The Witness Has Rights

     What is the best line in A Few Good Men – the classic courtroom drama starring Tom Cruise (as Navy defense lawyer Lt. Kafee) and Jack Nicholson (as Col. Jessup, the commander of Marine ground forces, Guantanamo Bay)?  Next to “You can’t handle the truth,” most people would probably choose the climactic moment when Jessup confesses to the crime of ordering the savage beating (resulting in death) of a young troubled Marine under his command:

     Lt. Kafee: Did you order the Code Red?

     Col. Jessup: You’re goddamned right I did!

     But this is not, I respectfully submit to my colleagues of the Bar, the best line in the movie.  The best line is what Lt. Kafee says immediately after Jessup’s confession:

      May it please the Court.  I suggest the jury be dismissed so that we can move to an immediate Article 39 session.  The witness has rights.

     Jessup is then immediately read his rights.  For this small town American lawyer, that’s the goose-bump moment.  That’s the lump-in-the-throat moment. 

     What this small town American lawyer is going to say next will offend some readers.  At a minimum, in this community of four major military installations, it will sound undiplomatic.  But I’m not a diplomat and this needs to be said:  Our military forces stationed abroad – in places like Guantanamo Bay (of all places!) – do next to nothing to protect our constitutional liberties as set forth in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere.

     I will try to explain.  But first, back to the movie.

     On the witness stand, Jessup is cocksure, condescending, and absolutely certain that Marines like him are the only thing keeping lazy & complacent pansies like Kafee from losing their liberties.  Jessup lectures Kafee that we live in a world with walls and that those walls need people like him to stand guard.  The implication is that if the walls go unguarded – anywhere on the planet, apparently – then some boogey-man aggressor will cross a vast ocean, install a despotic form of government, and rip up the U.S. Constitution.

     And who is going to protect us, asks Jessup, from this terrible (and for some reason, always imminent) fate:

     [to Kafee] You? You, Lt. WEIN-berg?

     Actually, Col. Jessup, it is Lt. Weinberg who will protect us.  Because here’s the thing.  None of the tyrants of the 20^th century posed any risk to the constitutional rights of Americans.  Hitler could not cross the English Channel.  (Conversely, think of the almost inhuman effort involved when the Allies crossed in the other direction on D-Day.)  He was not going to cross the Atlantic Ocean – ever – and institute unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.  There was no possibility that he would ever come here to institute a state religion or to eliminate freedom of the press or to implement cruel and unusual punishments.  He was a menace to European civilization, he was a murderer, and he needed to be taken out.  American forces played a crucial and justly proud role in his necessary demise.  But the point here is that his demise had nothing to do with eliminating a threat to the constitutional freedoms of Americans.

     Throughout our history, our armed forces have been sent to fight wars for lots of reasons – some very noble (e.g., taking out the Nazis) and some less so (Crazy Horse would have something to say here).  They have fought for territory (the Indian Wars; the Spanish-American War).  They have fought for access to resources (the two Gulf Wars; the Second World War).  They have fought to defend important allies (the First World War) and to destroy murderous tyrants (the Second World War).  They have fought to expand the country’s geopolitical influence (all of the above, as well as Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan).  In a few cases, they have even fought for revenge (the Second World War and Afghanistan).  But at least since the Civil War, America’s armed forces have not fought one single war (or even a limited military campaign) in defense of any constitutional freedoms – for the simple reason that those freedoms have never been seriously at risk from external threats.

     I love our military.  They are asked to do a terrible job and get little but empty praise from politicians in return.  But the idea that our military protects our constitutional freedoms is one of the Grand Myths of American History.  Lt. Kafee’s four simple words to the arrogant war-monger Col. Jessup blows that myth out of the water:

     “The witness has rights.” Here, in an American courtroom, and nowhere else.

     Goose-bumps.