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The Military’s Purpose is Not to Kill People and Break Things

August 26, 2015

An Army officer reflects on an oft-repeated and inaccurate maxim.

I have killed people and broken things in war.

I have killed people and broken things in war, but, as a military officer, that was never the end. There was a purpose, a reason, a goal. Always. My country, profession, and family demand this, as is the case for all in uniform.

So when, in the first Republican presidential debate earlier this month, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee responded to an open question from moderator Bret Baier on the “changing” culture of the American military by saying, “The purpose of the military is kill people and break things,” the audience applause appalled me.

The military’s purpose is not to kill people and break things. This idea is factually, historically, professionally, and philosophically wrong — and must itself be remorselessly killed and violently broken. This 11-word platitude has no place in modern society.

To suggest the military’s purpose is to break and kill confuses purpose and task, ends with means. Ironically, this miscalculation came from a minister. To apply the error in ecclesiastical terms would be to claim that Jesus’s purpose was merely to die a painful physical death, without any higher design. This might seem like silly semantics to some, but to professionals carrying either cross or carbine, words matter.

Beyond the logic, consider U.S. military doctrine’s first among equals — Joint Publication 1: Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States — which affirms that “military power is integrated with other instruments of national power to advance and defend US values, interests, and objectives.” This purpose applies even to the ground-pounding infantry, whose mission is “to close with and destroy the enemy.” Again, “destroy” is a task, which does not a purpose make. And recent reality reflects a much broader set of tasks for the grunts than myopic fixation on stabbing and smashing, all of which serve the same purpose Joint Publication 1 describes: training the Ukrainian army, assuring the Baltics, supporting African states, not to mention the development of security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade. Doctrine and recent experience combine to confirm that killing and breaking are not the military’s sole purpose or occupation.

Huckabee’s oft-repeated assertion is also wrong historically. Consider the Berlin Airlift, or the responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the earthquake in Haiti, and the massive disasters in Indonesia and Japan. Or the military’s role in creation and discovery: the Panama Canal, the Space Race, Lewis and Clark, the Great White Fleet, the Internet. We stand watch over the heroes in Arlington, as well as the environment: the U.S. Army protected Yellowstone, our first National Park, for over 30 years (which is where Smokey the Bear got that great campaign hat). Dr. Seuss drew political cartoons as a lieutenant, while director Frank Capra of It’s a Wonderful Life fame made movies as a major in the U.S. Army during World War II. The military does many diverse tasks. The common denominator is serving and protecting America, Americans, and American interests.

To sharpen this edge with a personal point, I write from a forward-stationed position in the Republic of Korea. Tensions are up after North Korea planted mines on our side of the Demilitarized Zone, maiming two South Korean soldiers, which resulted in an escalatory exchange of psychological operations loudspeaker broadcasts and indirect fire. If I were to receive a real-world alert call tonight, the entire range is possible: humanitarian aid and disaster relief, airstrikes and artillery, tanks and tunnels, not to leave out the fully present danger of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare. Or all of the above.

Critics will counter with Clausewitz, dismissing my argument as the naïve, “kind-hearted” words of someone that misguidedly believes there is “some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed.” But Clausewitz was writing in an era of limited options, when a bloodsucking leech was often the medical profession’s first and only recourse. Today is different. New U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley just alluded to the same kind of red stuff. “As America, we have no luxury of a single opponent,” Milley said, warning that “we will pay the butcher’s bill in blood” if the military is not prepared to succeed at tasks across the full spectrum. Limiting the military to killing and breaking would inappropriately constrain us to black/white responses in a Technicolor world.

Not everything has changed. The Spartans had a saying, which roughly translates to “Come back with your shield or on it.” The shield was valued above all, because in the ranks, the shield protected not just its immediate bearer, but also the next soldier, and on, and so on. The shield mattered more than the sword. The message was clear: If you do not have your shield, if you lost that implement of integrated defense, then you had better not come back at all. And this rings true today: The military is both the country’s shield and sword, but, always the shield over the sword.

