Opinion: Stop Trying to Politicize the Army

(April 14) -- Nobody wants a political Army.

The Founding Fathers so vehemently opposed the idea of a politicized Army that they wrote barriers against such a possibility directly into the very foundations of our Republic. The Constitution makes it clear that the Congress has the power to maintain a Navy, but only "raise" an Army. A little farther down one notices that even this "raising" of an Army is technically only for a period of two years.

They were wise men, those Founding Fathers.

Over the course of the past several decades, however, as the ethos of maintaining a large standing peacetime professional Army developed in this nation, a concurrent trend toward politicization of that military also reared its ugly head.

It has become particularly pronounced these past 20 years or so. Retired generals and admirals are solicited to endorse this candidate or that one. Military officers are asked their thoughts on political positions on television and radio. And one party deliberately attempts to paint itself as that which most "supports the troops."

That trend, ubiquitous across the services, must be stopped. We are between elections now. This is a good time to make this point.

I am an active-duty, regular Army, professional infantry officer. Once I taught history to cadets at West Point. During my time on the faculty there about a decade ago, some civilian sociologists at another intellectual center released an academic study that shook the foundations. Their research found that a great percentage of officers openly identified themselves as Republicans. I immediately attempted to mitigate the effects of this report on my young charges.

In my classroom, halfway through the semester, I would ask, "How many of you think that I am Republican?" Roughly a third of the hands would go up.

"And how many think that I am a Democrat?" Another third.

"OK, for you lazy ones ... how many think I am a Libertarian?" The undecided, realizing that this was the final option, raised their hands.

"My point is that none of you has a clue ... and this is as it should be."

Nobody knows how I have ever voted. Not my wife or my daughters or anyone else knows how I vote. I try to live up to our professional ethic, and I think I do a decent job. But the pressures from the outside are not insignificant.

Both political parties attempt to wrap themselves in the flag, and that is normal. But when they try to use us, who serve, as their personal political Kewpie dolls, then they cross the line. That is bad for the nation.

We who carry arms and fight the nation's wars do not serve the Republicans, and we do not serve the Democrats. We serve at the direction of the president, be that Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Obama. We serve with the authorities granted to us by the people as represented by the body of Congress, regardless of which party is in power.

We who do the fighting for the nation swear our oath, unique among the armed forces of the nations, not to a king or to a political body or to a political leader. We swear an oath to a document and to the ideas contained therein. My oath is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This demands consideration.

When our Founding Fathers sought to distance the Army from politics, they did so with the specter of the English Civil War, and the interregnum of Oliver Cromwell, fresh in their minds. They had learned as schoolboys of the poison of mixing politics with guns, and while we face no such crisis, we would be wise to continue to follow their lead.

I used to close my classes at West Point with this sentiment:

"I do not care if, in your heart, you are a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian or a Communist, or any other party for that matter. I do not care for whom you vote. What I care about is our professional ethic. It is weakening, and this I will not stand. What that survey should have revealed was that maybe 4 percent of the officers were Republican, 1 percent were Democrat, and 95 percent of the officers told the pollsters to go and get stuffed, because they would not answer."

Do what you can, if you know a serviceman, to encourage this ethic. It is slipping, and we need your help shoring up our will on this point.

Robert Bateman is a professional infantry officer and a strategist. He is the author of "No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident."