Reflections on Marines in LA

From 2018 to 2021, I was privileged to serve on the faculty of the US Naval Academy (I taught ethics). Today I’m thinking about former students of mine who are currently assigned to the 2^nd Battalion, 7^th Marines. On Monday, my students along with the roughly 700 other Marines assigned to 2/7 Marines, were ordered to grab their rifles and prepare to deploy. It was a moment for which they had long prepared. Marines, I’ve observed, are especially clear eyed about the implications of their oaths “to support and defend the Constitution.” Short-notice deployments to distant battlefields in troubled regions are exactly what they signed up for.

But the deployment order issued on 9 June did not send my former students and their fellow Marines to a distant battlefield or a troubled region. Instead, the Secretary of Defense ordered 2/7 Marines to deploy to Los Angeles. California. USA. Their mission, according to a US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) spokesperson is to “seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 (the 2,100 National Guard soldiers from the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team) who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.”

Whether President Trump has the legal authority to order 2/7 Marines into Los Angeles and federalize National Guard troops over the ardent protests of California’s governor will be adjudicated in the courts. Whether the order to deploy 700 Marines into downtown Los Angeles is morally praiseworthy is less controversial. It’s not. Nor, if we assume that the desired end state is restoration of order, the safety of the citizens of Los Angeles, and the preservation of their rights – and not some darker agenda – is it a prudent order.

Marines in LA: An Ethical Critique

In the interest of space, I’ll offer three reasons to criticize the deployment on moral grounds. First, the deployment exposes innocent Angelinos to a degree of risk that is disproportionate to the objectives that have thus far been stated. The doctrinal mission of a Marine infantry battalion is “to locate and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver and repel their assault by fire and close combat.” This is the mission to which 2/7 Marines prepares. When asked what measures NORTHCOM is taking to ensure that a military formation that’s manned, trained, equipped to kill enemy combatants and dominate foreign battlefields does not cause unnecessary harm to American citizens and civilian infrastructure, a NORTHCOM spokesperson responded that Marines are “trained to deescalate situations.” This is gaslighting (which is something I would not expect from a military spokesperson…I’m disappointed). All service members receive basic training in escalation of force. This does not make them experts. Indeed, by the standards of a mid-sized or big-city police force, it doesn’t even qualify them as competent amateurs.

The US military has been refocusing its limited training time and budgets on fighting peer military competitors, moving away from the counterinsurgency competencies that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq demanded. The LA deployment is an unhealthy distraction. Rather than preparing to defeat a great power army, 2/7 Marines are conducting crash courses in crowd control, prisoner handling, and less-than-lethal force. Every day that they are deployed on this dubious mission is a day that they are not training to fight and win our nation’s wars.

The second reason to question the Marine deployment on ethical grounds is the unwarranted risk of physical and moral harm to the Marines themselves. A well-trained Marine has been prepared mentally and physically to kill enemy combatants. Taking the life of an American citizen is a very different thing, legally, morally, and psychologically. If during this deployment it becomes necessary for a Marine to use lethal force to protect herself, her fellow Marines, or citizens of Los Angeles, there are at least three ways this could go wrong. First, the Marine could misread the threat and employ lethal force unnecessarily. Moral injury is a psychological response to participating in or witnessing actions that violate deeply held moral values. It’s unlikely that a Marine who takes the life of an innocent American will ever fully recover from that moral trauma. Moral injury is also the likely outcome for a Marine who makes the right decision to employ lethal force but fails to be discriminately lethal. Cops rarely discharge their weapons and, if they must, will use the minimum force necessary. Marines are trained to lay down “walls of lead.” So-called “collateral damage” is a foreseeable necessity in warfare. It’s unacceptable in policing. Finally, because the moral penalties for getting it wrong are so high, the likelihood that a Marine will hesitate to use lethal force in a situation in which a cop would not hesitate is high. This could cost a Marine his life. Since 9 June, many have voiced fear of trigger-happy Marines. A greater risk, arguably, is that Marines will hesitate to pull the trigger.

