As Armed Forces Day approached one year (this year, on Saturday), one commentator pontificated with loud moral indignation: "How can we honor professional killers for killing professionally!" He chose to define "military" as such with neither authority nor logic.

Monday, May 14, 2001

As Armed Forces Day approached one year (this year, on Saturday), one commentator pontificated with loud moral indignation: "How can we honor professional killers for killing professionally!" He chose to define "military" as such with neither authority nor logic. Preparedness to kill an enemy who would otherwise kill us is the military responsibility, but the responsibility and accountability for doing so is political. The job of the armed forces is being able to kill; the job of control belongs to the president and congress-and we who elect them.

Part of my training as a military police officer required learning how to train dogs to defend property and persons. It also included as a less frequent need, the training of dogs to kill in combat. More time was spent, on the officer level, with developing the appropriate attitude toward dangerous dogs and supervising those who handled them so they were used successfully for intended purposes and managing the risk of losing control. These dogs were effectively trained to attack aggressively and, if necessary in combat, to kill people.

The principle fixed in our minds is that animals cannot exercise moral judgment, but people can. If a person trains a dog to kill and the dog does so, the trainer and not the dog is accountable. If a person trains a dog to attack or acquires one for the purpose, this person has the moral obligation of controlling the dog. If the dog attacks when not necessary or injures when only restraint was directed, we hold the handler guilty.

We do not station a guard dog until it is trained successfully. We warn people away and keep the dog on a short leash. So must every nation do with its armed forces.

Men and women violent by temperament are anxious to join the armed forces-and police forces and fire departments. It is the responsibility of governments not to require acceptance of such people and of the services to weed them out. Military trainers are responsible (as are police trainers) to teach personnel not only how to kill but how to kill minimally to accomplish the necessary mission. They teach, moreover, why to kill and when to kill.

If we can believe it is sometimes medically necessary to terminate a fetus in order to save a mother’s life, we should certainly understand it is sometimes necessary for a police officer to kill a criminal to prevent the criminal from killing yet another innocent and defenseless person. We owe the men and women who served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps a similar understanding. And similar respect and honor.

Armed Forces Day offers the opportunity to honor armed forces personnel who are able to kill but do not want to and do so only when necessary. Their professionalism is respecting life and defending lives. Not "professional killers," they are professional defenders.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays.