True Faith And Allegiance: The Burden of Military Ethics

7. The Profession of Arms: The Full Measure of Devotion

7. The Profession of Arms The Full Measure of Devotion The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason for his being. —Douglas MacArthur, 1946, reviewing the case of a Japanese war criminal As pointed out in the last chapter, students of military ethics must beware the simple answer and the moral zealot. Although codes and dogmas and rituals can serve well as guides to honorable conduct in trying circumstances, there are no shortcuts to morality. Ethical actions do not simply occur; they are the product of wisdom and virtue annealed into habit by good education . Although it is true that soldiers are not moral philosophers, it is not at all correct that soldiers are not moral beings. One does not have to be a restaurateur to eat, and one does not have to be a philosopher to be moral. After all, "Man doth not live by bread alone."1 Tragically, man also seems not to live by peace alone. As Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) once wrote: "Hope though we may, what reason have we for thinking that passion and selfinterest , the root cause of armed conflict in men and nations, will cease to operate; that anyone will willingly surrender what he has or not try to get what he wants; in short, that human nature will ever become something other than it is?"2 "From the beginning of man's recorded history," Gen. Sir John Hackett observed, "physical force, or the threat of it, has always been freely applied to the resolution of social problems. This phenomenon seems to persist as a fundamental element in the social pattern." Hence Hackett's assertion: "The function of the profession of arms is the ordered application of force in the resolution of a social problem."3 If we are to have military 116 TRUE FAITH AND ALLEGIANCE ethics, then, we need to understand moral and military imperatives . The Military Mind and Military People According to D.T. Suzuki, the great interpreter of Zen to the West, the samurai "finds a congenial spirit in Zen" because the "military mind . . . is comparatively simple and not at all addicted to philosophizing."4 And this remarkable index entry may be found in the memoirs of David Lloyd George (18631945 ), British prime minister from 1916 to 1922 and one of Britain 's greatest war leaders: Military mind, narrowness of, 3051; stubbornness of, not peculiar to America, 3055; does not seem to understand arithmetic, 3077; its attitude in July, 1918, represented by Sir Henry Wilson's fantastic memorandum of 25/7/18, 3109; obsessed with North-West Frontier of India, 3119; impossibility of trusting, 3124; regards thinking as a form of mutiny, 3422.5 But if these and similar insults directed toward the "military mind" seem too harsh, it is true that the military tyrant is ubiquitous not only in military literature but in the barracks and on the battlefield as well. A retired U.S. Army two-star general admits that "the authoritarian structure of our profession, even though essential, is the natural breeding ground for the unethical use of authority."6 If the military endows soldiers with power but fails to inculcate a corresponding sense of responsibility, it may—however unintentionally—create despots with "military minds." One popular depiction of such a despot is the movie A Few Good Men (1993), in which the tyrannical Marine Colonel Nathan Jessup is played by actor Jack Nicholson. The film is at its best, or worst, in depicting Jessup's "military mind," as well as the mind of a young Marine lance corporal to whom the Corps is everything. His loyalty is to unit, Corps, God, and country— in that order. To him, as Lloyd George might have put it, thinking becomes a form of mutiny. The film is hardly an accurate The Profession of Arms 117 description of the minds of most members of the military. That it does accurately describe the thinking of some, however, is enough to carry us back to the point that every soldier must be thoughtful and moral enough to understand that power and virtue are not always coincidental and that not every order is binding. Those commissioned into our military forces receive a credential that recognizes their "patriotism, valor, fidelity, and abilities ." Thus we return to the loyalty dilemma, discussed in Chapter 2. The...