My final ethical criticism of the decision to deploy Marines on American soil is the harm this will do to America’s trust in its military. Since the late 1980s, the military (according to Gallup) was either the most trusted institution in America or second most trusted (occasionally small businesses edged out the military). It’s easy to forget that this was not always the case. During the late 60s and for most of the 70s, the military was not well respected and, in some circles, it was reviled. The military successfully clawed its way back to respectability, but the trust the military has earned is fragile.

General George Marshall eloquently expressed the strategic significance of preserving America’s trust in its military. In a 1944 letter to a subordinate general who was preparing to take over as a military governor of a town in occupied Italy – essentially establishing a military dictatorship there – General Marshall wrote:

“I’m turning over to you a sacred trust and I want you to bear that in mind every day and every hour you preside over this military government and civil affairs venture…[We] have a great asset and that is our people, our countrymen, do not distrust us and do not fear us. Our countrymen, our fellow citizens, are not afraid of us. They don’t harbor any ideas that we intend to alter the government of the country or the nature of this government in any way. This is a sacred trust that I turn over to you today…I don’t want you to do anything…to damage this high regard in which the professional soldiers in the Army are held by our people.”

In 2020, according to then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, President Trump conveyed in a volatile Oval Office meeting his fervent desire to employ active-duty troops against demonstrators protesting racial violence in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. To Trump’s great frustration, Esper and General Mark Milley, the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), successfully restrained the president’s worst instincts. Five years later, Oval Office dynamics have changed. Fealty and eagerness to please the president were the chief virtues leading to Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s nomination and confirmation. Predictably, SECDEF voiced no reservations about the risks I’ve outlined above. The current CJCS, General Dan Caine, is also disadvantaged in his ability to challenge the president. Although he had a stellar Air Force career and is clearly a man of character and integrity, General Caine was a retired three-star when he was nominated for CJCS (every other Chairman was selected from the field of active-duty four-stars). As a result, his resume does not include an assignment as a combatant commander or service chief, jobs that immerse flag and general officers to the workings of government at the highest levels. Although we may never know how strenuously (or if) General Caine advised against deploying Marines into LA, we know that he, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Commanding General of USNORTHCOM failed to protect their Marines.

Given the eagerness of the Commander-in-Chief and SECDEF to employ active-duty military on American soil, and the failure at the four-star level to stop this dangerous politicization of the military, the burden of mitigating the harm of this awful decision falls primarily on the shoulders of the junior officers and senior NCOs at the company, platoon, and squad levels. In this regard, I’m optimistic. Although they are ill-prepared tactically for this mission, the Marine Corps does an especially good job at educating its leaders in first principles, the foundational ideas of military service in a democracy. These, I believe, will serve as essential guardrails against the risks I’ve outlined in this essay.

Advice for My Former Students

If I had had the opportunity to chat with my former students before their deployment to LA, I would have advised them to recall the conversations we had during week 7 of the Naval Academy’s core ethics course (the course that I directed from 2018 to 2021; most Naval ROTC units have also adopted this curriculum). On week 7, the syllabus explores “special obligations,” the moral duties that apply to specific people based on distinct positions they occupy, relationships they’ve formed, or promises they’ve made.

The curriculum pays closest attention to promise-keeping. When newly commissioned Second Lieutenants and Ensigns take their oaths of office on graduation day, they make a promise to the American people that they will “support and defend the Constitution,” that they will run to the sound of the guns when prudence would suggest running away, and that they will never misuse the awesome power entrusted to them. Inspired by America's deep historical distrust of concentrated military power, the oath of office commits an officer’s loyalty to the law of the land – a document, not a prince.

In preparation for making this promise, Midshipmen and their professors gather in seminar to dismantle the language of the oath and consider the merits of an ethical model that transforms the oath into a guide for moral reasoning. According to “Constitutional ethics,” a framework for moral reasoning developed by retired Marine Corps Colonel Paul Roush, the Constitution implicitly establishes a hierarchy of professional loyalties. Self is at the bottom, followed by shipmate (fellow Marines and Sailors), ship (the Marine or Sailor’s assigned unit), service (Marine Corps or Navy), mission, and ultimately, the US Constitution.

