French L. MacLean

A New Knights Templar? (Part 4)

 

Maasai warriors hunting a lion

Although the primary mission of the original Knights Templar was military combat action, relatively few members were combatants.  The majority of its adherents acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure of the organization.  Once Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church figure, lent his support, the Templars became the favored charity in all of Christendom.  Templar headquarters in many lands received land, money and businesses.

In 1150, the original Knights Templar began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land.  These pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar office before embarking.  In return, he would receive a document indicating the value of the deposit; he would use that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds in an amount of equal value.  In return, the Knights Templar received a small percentage of the wealth, an arrangement that was an early form of banking and may have been the first formal system to support the use of these forms of documents.  The system thus not only improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, but also contributed to the Templar coffers.

Today, a New Knights Templar organization would require a different system to meet a much-more complex world.  As before, the most efficient organization of the New Knights Templar would be by country, as there is no real reason to have an international control body.  The New Knights Templar is not going to defeat ISIS and other evil militant Islamic organizations alone.  They are not going to command large forces, disperse billions of dollars or compete against nation states on the world stage.  No, a New Knights Templar will probably evolve as a much smaller entity, consisting of numerous units, each of which would probably be no larger than regiment in strength (1,000 to 2,000 individuals.)  The organization may find that it has adequate volunteers from Country X to form a regiment; Country Y to form a battalion (500 individuals); and from Country Z only a company (100 individuals) can be formed.  Additionally, because of the norms, skills and heritage, the unit from Country Z may be a medical organization, while Country X is fielding an infantry unit.

Fielding by country provides several advantages.  First, there is generally no language barrier within a single country.  Second, there is a built-in support structure back home to reinforce those Knights Templar at the front.  Third, a nation’s laws and political objectives may change over time.  Should a nation shift its views against its citizens being members, the cut-off of volunteers from Country X will only affect the New Knights Templar units from Country X, not all units if citizens from Country X had been spread across the force.

The New Knights Templar would have three major ongoing tasks to accomplish, and accomplish well.  In each nation, the organization will need personnel to raise funds, help recruit, provide some type of military training (within the context of what is legal to do in that country), conduct supporting public affairs activities and work behind the scenes with political leaders to increase – or at least maintain – support for the organization.

A second group of New Knights Templar in each country would be responsible for the transportation of New Knights Templar personnel, and selected equipment, from the home country to the area of foreign operations.  This group would also procure selected equipment and ensure it was legally and properly transported; they would then “marry” this equipment to New Knights Templar volunteers on the ground, which would include equipment familiarization.  Finally, this second group would be responsible for re-deploying front line New Knights Templar to their home countries.

The third group, obviously, are those New Knights Templar are the actual fighters, translators, logisticians, medical personnel and civil affairs experts that actually go on a tour of duty overseas.  Each nation providing volunteers for a New Knights Templar will find its own best way to recruit volunteers.  One overarching principal will likely be that every volunteer can find an area in which to help; that all contributions are valuable; and that each volunteer must balance the degree of personal service in the organization with his or her ongoing personal and family commitments.  If those commits preclude service overseas, than whatever the volunteer can contribute should be valued.

For those volunteers that seek active overseas duty protecting the innocents and directly fighting the Evil, the sending countries would do well to remember Colonel Ardant Du Picq, a French Army officer and military theorist of the mid-nineteenth century.  Du Picq’s analyses stressed the vital importance, especially in contemporary warfare, of discipline and unit cohesion.  He also believed that the human element in war is more important than theories.  Before his death in combat in 1870, du Picq had already published Combat antique (Ancient Battle), which associates later expanded into the classic Etudes sur les combat: Combat antique et moderne, most often referred to by its common English title of Battle Studies, which was published in part ten years later, although the complete text did not appear until 1902.  A thorough study of all of du Picq’s thinking boils down to one of his fundamental truths:

“Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare attack a lion.   Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely.”

New Knights Templar organizations should strongly consider recruiting volunteers from among four people who already know each other well; they could have served in their own nation’s military together; gone to school together; or in some manner already know each other.  They should deploy together, work together overseas and re-deploy together home.  New Knights Templar organizations will quickly find that individual replacements cause nothing but problems.  A group of four volunteers – perhaps that will be termed as its own “Lion Team” – will work well together, be that as a medical unit or direct combat formation.

