November 11 is a day of reflection for those of us who served this country in uniform. We reflect on our reasons for joining the military, the places we deployed, the campaigns we participated in, and the friends we made (and, in some unfortunate cases, lost) along the way.
Our paths to service were different — one as an enlisted sailor straight out of high school, the other as a Marine Corps officer following graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy — but our commitment to public service and dedication to the principles of our nation are ties that bind. And like nearly 16 million other veterans, we took an oath when we became members of the United States military.
It wasn’t an oath to a political party or individual leader. It was an oath to the Constitution, the document that created our democracy and outlined a set of values that makes our country worth fighting for. We served to defend our fellow citizens’ individual freedoms, to guard against tyranny at home or abroad, and to preserve that constitutional democracy.
On this Veterans Day, as the Trump administration seeks to widen military deployments across American communities, we are reminded of that oath and our sworn duty to the Constitution and to the American people — of our role as their military, not that of an individual or political faction.
Read more: Not his military.
As veterans, we are unsettled watching masked immigration agents snatching people away from their families without court hearings. We are disheartened when those agents are confused for military personnel. We reject the intent to use military personnel to provide a veil of legitimacy to these reprehensible actions. We cringe as we witness an administration that seeks to weaponize the military to further divide our society. Our troops signed up to help make Americans more safe, not to be used by civilian leadership to make them feel less safe.
They didn’t sign up to be gardeners, either.
Read more about deployments in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and Chicago.
As veterans, we see the immense challenge facing those currently serving: They are legally bound to follow lawful orders to conduct missions they may fundamentally disagree with. And they’re being ordered to do so by civilian leaders who flaunt the rule of law and who have abandoned their own duties to those in uniform. But we also take real pride in seeing the ways that members of the military have bravely upheld their oaths to the Constitution even in such challenging circumstances.
We saw the oath in action with the retirement of Lieutenant General Joseph McGee, an Army officer who served as director for strategy, plans, and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. McGee had reportedly been raising concerns about the legality of the lethal boat strikes occurring in the Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela, and in the Pacific Ocean in the Southern Command area of operations. These attacks have been conducted with questionable legal authorities, killed people who have not been charged with any crimes, and have so far claimed 67 lives.
McGee was forced out of the Pentagon for honoring his oath to the Constitution by questioning these extrajudicial uses of the military.
Our fellow veterans remember their oath too. In central Florida, veterans organized to push back against the intended deployment of active-duty Marines to support immigration enforcement operations, a mission that they are not trained to execute.
A coalition of retired general and flag officers met with the governor of Illinois to call out the “ongoing exploitation and politicization of America’s servicemembers and [the] unprecedented attempt to deploy the military into American cities.”
For veterans, our oath to the Constitution and all that it stands for does not end the day we leave active service.
Sometimes service members’ fealty to the Constitution rather than to political leaders shows up in small acts of professionalism.
In September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brought together hundreds of generals, admirals, and staff non-commissioned officers for a speech at Marine Base Quantico — an unprecedented gathering during peacetime. Hegseth was joined onstage by President Donald Trump, who gave a political speech before the professional military audience. While the political leaders appeared to have expected applause, they were met with a room full of straight-faced service members exuding the stoic neutrality that is expected of all members of an apolitical military.
Their professionalism was so forceful that it gave Trump pause. “I never walked into a room so silent before,” he said. “If you want to applaud, you applaud. You can do anything you want.”
Our military is a formidable fighting force, famous for victories in countless far-flung theaters of operation around the world.
As vets, we’re proud of our military’s achievements everyday, not just on Veterans’ Day. Our military members work hard to keep us all safe and stay ready to respond to any new threat to our security. But our military’s operational excellence — from combat operations to humanitarian assistance — should always be in service of the law. Not in tension against it. The oath matters. The rule of law is worth defending.
On this Veterans Day, we remember our oaths and what makes this country worth fighting for.
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Beautiful. Forceful. Hopeful. Thank you!
Thank you for your clarity of purpose and your service. Both are appreciated.