us that are Christians, it makes us look even worse.

God didn't simply come down to Earth, He came to Earth in a country that was occupied by the most powerful and dominant political system of the time. As we all know, he came to us as the occupied, not as the occupier.

The point of the sermon was that God takes sides (duh). With Christ's resurrection, God took the side of the occupied. With the resurrection, God denied victory to the imperial bullies and the corrupt local officials that conspired with them. Their cruel and humiliating tactics killed the rabbi who had no earthly powers, but then God said no. He took away their victory over the powerless, the occupied. God sided against the occupiers, saying no to power combined with cruelty.

As a former occupier myself, this wasn't the joyous Easter Sermon that I was looking forward to. A week after Winter Soldier, it was really the last thing I needed to hear. As a former imperial bully, I needed it even less.

I had been a simple, honest soldier. 11H- Heavy Antiarmor Weapons Infantryman. I loved almost every minute of it. I loved it enough that after my unit got shut down as a part of the "peace dividend" after the end of the Cold War, I ended up looking for a new home. I wound up as a 13B Cannon Crewmember. I adored every minute of that.

All that simple, honest soldiering came to an end when I got to Iraq. I was there In Lieu Of military police, which ordinarily wouldn't have been so bad. Patrolling and escorting convoys is just fine; they're ordinary tasks. No, those jobs weren't the problem- being a prison guard was. I stopped being a soldier and started being an occupier. A true imperial bully. That was when I stopped being a professional soldier, too. The only training I got was how to wear a brassard and the pictures in the news showing how the "real MPs" treated detainees up at Abu Ghraib. The pieces of shit running the 16th MP Bde (the only airborne MP brigade in the world) had the nerve to tell us that if there was a problem in the IF and we had to fall back on our training and experience as combat soldiers, we would go to jail. For mistreating the detainees. This from the MPs down from Abu Ghraib.

I wasn't a trained professional any more. In lieu of training, my chain of command gave me threats of jail. I was a thug, literally armed with a club and making up rules as I saw fit. Just because I never killed any of them doesn't make it less bad. Just because I never beat, robbed or raped any of them doesn't make it any less bad. It was the highlight of my Army career, and I wasn't the simple, honest professional soldier that I had been for the previous twelve years. I was just an imperial bully. I was professionally and morally the equal of the men who killed Christ. Those men didn't know that they were killing the son of God, they were just thugs in an occupying army doing their jobs as oppressors- just like me. Everyone that trained me, that I looked up to when I was a young private, taught me better than that. Everyone that trained me, that I looked up to when I was a young NCO, taught me better than that.

Everything I was, everything I stood for, everything that I swore in my oath of enlistment- it was all betrayed by the way that my unit was used. We did nothing to defend the Constitution of the United States. All we did was oppress Iraqis. Oh, and if we were Christian, we betrayed our faith and our God, too.

It wasn't a good Easter for me.