The final stake in this mistaken sentiment’s heart is that it misrepresents me as a military person. If my purpose is to kill people and break things, how do I explain this to my wife and two young daughters? Particularly as Gen. Milley considered this our primary audience, stating: “Most importantly, we serve for our children.” Should I get down on bended knee and tell my girls, “Daddy is a killer and a breaker?” Would this make them smile? Proud?

The idea that the military exists to kill and break rests on a Hollywood-informed view of the world, loaded with giant, muscular superheroes that never have to submit to the laws of physics or a weapon’s maximum ammunition capacity, perpetually ready to whack a terrorist at a moment’s notice. This Bruckheimerian theology might be captured at its uniformed best in Marvel’s Captain America (played by a CGI-enhanced Chris Evans). Ironically, friends at work have taken to calling me “Steve Rogers” — as in the scrawny, scrappy, hard charger who eventually transforms into Captain America after taking a mystery drug (steroids). As in all jokes, there’s some truth in the punchline: As a runner, I fill out every bit of my extra-small uniform.

But here’s why I’m proud, fiercely proud, to be nicknamed “Steve Rogers.” In the movies, you take some chemicals, get big and impervious to heavy-weapons fire, and start mauling bad guys. In reality, those of us in uniform are human, not Terminators. There’s a telling moment in Captain America when a senior officer tests a group of recruits by rolling a grenade into a large gathering of soldiers. Without hesitation, the smallest of them, Steve Rogers, hurls himself onto the explosive. The protective instinct on display represents the military far better than any written description ever could — sacrificing one’s all to safeguard the many.

The purpose of the military is not to kill people and break things. While sometimes it must break, it must always guard. While sometimes it must kill, it must always keep. In all things, in all tasks, beyond any debate, the military’s purpose is to serve and protect America.

 

Major Matt Cavanaugh, a U.S. Army Strategist, has served in assignments from Iraq to the Pentagon and New York to New Zealand. He writes regularly at WarCouncil.org and invites others to connect via Twitter @MLCavanaugh.  This essay is an unofficial expression of opinion; the views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the US Military Academy, Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or any agency of the U.S. government.

 

Photo credit: The U.S. Army

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36 thoughts on “The Military’s Purpose is Not to Kill People and Break Things”

  1. Excellent article! By Mr. Huckabee’s standard, for those of us who came up during the Cold War, the goal would have been any excuse to launch, launch, and launch some more so we really could kill and break things. Whether it be a nuclear artillery round, a silo based weapon, or something from our Navy colleagues, Mr. Huckabee’s comment makes it sound like our fingers are on the trigger and very itchy. That thought is about as far from reality as you can get. Folks in the military inherently know that we are here to defend America, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The operative word is “defend.” The military does not go out looking for trouble. We are there when there is no other option available and the last attempts at negotiation have failed. Major Cavanaugh has done a good deed by writing this article and expressing what many want to say. We train to be a compelling force when America needs us. However, we are not here for sole purpose of killing and breaking. In closing, I think Major Cavanaugh’s examples of how the military “supports” America are top drawer. I would add one more, Hurricane Katrina. Everyone knows what LTG Honore and his people did in order to support America so there’s no reason to rehash it here.

    1. Purpose of the military is to prevent war by always being prepared to destroy any enemy quickly and effectively. Best defense has historically proven to be a strong offense. MAD has proven to be effective deterrent–being ready to break and kill is best means to prevent war. Once war starts historically most effective way to end it still is breaking and killing.

    2. US Army Strategist? Recommend against going high warble when a political candidate makes a statement. More importantly, 2500 years of history and strategic context crushes this weak argument. The supporting examples (first and last) of the Berlin Airlift and “Steve Rogers” are equally weak. This argument conveniently leaves out the realities of “war proper” prior to the beginning of the Cold War/Berlin Airlift, the resultant wars within the Cold War, and yes the actions of the author’s superhero. War is a last resort or desire for us all, but there is history, reality, and adversaries with a “vote.”

