What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Wait a second. Doesn’t this break military regulations and probably several laws?  

A few weeks ago we discussed the fact that the RNC was apparently working with the White House to send active duty members of the military in uniform to speak on behalf of the president’s policies at Republican political events.  That’s against the law and military regulations.  And for good reason since that’s a quick ride to making the military — or factions or individuals in the military — tools of one or the other political party.  

Now we seem to have an example in practice.

This is exactly what appears to have happened yesterday at a political event with Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO).  This article in the Fort Collins Coloradoan shows a picture of Musgrave doing just that with the caption: “Marilyn Musgrave introduces Marine Sergeant Brandon Forsyth on Friday during the Larimer County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner.”  

A look at the picture shows pretty clearly that Forsyth was in uniform.  Yet those regs linked above say clearly that military personnel can attend partisan events only as spectators and not in uniform.  

I’ve heard from a number of active duty and retired members of the military, including a number of JAG lawyers, and unless there’s something very different about Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) event in Colorado than the description of it that appeared in her local paper, it clearly violated the law.  

There’s another little detail one retired JAG officer brings up, however.  

The uniformed member of the military who appears at such an event can be court-martialed for the violation. It’s not some technicality in UCMJ terms. But there’s no law against a politician or party leader putting them up to it or facilitating it. So there’s no risk for them.  

So Musgrave and whomever else organized the event is putting this guy’s career on the line as well as encouraging this misconduct for their own partisan gain.

Let me mention another point about this issue of uniformed military appearing at and/or speaking at partisan political events.    

I’ve gotten a few emails on this point so I want to clarify lest there be any confusion: violation of the ban on uniformed military participating in partisan political events isn’t some technical violation like not filling out a form or not following some obscure protocol. And pointing it out isn’t just some blog gotcha.  

The existence of this ban and the enforcement of it are hugely important both to good order and discipline within the military and to preserving our democratic republic. The military can’t be made into an arm of one or the other political party. Nor can the executive be allowed to enlist members of the armed forces, either individually or en masse, willingly or not, as soldiers in his domestic political battles.

This is about preserving a professional military and preserving our system of government. It’s a big deal. We need to find out a few more specifics about what happened at the Musgrave event. Perhaps the newspaper account is deeply misleading about what actually happened. But if this thing that looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is a duck, then it needs to be nipped in the bud.