The greater the complexity of the operational environment, the more helpful the hierarchy of loyalties becomes. On the streets of LA, they can serve as an ethical handrail, a reminder that every action a Marine takes during this operation involves a moral duty to self, shipmate, ship, service, mission, and the Constitution. If loyalties ever seem to conflict, the “Constitutional paradigm” insists that the Marine must resolve the conflict before acting. Importantly, the order of priorities is fixed – the Constitution is always the highest priority; self always comes last.

Although self and shipmate bring up the rear on Roush’s priority list, they are still priorities. Every Marine has a duty, a moral obligation, to take care of himself and his fellow Marines. As earnestly as Marines may want to avoid violent confrontations in Los Angeles, they must be prepared to exercise the inherent right of self-defense that every Marine possesses. However, as my students learned during week 5 of their ethics course, there are limits to defensive rights: the threat must be imminent or ongoing, the Marine must inflict the minimum amount of harm necessary to defend herself and her fellow Marines, and the harm inflicted in defense can’t be significantly greater than the harm that the offender has caused or intends to cause. (Note: the president’s “If they spit, we hit” formulation fails to pass the proportionality test.)

“Ship” (the Marine’s unit) and service (the Marine Corps in this case) are profoundly important considerations for this deployment. Second Battalion, Seventh Marines is a storied unit. Activated in early 1941, 2/7 Marines fought in the Battles of Guadalcanal, Peleliu, and Okinawa during the Second World War. Among their many campaigns in the Korean War, 2/7 Marines participated in the Inchon Landing that led to the recapture of Seoul and the famously brutal Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Battalion-level achievements and personal acts of heroism during the Vietnam War, The Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan are too numerous to list. “The Los Angeles Protests” is now a part of the history of 2^nd Battalion, 7^th Marines. If the deployment is successful, it will likely fade into historical oblivion. If, however, the deployment becomes a catalyst for violence as some fear, I believe it will leave a permanent mark on the reputation of this extraordinary unit and on the US Marine Corps.

The principal advice I wish I could have given my former students prior to this deployment involves the final two priorities – mission and Constitution. These are your ethical North Stars for this operation. Conduct detailed mission analysis and don’t allow a centimeter of mission creep. There must be no uncertainty in your mind regarding the boundaries set by the Rules for Use of Force. Demand clarity from above and tolerate no failures to follow the RUF in your subordinates. While you’re not expected to be lawyers, you’ll know if you’re given an order that is palpably illegal. Palpable illegality is the threshold; don’t follow a palpably illegal order. It’s wildly unlikely but conceivable that you’ll receive an order that’s legal, but palpably immoral. If this happens, follow Colonel Roush’s “prerequisites for disobedience”: 1) disobedience is appropriate only for non-trivial violations of justice; 2) before disobeying an order, try to change it (time permitting); 3) disobey publicly (don’t sneak away and disobey); and 4) be prepared to accept the consequences of disobedience, which could include the end of your career or even jail time.

I’ll conclude this post with a final idea that emerges from Colonel Roush’s Constitutional paradigm. Roush suggests that for officers who regularly find it difficult to resolve conflicts in the priority of loyalties or who routinely confront orders that seem immoral, it may be because their values are inconsistent with the values of military service. Those officers, writes Roush, should consider resigning and finding a line of work that does not require them to compromise their personal values.

While I think Colonel Roush is right, I’d like to contribute my own addendum. For any military officer who is still reading this lengthy post, I hope you’ll set the bar very high for circumstances that would lead you to resign. It’s evident to me that you care deeply about leading ethically. We need officers like you to stick around. Your Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Guardians need you to lead them. Your country needs you now more than ever.

Thank you and, if I may, semper fi.

Photo credit: AP