  2. You can count me among those who think the author is indeed engaging in silly semantics.. On the technical point about the “purpose” of the military and our national security apparatus, Major Cavanaugh is correct – means clearly differ from the ends; no one is suggesting that we kill for the sake of killing. However on the primary “function” of the military, he is dead wrong. While many other organizations (and even other nations’ militaries) can perform the humanitarian support missions the US military sometimes finds itself (often rightly) involved in, the author cannot ignore that no one else on this earth is better at warfighting than we – no other nation or group is as well equipped and trained to engage in combat as its primary (but not sole) function. Governor Huckabee’s point is still well taken – the US military must not be distracted with social engineering experiments or try to kid itself that it should not have killing people and breaking things as its core tasks. Our armed forces must always possess the skills, tools and focus to accomplish them when called upon. To fail this places the nation and the rest of the world at risk.

  3. “Critics will counter with Clausewitz, dismissing my argument as the naïve, ‘kind-hearted’ words of someone that misguidedly believes there is ‘some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed.'”

    In fairness to General Clausewitz, I suspect that he would have vociferously endorsed this op-ed. Sun Tzu is often credited with noting that the apex of strategy is to win without fighting at all, and that sentiment rings true in Clausewitz’s seminal work, but the implication of Clausewitz’s admonition to destroy and disarm the enemy is that these actions are advocated for when other options – e.g., diplomacy, for which the use of armed force is both an alternative and an adjunct – has ceased to be an option. With respect to Governor Huckabee’s remarks, while they may be technically accurate, the context (e.g., purposes) of such tasks is key, and was unfortunately absent from his comments.

    As usual, an outstanding contribution to the dialogue from Major Cavanaugh.

  4. I would use this simple description:

    The military’s purpose is to fight and win the nation’s wars (yes I know it is a cliche and some would say a throw away statement but I think it is worth remembering at all times).

    If there is demonstrated political will (leadership and popular) combined with the military capability we can achieve deterrence (though we have to understand deterrence can never be assured because the enemy does have a vote).

    With the national will and military capability to fight and win the nation’s wars diplomacy is able to take the lead among the elements of national power.

    With diplomacy in the lead and the will and capability to fight and win the nation’s wars then and only then can we pay attention to the question of the former senior US Diplomat Madeline Albright when she said “What good is having a military if you do not use it.”

    I of course think it is a damn good thing not to have to use the military but if it is necessary to use it for purposes other than fighting and winning the nation’s wars (e.g., humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, operating in the “gray zone” conducting political or unconventional warfare as required) we can make the political decision to do so and know that if we have properly organized, trained, and resourced the military for its fundamental purpose then we can have the agility and flexibility to do other tasks to support policy, diplomacy, and strategy.

  6. Using the phrase “kill people and break things” is a statement used to contrast the efforts of some to bog down the DOD in poltical correctness and drown it in LGBT causes.

  7. While I am happy to hear that Major Cavanaugh is prepared to “kill people and break things”, and I sincerely thank him for his service, his essay is fundamentally flawed. The basis for the military, regardless of whatever any JCS publication might say, is to defend America and our way of life. If the underlying purpose of the military was to respond to humanitarian disasters, or build nations, or conduct any other of the actions mentioned, we could save billions of dollars, and not require the most dedicated men and women in te country to join. In other words, we would not need “a military.”

    I’m sure Major Cavanaugh his a fine officer, but to suggest that the military does not exist to kill people and break things is another trifle of political correctness. The Marines don’t say that “every Marine is a rifleman” except to emphasize the basic reason for our military.

  9. Of course the military’s purpose is to “kill and break things” (an obvious over simplification of military missions). The author confused goals, objectives, and national strategy with the military’s purpose. We don’t send the military off to just “kill and break things”. We do it to accomplished established goals and objectives (hopefully). But if the military wasn’t good at “killing and breaking things”, then it wouldn’t be used, hopefully as a last resort in most cases, as an element of DIME.

  10. I applaud the Major’s service, but am dismayed at his learned opinion. The U.S. Military is a tool useful to the Republic only when married to a coherent strategy. Ie, when destroying/degrading the enemy is the goal. When that strategy is recreating American values on enemies and allies we have had zero success in the last half Century. Maybe it’s necessary for us to fully wipe out a culture before they will allow themselves to be made in our image; ala Germany and Japan, but the killing done for this purpose in Vietnam and Iraq has been in vain, a horrible waste. Afghanistan looks like it will turn out to be the same. The moment our strategy morphed from vengeance on the Taliban and Al Qaeda, to “nation building” we were on a fools’ errand. Clarify first, kill second. Wars should be thoughtful, and a last resort

  11. The author’s argument rests on not distinguishing between the military and National Command Authority. Of course the use of military force is much more than to kill people and break things, but that purposes he describes are civilian decisions, not military purpose. The primary purpose of the military is to be capable to unleashing controlled violence in service to national political purposes. Note those purposes are not the military’s but the government’s. The ancillary missions such as humanitarian relief, while useful, are not the purpose of the military. Indeed, we could design and equip a humanitarian organization for far less money.

    So the phrase the author dislikes should more accurately be stated, “the purpose of the military is to be prepared to kill people and break thing, so as to give the government coercive leverage in international affairs in service to larger political goals…except when we can spare them to do humanitarian work. ”

    But since that phrase, while accurate, is verbose, the shorter version is a reasonable facsimile.

  12. What ever the strategic outcome wished by the government, or the operational requirements of higher headquarters, the infantry will be the main instrument in an application of the “military.” The institutional definition of the mission of an infantry unit is to “find, fix, and destroy the enemy; his will to make war and his means of doing so.” The mission of an infantryman by MOS description is, ” to close with and kill the enemy.” Everybody else may be winning hearts and minds, but the infantry is concentrating on separating the two, physically.To paraphrase a notable “killer”: “all else is superfluous.” I would opine that the author is a practitioner of long range, low intensity conflict,and that by declaring himself a killer twice in the first two sentences of his thesis he intends to add gravitas to his thesis. But any holder of the CIB earned in high intensity combat would view such a declaration with considerable skepticism.

    1. You stole the words right out of my mouth.

      Ironically, so did Cavanaugh (or whoever moderates this site) when they deleted my original comment. Ask me if I’m shocked that the guy who wrote the article above is also in favor of censoring the opinions of others that don’t happen to align with his own. I pity the Major’s soldiers both past and present.

      1. Well, it’s very much to his advantage to continue to rationalize to himself and his wife and daughters the way he has, as it’s that kind of rhetoric will make it very likely he’ll be set among the next generation of ringknockers in charge of half-hearting whatever the next campaign may be, in the absence of all the good, proven leadership that was burnt out or kicked out following the budget cuts of the ones we just had. The process will repeat just as it has since the Korean war, and he’ll be able to rest on his laurels, at no cost to his conscience.

  13. Current military doctrine is outside the bounds established by our Constitution. Our military should not be engaged in ~90% of the operations it now performs. Rightfully, our military’s core purpose, reason and goal remains to “kill people and break things”.

  14. “killing people and breaking things” worked wonders on WW2 axis….
    killing people:
    military personnel on the battlefields, civilians under rain of bombs
    breaking things:
    ships, planes, tanks on the battlefields, cities levelled under rain of bombs

  15. I understand the mix-up highlighted between ways and ends as well as the spectrum of tasks the armed forces carry out that are perhaps lost when the statement in question is used. However, at the end of the day, isn’t what the military brings to the table that no one else brings the ability to break things and kill people – in other words, force? Or, perhaps in the more eloquent words of General MacArthur:

    “And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.

    Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment. But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory”

  16. As long as we continue to allow our military to be used for a wide and ever growing number of purposes, we will inevitably leverage the resource for irresponsible purposes. The commenter below alludes to the Cold War, but it’s the grave and simple reality that we would only use the military in case of armed conflict that would prevent its overuse. And it would require responsible and constitutional discussion when the executive and legislature chooses to employ because of that gravity.

    All of the other purposes he discusses would be as equally is not better served under a non-kinetic entity. Just because the military can do it does not mean that it should.

    We need to leave this well-meaning but dangerous type of thinking to a different time. It’s resulted in seventy years of over-intervention, inflated dangers to entice an increasingly alarmist public, an overcommitted military in a debt-burdened society while NATO allies significantly underfund their own security, and a force on the verge of cracking under the weight of conflict and gross budget mismanagement. Let’s leave neoconservative over-commitment of our military to a different decade.

  18. I will speak as a foreigner from a country that has experienced dramatic collapse in the battlefield. I think the author is plain wrong in the essence and existential identity of the military. The author seems to take an issue with the bluntness of Huckabee’s discourse (as a political and electoral discourse, it is not only blunt but a means to draw attention). Particularly there is this issue of proving than the military is more than just blunt killing and destruction, thus all the relatively contemporary and isolated examples of how the military is about either altruistic missions or part of a wider national statecraft toolkit.
    However, although I am no fan of Huckabee, he is right outside the context of his ideology or party politics: good soldiers are experts in killing the enemy faster, better, and at lesser cost to friendly forces in order to achieve tactical proficiency that supports operational and strategic success. If we take the best armies and navies in our history, the ones that stand out are not those are extolled for the humanistic spirit but for their warfighting skills and those skills are, at their very essence, about how to kills better, faster, and to lesser cost to your troops. The legions were about that, the Grande Armee was about that, Guderian’s Panzer’s did not mind to solve the hunger of french refugees more than cutting through the XXIst French Corps at Sedan and enveloping the allied left flank in the Lower countries. Major Cavanaugh’s argument uses recent and relatively scarcer pieces of evidences to run against the entire historical trends. No wonder why he never elaborated on the historical side of his argument below 1945…he knew what things were like before that year. Finally, it seems that he argues with so much bias out his concern as to how to explain his profession to his children. Well, the killing is not personal so in the eyes of Just War theory he should not be as concerned of admitting the alleged wrong-doing of his profession as much as sugar-coding his life and career choices. At least this is what General Patton would tell the Major I believe.

    As a someone who comes from a country were the nature of the army took a longer time to mature, I can speak for the woes that come along a romanticized and politically sanitized version of what soldiers are about. My country, Ecuador, experienced a massive battlefield collapse in 1941 which took away half of our territories in the Amazon region. This resulted, among many things, from soldiers who believed that, more important than mastering their military skills, was to be play as political actors who defended the poor and isolated. Though morally-praiseworthy, their actions triggered an overall collapse of military skills. Soldiers who entered the army to wear a uniform without mastering the martial skills that it represented. The result was a dramatic defeat. After it, the military acknowledged that it lost its ways and focused on mastering its skills and trying to stay away from politics even if the little man was suffering from social injustices. As a result, the army vindicated itself in 1995 with a successful defensive against Peru.

    These two examples should call on the overall flawed structure of the author’s argument. I think the United States should concern itself with finding politically sanitized terms or ideas to describe its issues. Calling the military to be prepared to succeed in a “full-range” of missions is less than sound guidance to face the tough questions regarding budget, training, deployments, and military strategy facing this nation. I say this respectfully and as a guess of course. But taking issue with the blunt description of the military’s existential identity should be less of concern than asking the question “what of all the potential conflicts across the spectrum, should the United States succeed in order to preserve its superpower status?” it might not feed hungry kids in Africa, but it is what makes justice to American tax-payers who do not have healthcare coverage in order to support a ready, skilled, and powerful military.

