Lycanthropia

Let’s take a break from our regularly scheduled program of fiction (proceeding apace, thanks for asking) and have a brief civics lesson. For a number of Whistle & Fish readers, this will simply be a refresher course; the rest should pay careful attention.

We’ll start with a review of the soldiers’ oath, a pledge made by everyone who enters the United States military. It’s pretty simple, really:

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.

I want to stress a very simple point here: Soldiers agree to support and defend the Constitution. Not the United States themselves, nor their elected officials, nor even the citizens of the nation, but the contract we, the people, have agreed will govern us. I constructed that last phrase quite carefully. We, the people, are not ruled by our elected officials, but by the document that circumscribes even their conduct.

In fact, within the framework of the Constitution, we govern ourselves, and our citizen soldiers vow to support the Constitution even before they agree to follow the orders of the President or their officers. This hierarchy is important because, if officers or presidents prove to be domestic enemies of the Constitution, soldiers are no longer obligated to serve them. They are, rather, sworn to defend the Constitution against them.

It is important to recall that, while the constitution was drafted by remarkable people, they were first and foremost a group of rebels that had lived under the rule of a tyrant, and they were determined not to let their newly conceived government become the tool of despots. After trying out and rejecting Articles of Confederation, they drafted and adopted the present document. But it was still suspect. To spell out immunities provided individual citizens who would serve as watchdogs insuring elected officials did not exceed their legal limitations, the new Senate and House of Representatives immediately ratified ten amendments to the constitution: the Bill of Rights.

Regardless of how else one interprets it, the Bill of Rights is about ordinary citizens preventing the abuse of power by elected officials. The amendments were ratified because the infant government recognized that, to succeed, it needed two things: First, a clear definition of the powers of government adminstrators (the Constitution itself) and, second, an informed, vigilent, somewhat suspicious citizenry with the right to demand its elected officials toe the line. It is clear from the way the Constitution is constructed that its framers believed one part of the equation wouldn’t work without the other.

Many in today’s society, instructed by tradition and nationalism rather than a critical understanding of the Constitution, believe supporting their elected officials in any and all their actions is, in fact, patriotism. This is especially — perhaps dangerously — true of their attachment to the seated president and his advisors. But the reality, as abstracted by the Constitution, is quite the opposite: The Constitution both approves of and encourages dissent, because dissent lets elected officials know that unconstitutional abuses of power will not be tolerated. Who defines the abuse of power? Certainly Congress and the Supreme Court, but also (and perhaps more importantly) a well-educated citizenry, a citizenry informed by a free press and expressing itself through free speech. Let me say the following quite clearly: Any agency attempting to compromise those freedoms — especially during times of national distress (war, for example) — is anti-American. A well-informed citizenry validates the actions of soldiers on the battlefield precisely through exercising the rights guaranteed by the Constitution that the army is sworn to protect and defend.

Let me repeat that last statement: If soldiers on the battlefield are executing the lawful mandate prescribed by the Constitution — ie. its support and defense — then those at home exercising their constitutional rights are encouraging them, making their work purposeful. If, on the other hand, soldiers on the battlefield are operating outside the lawful mandate prescribed by the Constitution, then voices of dissent are their best chance of being extracted from unconstitutional hazard.

Lately, George W. Bush and his cabinet officials have done an astounding job of disinformation, convincing those informed by tradition and nationalism that their critics are “demoralizing American troops and putting them at risk.” In fact, most of the administration’s critics are simply insisting that it act circumspectly, according to constitutional mandate. Far from putting troops at risk, the administration’s critics want to insure they are not deployed haphazardly, nor being used as pawns in the quest of an American empire that is clearly outside both national and international law. Calling this dissent “un-American” is either badly misinformed, deliberately misleading, or both.

A second response to criticism is the “why don’t you move to Iraq?” or less venomous “you should be glad you were born in America” sleight-of-hand. Certainly I am fortunate that the Constitution guarantees my right to free speech, but the guarantee comes with the responsibility to exercise it in defense of that freedom. So while I rank myself among the privileged, I am also among the obligated. By implication, the Constitution requires that I speak out against its abuses, whether the president, his cabinet or those informed by tradition and nationalism like it or not (and perhaps especially if they don’t like it).

My question in answer to their criticism is this: What are you gentlemen hiding? If your actions are constitutional, why worry about criticism? Why expand the ability of government to pry into the privacy of individual citizens while continually cloaking your own actions in secrecy? Why stifle dissent that, according to your estimation, has no teeth?

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