On the first day of this year, 231 veterans and active-duty service members signed the Declaration of Military Accountability. This letter about the state of our military is not addressed to the Defense Department or members of the chains of command who implemented the unlawful COVID shot policy with totalitarian zeal. The letter is instead addressed to those we serve: the American people.
This letter reminds the nation that the wrongs of the past three years must not be forgotten, and that our institutions must return to following the law if we are to remain a nation of ordered liberty in which every American has the opportunity to thrive.
My reasons for signing this letter are my own and may differ from the motivations of the other 230 signatories. Joining my name to such a document was not a decision to be taken lightly. Especially for my colleagues still in uniform, such a move, though entirely lawful, brings risk. As a matter of conscience, I was duty-bound to stand alongside them.
Beyond that, I signed the letter for two specific reasons. First, it is clear that those currently running the Defense Department have no interest in making amends to those they have wronged since 2020. Second, in light of the tepid language in the most recent national defense funding bill, there is little reason to believe that the current Congress will rise to the occasion and force accountability within the Defense Department on this or any other relevant topic.
As a company commander in the Army, I knew the limits of my authority well. The trust granted to me in that role was not for my personal benefit or any partisan agenda. It was for the effectiveness of the organization and wellbeing of my soldiers. Too many across the force have departed from that worldview. I signed this letter to be one more voice reminding the public, as well as current and former members of the military chain of command, that the authority of state is sacred, and that violations must be answered for. The idea of lawful accountability is central to military life. The Defense Department must return to that way if it has any hope of narrowing the current trust gap with veterans and the public.
Those of us who signed commit to seek accountability through the law, in accordance with the military oath that every member of the armed services swears to uphold. In contrast, senior officers and political appointees who mandated emergency use authorization shots that were not approved by the FDA went outside the law, thus departing from their oaths. Yet acting beyond the letter of the law is not a new habit of senior military officials. Regarding the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the years following WWII, Samuel Huntington wrote that they “did not just accept the limits set by political authorities; they also incorporated into their own thinking the assumptions which were uppermost in the minds of political leaders.”
In our time, the results of such philosophy include over 8,000 patriotic service members forced out with improper discharge characterization, a precipitous loss of trust within the ranks, and otherwise unexplained spikes of heart inflammation and myocarditis occurring in a previously healthy military population. Though a formal risk-benefit analysis of these mRNA products on the military has not yet been conducted, a well-designed study examining the overall impact of vaccine mandates on young adults suggests the effect on the health of the force was negative. This hurts national security efforts. The military cannot afford further reductions in public trust, particularly as we are seeing in a third consecutive year of recruiting crisis.
I signed the letter out of a desire to play a positive role in helping the nation’s military recover the soul that those currently running it have chosen to surrender. People like me are not casual critics of the force. Having given much of our lives to military service, we love the institution and know that it is itself under attack by bad-faith actors within. We seek only to restore a reverence for the law across the nation’s military so that it may recover a place of prominent trust in a society that desperately needs robust institutional leadership.
As time passes, it becomes easy for the few among society who paid attention to forget about the state-sponsored persecution of military members that became widespread practice in the lockdown era. Many of the military officers who broke the law by coercing service members to accept these emergency treatments have moved on to other assignments or retired, and therefore believe themselves safely past any accountability.
Perhaps they are. Only time will tell. But part of restoring reverence for the law comes with demonstrating that laws matter and will be enforced. The nation must no longer be content with allowing senior military officials to enact politically driven, unscientific, and unlawful medical edicts with impunity, believing themselves exempt from accountability. This belief enables a nonchalant and opportunistic perspective on matters of substantive policy rather than a long-term stakeholder mindset. It is one of the worst vestiges of the military-industrial complex that is burning a hole in the heart of the spirit of military service.