    1. That is some 9/10/01 nonsense, everything in the military is geared toward killing the enemy or denigration its will to oppose you. Other means may be deployed but ultimately killing, I.e. The use of force is what it is purpose. Many within the military act like it’s an institution that needs to be protected from the one thing it’s suppose to do kill the enemy. When that’s not the main goal an NGO or a charity or another department of the government should be used. This is the same kind of thinking that gave us all the crappy non tactical equipment with no function in combat. Namely the Humvee, non armored of coarse…

  19. I strongly disagree. The Major recognizes that military force is a means to an end – that is correct. However, he fails to recognize that the “military” component of national power is fundamentally based on the ability to coerce others into fulfilling our wish. Missions such as humanitarian relief and guard duty are derivative capabilities. Ultimately, coercion requires physical force – the ability to kill people and break things, if necessary. The military has been tasked with things outside of this lane in recent years because the military is seen as a “can-d0” mission-capable entity, unlike most of Washington. However, nation-building (or COIN if you prefer) has been shown to be a failed endeavor. Until our officers understand the military purpose (within the larger political strategy), we will continue to struggle.

  21. Early in my third year of ROTC, our TAC officer circled my class up and told us “Your job, as Army officers, will be the management of the execution of violence. If you have a problem with that, you’re in the wrong class.” The Armed Forces exist to defend our country through force of arms – to kill the people and break the things of those countries which choose to attack our country, or in support of national objectives. Every Army officer is either charged with directly leading forces who may be called upon to kill people and break things, or to provide support to those who do.

    The Berlin Airlift was a wonderful humanitarian gesture, but it was also a strategic challenge – was the Soviet Union REALLY going to start a shooting war by shooting down our aircraft? Our military was enforcing an agreement made at the end of World War II over the governance of Berlin. We kept combat forces in Berlin and on the borders of East Germany and Czechoslovakia for over forty years, until the Soviet Union collapsed. We weren’t there for humanitarian purposes, we were there to kill people and break things in the event the Soviets decided to conquer the rest of Europe. The Major may not be old enough to remember it, but I lived it as an Army dependent, too close to the Fulda Gap to have been evacuated if there’d been a sudden attack.

    Yes, when we can spare them from operational concerns, we’ll use those resources for humanitarian purposes – a use which also serves a strategic interest by encouraging the citizens of those countries to look favorably upon the US.

    Training the Ukrainian Army, the Baltics, security duties in Afghanistan and other countries? Again, those are strategic efforts, involving training the locals to kill people and break things so we don’t have to do it all – because if those conflicts spread, we WOULD be killing people and breaking things on a large scale. We didn’t directly intervene in Afghanistan for over a decade of Taliban rule, until they hosted and sheltered a group which committed an attack on our country. We aren’t there for humanitarian purposes, we’re there because we had to go in there to kill people and break things, and now we’re trying to set the stage so we don’t have to do it all over again in a few years.

    If they weren’t intended to kill people and break things, they wouldn’t be ARMED Forces.

  22. You are seriously hung up on Semantics here. The purpose of the US Military is to act as the hammer of our Foreign Policy. While it can, and does perform other non aggressive functions. Its primary function is Combat, AKA “to kill and break things”.
    I see you are assigned to the 82d Abn., as was I long ago and likely before you could walk (or were even born).
    We trained for the eventuality that we would engage the enemies of the United States in all out War. It was not a matter of if, but when it would happen. We trained to kill, and to break things in the most effective military manner possible.
    You are a victim of the over Politically Correct Culture… What in the world do you think is meant by all those nice words you quote from the Doctrine? When our nation calls upon us to engage its enemies, it is telling us to go kill and break things on its behalf.
    Our enemies surely know that their mission is to kill and break our things, do you think they care that you want us to do it in a PC manner? They think it shows weakness on our part.
    Semantics are a wonderful thing… but whatever it takes to help you sleep at night. I am grateful for your service, I just think your point of view is a little too PC.
    AATW! Let’s Go!

  23. The good Major has been taken to task by others so I will not double tap those issues which have already been appropriately identified. (WHOOPS – Please excuse the horrifying analogy to putting two rounds into a bad guy’s chest before another in his brain case).

    Perhaps he is unaware, so I would remind the good Major, who quoted GEN Milley in his piece, of the official 39th Chief of Staff of the Army’s Initial Message to the Army.

