Thomas Olstead Quotes
We do not allow the Army, Navy, Marines, and the Air Force to be a police force. History is replete with countries that allowed that to happen. Disaster is the result.
Thomas Olstead, Marine Major General, Congressional Testimony, Quoted on C-SPAN, Book TV, August 10, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In early America, there was great concern about a standing army—a military force that exists and is organized in peacetime. History showed the founding fathers that tyrants who siezed power almost always did so by getting control of the standing army. The logic was if there is no standing army, no one can control it and therefore no tyrant can control the country by force. At the time, however, with oceans protecting us, there was penty of time to mobilize a defensive army should any foreign power invade. However, with modern military technology, and the importantance of retaliation as a protective3 strategy, it is virtually impossible to not have a standing army and stoll be secure.
Many modern Americans who look to the founding fathers for modern guidance regarding gun rights, foreign policy, and many other facets of government are shocked to learn that there was almost unanimous opposition to maintaining a standing army in times of peace. That there was very little concept of military preparedness.
In 1776 General Charles Lee imposed a loyalty test on inhabitants of New York in the name of the new government. Four distinguished public men wrote this letter.
These two states actually prohibited their legislatures from maintaining a standing army. Similar sentiments were in the constitutions or bill of rights of New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts but the option was left with the legislatures. A similar phrase appears in the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776.
America is almost unique among nations where the military has never been a force that either dominated or controlled the government or acted independently from it. The Founding Fathers knew well the history of Europe and other nations, and built many checks into our Constitution and our traditions with George Washington, setting the example for American military men forever after.
He had no authority to do this. He just took it upon himself. This was one of the incidents which caused later Congresses to pass very strict laws limiting the authority of all Federal Military and other intelligence and police forces so that they have little or no authority within the United States. President Lincoln did not allow the order to stand, although he repudiated it very delicately and as privately as possible. Many in his own party strongly favored this proclamation as it cracked down on the Southern Rebels and emancipated slaves—both objectives of many Republicans. In addition, Fremont was very popular with the people and had strong political connections. (He would later run for President.) See {635739}.
He was objecting to the current crop of senior military officer who have little experience in fighting and much in academic, strategic and technical training. Many however see him as a dinosaur who does not realized the complex nature of the modern military missions. In general, we have won almost all of our fighting battles but often failed in our maintaining civil society, occupation, nation building, military procurement, preventing sexual assault of our own troops by our own soldiers, assuring mental health of our soldiers. Hackworth, detractors argue, wants to change what already works and ignore what does not.
Congress and most of the Founding Fathers were very distrustful of standing armies. They were aware that standing armies had taken over societies ever since ancient Rome and Julius Caesar.
Nixon was considering not obeying Federal Court orders. The Federal Marshals would be responsible for enforcing the courts orders. This quotation illustrates how closely the nation came to a virtual civil war or putch.
This general perception led the Founding Fathers to place profound restrictions on the allowable role of the military in national law enforcement—a condition that exists to this day.
His statement was on the issuance of Executive Order 9981 which outlawed military segregation and granted equal treatment and opportunity to all service members regardless of their race:
