The Marine Corps Has Banned the Confederate Flag
By: Glenn Rocess
Tags: Social Justice, Military, BlackLivesMatter, Equality, Racism

Here’s a statement I never thought I’d write: the United States Marine Corps, long considered the most socially conservative of the military services, is now the most progressive. In addition to issuing orders for parental leave for same-sex couples and additional combat roles for women, Marine Corp Commandant General David Berger also ordered consideration for maternity leave up to one year. Twenty years ago, any of those moves would have been considered heresy among officers and senior enlisted alike. The fact that none of those changes has made the national news shows how much our nation’s culture has changed.

General Berger’s latest move, however, is certainly raising more than a few eyebrows, many in outrage, but many more in gratitude. He has just banned the Confederate battle flag from Marine Corps bases worldwide:

“The Confederate battle flag has all too often been co-opted by violent extremist and racist groups whose divisive beliefs have no place in our Corps,” the service branch said in a statement. “Our history as a nation, and events like the violence in Charlottesville in 2017, highlight the divisiveness the use of the Confederate battle flag has had on our society.” “This presents a threat to our core values, unit cohesion, security and good order and discipline.” (Fox News)

To be sure, the scope of the order faces certain limits. While it applies to most such depictions of the Confederate battle flag on Marine Corps property (including personal items such coffee cups and bumper stickers), it does not apply when it is depicted as part of a state flag or on license plates, or for educational purposes as in a museum.

But there’s more to the story, for this tectonic shift in Marine Corps policy didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was issued the day after retired Marine General Jim Mattis issued a letter of protest against the government’s recent actions, including a stern warning against the domestic use of the military for partisan political purposes:

“Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict — a false conflict — between the military and civilian society . . . We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.” (Source)

While General Berger did order base commanders to begin removing the flag from Marine Corps bases as early as February, his formal issuance of the order the day after Gen. Mattis’ letter cannot be mere coincidence. If anything, it evinces the influence retired flag officers still have on military policy.

While some may use the same old faux states-rights arguments and racist dog-whistles to condemn General Berger for this policy, his order makes eminent sense from a purely military standpoint. In a 2019 poll of active duty service members by the Military Times, 36 percent of respondents said they had seen evidence of white supremacist or racist ideologies in the military, while only 22 percent responded similarly in the 2018 poll. The military has long had a problem with white supremacists in its ranks and began — if halfheartedly — to address the issue in the 1980s. But it’s come to the point that white supremacists are now seen as a significant threat to national security:

In the poll, about 46 percent of troops surveyed rated white nationalists as a significant national security threat, slightly higher than domestic terrorists with a connection to Islam (45 percent), and significantly above immigrants (28 percent). (Source)

But that’s actually very good news, in that white supremacist extremism is now recognized as a serious threat not only by the military brass, but also by the rank-and-file enlisted. Moreover, the military has often been not at the back, but at the forefront of social change, one example being the desegregation of the ranks long before the end of the Jim Crow era. The last racially segregated unit was deactivated in 1954, a full decade before LBJ signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law.

There’s a quote credited to both Thomas Paine and General Patton, but it has always been an indelible part of the Marine mindset:

“Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!”

By removing the Confederate battle flag, a perpetual totem of both traitors and white supremacists, the Marines are leading the charge. It would behoove the rest of the military — indeed, the rest of America — to follow their lead.