    The new CSA lists three priorities in this document. From Priority #1, quote:

    “#1. Readiness: (Current Fight) Our fundamental task is like no other – it is to win in the unforgiving crucible of ground combat. We must ensure the Army remains ready as the world’s premier combat force. Readiness for ground combat is – and will remain – the U.S. Army’s #1 priority. We will always be ready to fight today, and we will always prepare to fight tomorrow.”

    The portrait of being on bended knee pontificating the stark realities of the world with young daughters and calling yourself a ‘killer’ while doing so is an emotional and irrational perspective.

    There are appropriate ways to frame and discuss potential necessities involved with deployments. If that is impossible for you to do, perhaps you can solicit the hundreds of thousands of us who have had the same types of conversations with our families, or consult your chaplain.

    In the meantime, with regard to the number one mission of the Army – you better check with the boss because his marching orders and his priority number one do not connect with your philosophy. If you need some additional guidance I would check with GEN Milley’s XO and see if you can drop by the office so he can make his guidance more clear for you.

    Good luck with that.

  24. I don’t know what planet Mr. Cavanaugh is inhabiting, but apparently he doesn’t understand that even the Smurfs had their enemies and had to deal with them.

    Kids understand that basic principle.

    You cannot shield your kids from reality, no matter how much you may want to. There are good guys and bad guys and unless you are willing to stop the bad guys, they will take your stuff and kill you if they feel like it.

    Kids get that. If they didn’t understand that basic principle, they wouldn’t hide in a closet and call 911 during a break-in, would they now? Kids have a very realistic view of the world that adults tend to lose in the process of wanting to be thought of as ‘nice’ and ‘easy to get along with’ and – oh, yes, that awful word: GULLIBLE.

    If that were not the case, why would you teach your kids about stranger danger and where to look before they cross the street?

    Cavanaugh needs to find himself a new job, some place where he can wrap himself in cotton padding and not have to go outside unless it’s a perfectly calm, sunny day. And no bugs. Bugs will bite you and give you diseases. And no birds, because birds might give you bird flu. And don’t touch anything in the grocery store unless you wipe it with those alcohol wipes first, because WHOOPING COUGH!

    I think Mr. Cavanaugh needs to get some professional help with his paranoia.

  25. I’d slightly pedantically point out that you’re wrong about the Spartans.

    The phrase is important because the shield (‘hoplon’) was the first thing to be dropped during the rout if the phalanx broke because it was so heavy. There was no special attachment to it just because it was defensive.

    Returning home without your shield meant that you had participated in an all-out retreat when to Spartans, in theory at least, it was better to stand and die. Of course if you died in battle and your remains could be recovered you would be returned to your family quite literally it seems ‘on your shield’ with full honours.

  26. If you think our main purpose is to win the hearts and minds or the enemy, you are wrong [COMMENT ORIGINALLY USED RUDE LANGUAGE AND WAS EDITED BY MODERATOR. DO NOT BE A JERK IN THE COMMENTS SECTION]. This strategy has been proven to fail time and time again. A Combat unit is ineffective without Combat; IE, Killing people and Breaking things.

    I would hate to be a member of your unit; especially when you kowtow to the politically correct crowd. That ideology gets the military personnel killed.

    Remember who you are fighting for and hold fast with those you are fighting with.

    Sincerely,
    A crusty old SNCO

  27. It looks like this article is a case of silly semantics. Does Cavanaugh really think that the politician he cited, Mike Huckabee thinks that the military is only a tool of violence, to be deployed with no larger strategy? “Break things and kill people,” is a bumper sticker sized antidote for a modern society that is too far removed from the reality of warfare. There are too many people that think the primary mission of the military is to be an international meals on wheels program. Too many people also have a video game view of precision guided weapons and don’t understand that in war more people than just uniformed soldiers get killed. Too many people also think of the military as some sort of social science laboratory to implement the goals of liberals instead of defeating our enemies.

  28. If you are weighing military action and geopolitical behavior through the lenses of a child’s understanding you need to retire immediately. Before you get Soldiers killed.

  29. So the military just doesn’t kill people and break things. It trains other armies to kill people and break things. Just because the author can’t find the right words to tell his family what he does for a living doesn’t make the old saying any less true.