The Difference Between Us and Them
America’s military strength has always rested not just on power, but on the discipline to protect civilian lives. That standard is now being dismantled.
Before I was a Marine officer, I worked in the civilian protection movement.
In my twenties I helped lead advocacy campaigns at the Genocide Intervention Network and the coalition that later became United to End Genocide, organizations focused on places where civilians were being deliberately targeted in war, like Darfur, Sudan. We organized Americans to push for sanctions, peacekeeping missions, and sustained diplomatic pressure that might protect people who had no ability to protect themselves and no government willing or able to defend them.
The stories we encountered were often unbearable, but the work taught me something fundamental about war. The difference between professional militaries and criminal ones lies in how they treat civilians.
Anyone who has worn the uniform understands that war is brutal, whether through personal experience, through the experiences of friends and colleagues, or through the study of history. Combat is chaotic and imperfect, intelligence fails, targets move, and even the most disciplined force in the world can make terrible mistakes.
Yet the United States has long claimed a principle that distinguishes it from the regimes it condemns. American forces try, relentlessly and systematically, to avoid killing innocent people.
That commitment did not emerge by accident. It developed over decades through law, through hard lessons learned in combat, and through institutional reforms designed to reduce civilian harm. Today that infrastructure is being dismantled by the Trump administration.
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