Truth and the military

With so many military men swearing to tell the truth and nevertheless contradicting each other publicly, the ordinary citizen must be perplexed as regards what the military considers to be true and indeed values as truth. It cannot be possible that members of the Philippine military elite – graduates of the venerable Philippine Military Academy, no less – are contradicting each other publicly out of simple ignorance of the facts, lack of sophistication in public presentations of what the truth might be, or a genetically programmed inability to resist publicly spinning a lie. There is a lot more to this business of "truthtelling" by those from the AFP or the quasi-military – by legal fiction "civilian" – PNP.

PMA graduates who get to head the AFP or the PNP and their sensitive intelligence services get to have a lot of contact with the truth, even the ugliest truths involving their own colleagues. Within the military and police services, there appears to be hardly anything that is not an open secret concerning the life, loves, lusts and liabilities of senior officers. The same can be said as regards their various skills, strengths and sophistication. People who have risen from the ranks to become colonels and generals have fairly well-discovered military closets. They are much respected or scorned by colleagues familiar with their closet’s store of merited medals, shocking skeletons and a few other perhaps less consequential testimonials.

One can thus assume that military men, in speaking of each other and in alleging anything, know whereof they speak. This knowledge is there whether they tell the truth fully, treat the truth prudently, or – in offering convenient half-truths – present full lies about each other.

Colonels and generals may appear to make a gaffe in public, to have put a foot in their mouth far too easily and even frequently. When they head the ISAFP or the PNP (if only formerly in the case of one of the current public protagonists), only those who stereotype military men as genetically inferior to civilians in intellectual endowments may sustain a false sense of superiority. It is far more prudent to assume some rime and reason to underly a publicly projected image of doltish incompetence. Sophistication need not build on truthful projection; all it needs is the successful projection of what one desires to have others believe to be true. Expertly projected, "honest" error-making easily gains a person sincerity points. This is vital where one makes an appeal to the court of public opinion – a forum where the rational rules of acceptable evidence are easily waived and the heat of deliberately-stoked passions takes over.

Military people are probably not genetically different from the rest of us. It is doubtful whether any DNA analysis would establish that those who serve in the armed forces or the police share some special gene inclining them to lie rather than be forthright with the facts as they know them. Still, there is enough public evidence that military men in most countries are not most eager to volunteer the truth as regards anything concerning the national security, the military institution or their comrades-in-arms.

If they nevertheless find it hard to tell the truth, it must be that truth could be threatening to them in many contexts. They do not really dispense information regarding their operational missions, their timetables, their human and other resources nor the latter’s effective disposition or deployment.

Democracies have invariably acknowledged the military’s special need for cloaks in its operations to secure the state and the people. Particularly in states where the national security doctrine holds sway, the opaqueness of the military becomes itself a dangerous threat to the democratic character of the regime. Where the military believes itself to be the final bulwark of a democracy, military men will not gain kudos for transparency or forthrightness in their public acts.

For the military, the utility of truth is extremely conditional. Truth will be served grudgingly even for those the military consider to be its proper constituency and its allies. For those perceived or simply suspected to be the enemy, the truth will not only be denied; it will be subverted with systematic disinformation and outright falsehood.

The idea of the enemy is thus integral to the military’s concept of truth and truthsharing. This idea is precisely what makes the military a double-edged sword in a democracy. In cutting down the enemies of liberty and freedom and protecting other human rights, the military serves democracy well. In striking down those perceived by the military to be its enemies and in arrogantly mistaking democracy for what the military says it is, the military may also kill democracy. Democratic education and institutional controls are therefore indispensable in making the military a responsible guardian of any enduring democracy.

In the current clash of public officials whose mindsets formed in the foundry of the Philippine Military Academy, civilians would do well to realize who these military men – active as well as retired from the service – consider the enemy. If these military men can go beyond their immediate selves as they clash publicly with each other, some would serve truly democratic causes and others just as truly won’t.