It is not unexpected to be accused of behaving in political fashion for engaging in a matter of internal military policy. To such critics, I answer that this letter is a piece of engaging the lawful civic mechanisms of society in an effort to redress institutional wrongs accepted under the false guise of military readiness. This is a right affirmed for active duty military members by the Defense Department itself. The idea that the military is apolitical, or that those who serve in it are political eunuchs, is a false understanding of the contract between a citizen and the armed forces in which he or she serves. Defense Department policy restricts political advocacy related to specifically partisan causes but does not force military members to entirely abstain from civic life. To discourage bold advocacy toward accountability and constitutional governance would seriously degrade the ability of those in uniform to fulfill their oaths.
No order could ever be questioned as unlawful under such thinking. If there is any cause we can safely consider nonpartisan, it is the support and defense of the Constitution and rule of law against those who subvert it.
For too long veterans have been shamed into silence with the false narrative that to wear the uniform makes one apolitical. In truth, the military has never been an apolitical force. It exists to exert political will, enacts and enforces its own policies, and functions according to the policy dictates of elected officials. Military members were never intended by the constitutional framers to take on the form of intellectually indentured servants. The idea to the contrary is carried along in discourses that frequently cite the famed World War II General George Marshall’s personal conviction against voting because of his status as a military officer as precedent for why military members must exist in an impossibly nonpolitical fashion. For all the honor due to patriotic leaders like Marshall, his personal decision on voting is not a policy requirement or national tradition for those who serve the country in arms to abandon it with their intellect and voice.
The idea that military members attain professional status by eschewing all things political even as they serve in a political organization has borne out a mercenary mindset that enables war to be a top American export in our time. This imaginary standard is usually enforced selectively by those who see constitutional constraints on governmental power as inconvenient barriers to a partisan political agenda. It is long past time to end the Orwellian game in which political ideas expressed by senior officials are accepted as disciplined policy, while any engagement between the rank-and-file and the American public is decried as overtly and unacceptably political.
Many of us have received questions from other veterans on how to endorse this effort. I encourage veterans, active military members, and the public to visit militaryaccountability.com and add their names to the public petition. I acknowledge that petitions alone are not enough. It is time to engage the political processes available to us as citizens to bring the cause of ordered liberty for service members before lawmakers.
Here are some recommendations on how we can begin the work of military reformation.
First, fund and support candidates who commit to use the lawful authority of office to ensure the military operates within the law and its own regulations. These include Mara Macie in Florida, Matt Shoemaker in North Carolina, Cameron Hamilton in Virginia, Nate Cain in West Virginia, Chris Coulombe in California, Nick Kupper in Arizona, and Joe Kent in Washington.
Second, share the letter with your members of Congress and respectfully convey your position that they must take the constitutional responsibility of military oversight with greater urgency. This includes not only restricting the military from misleading service members into accepting unlicensed emergency use authorization products in violation of federal law, but also preventing discrimination against those who decline to take such injections voluntarily.
Third, ask your state-level representatives to introduce legislation that bars employers from forcing emergency use authorization injections on their workforces. Such legislation must make clear that military installations and commands located in your states are not exempt.
Fourth, engage locally at all levels of personal influence. Write your own social media posts, letters to the editor, and opinion editorials on the subject. Share what you know conversationally when the opportunities present themselves. The military specializes in making a few appear to be many. We are many. Make it clearly observable.
Finally, read about American history, and particularly American military history. Our ancestors distrusted large, standing peacetime forces for good reason. Get familiar with why and educate others that with respect to public opinion for the Defense Department, we might desire to trust, but we must verify.
I signed the Declaration of Military Accountability because of a sense of duty engrained through twenty years of wearing the uniform of an institution that was often a joy to represent. Now this institution requires our help to enable a much-needed course correction. With malice toward none, my signature pleads the cause of repentance, accountability, justice, and reformation so that our military and veterans may be healed of the grievous wounds of the past three years. I hope you will join in that cause.
Chase Spears is a retired Army Major who served for twenty years in military public affairs. He is foremost a husband, father, and educator. Among other pursuits, he is a doctoral candidate at Kansas State University. Chase enjoys writing about topics including civil-military relations and communication ethics.