Training opportunities for volunteers for combat units will undoubtedly be limited and expensive, both in the home nation and once the volunteers are deployed.  Therefore a second consideration for volunteer selection – at least for combat duty – is previous experience in a nation’s armed forces.  Combat veterans have a stabilizing effect that cannot be over-estimated.  opportunities to fully train on host nation soil may be limited, so the higher the level of skill a volunteer brings in, the better.  Additionally, the enemy that the New Knights Templar will face will have months, if not years, of their own combat experience, albeit most of it was against defenseless women and children and those who could not adequately defend themselves.  With the formation of a New Knights Templar, that will be about to change.  To be continued…

 

A New Knights Templar? (Part 4)2021-06-15T17:59:56-05:00

A New Knights Templar? (Part 3)

 

Max Weber: Monopoly of Power of the State

The 800-pound gorillas in the room that could make the establishment of a New Knights Templar difficult are nation states.

One could easily make the argument that the history of mankind has been a violent one.  In ancient times, kings and queens could send their empires to war or order the execution of a criminal or political opponent with as little as a nod of the head.  Within empires, local tribal leaders often held similar power over life and death.

By the time of feudalism – during the period of the Crusades – European kings depended on loyal vassals to do their bidding and so often turned a blind eye when these vassals sometimes felt the need to do violence to one another over a slight or family grudge.  At the same time in Europe, the Catholic Church held great power, and often in consultation with secular rulers, could urge the faithful to “take up the Cross” and go on Crusade with the full knowledge that violence would result.  Religious courts also could try individuals on perceived religious violations – such as heresy.

With the rise of the nation state, governments desired to be the sole arbiter of the use of legitimate violence within their borders.  This phenomenon was perhaps best described by German philosopher Karl Emil “Max” Weber.  The modern state, he believed, emerged from feudalism by expropriating the means of political organization and domination, including violence, and by establishing the legitimacy of its rule.  Writing during the period 1890 to 1920, Weber – in his work – Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined a concept he termed Gewaltmonopol des Staates (Monopoly of Power of the State) as any organization that succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force against residents of its territory, which was most seen at the level of a nation state.  According to Weber, this could only occur via a process of legitimation of that organization.  He then went into detail that this social authority was most often seen in three forms, which he labelled as charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal.

According to Max Weber, the state was the source of legitimate physical force, with the public police and the military as its main instruments; he also added that private security could also be used with state authorization.  Weber delved into several levels concerning the monopoly of force, believing that this did not mean that only the government could use physical force, but that the state was the only source of legitimacy for all physical coercion or adjudication of coercion. This would provide citizens with the backing of law when individuals found themselves in a situation requiring the use force in defense of self or property; the right derived from the state’s authority.  This fits with other philosophers’ views that the state can grant another actor the right to use violence without losing its monopoly, as long as it remains the only source of the right to use violence.

As nation states progressed, many expanded on this theory and in many cases desired that they have a monopoly on the potential to use force.  Starting with totalitarian régimes, governments began to limit ownership of firearms – stating that weapons were the root cause of violence – but in actuality believing that an unarmed citizenry will be a docile citizenry.  Over the last half century, these policies have been adopted in traditional democracies.  England – the home of the Magna Carta, actually enacted The Unlawful Games Act in 1541 that required every Englishman between the ages of 17 and 60 (with various exemptions) to keep a longbow and regularly practice archery.  It was repealed in 1960 by the Betting and Gaming Act.  Great Britain now has some of the tightest gun control laws in the world.  Only police officers, members of the armed forces, or individuals with written permission from the Home Secretary may lawfully own a handgun; in all other cases, handguns are prohibited weapons.  Rifles and shotguns require a certificate from the police for ownership, and only after a number of criteria are met, including that the applicant has a good reason to possess the requested weapon.  The government has determined that self-defense or a simple wish to possess a weapon is not considered a good reason.  Furthermore, secure storage of rifles and shotguns is also a factor when licenses are granted; this has devolved to mandatory overnight storage of a shotgun not in the owner’s home, but at an authorized shooting or hunting club safe.

Nation states also are fairly reluctant to permit their citizens to fight for any group that is not the armed forces.  The United Kingdom has laws preventing their nationals from enlisting in foreign armed forces, and they are examining the loss of citizenship for those citizens that join terrorist organizations.  Prior to now, the legislation hasn’t been used much; for example, way back in the Greek War of Independence, British volunteers fought with the Greek rebels, which could have been unlawful; it was unclear whether or not the Greek rebels were a “state” per the Foreign Enlistment Act, but the law was clarified, saying that the rebels were a state.

Both the British and American governments turned a blind eye toward their citizens’ participation in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.  The United States has laws that seem to both make fighting as a mercenary or fighting as part of a non-US entity overseas legal and illegal at the same time.  The United States has not banned Americans from fighting with militias against ISIS, although it considers the Turkey-based Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), a terrorist organization.  The Kurds have turned to the Internet to find foreign fighters, creating a Facebook page called “The Lions of Rojava” with the stated mission of sending “terrorists to hell and save humanity.”  The United States has pushed recently for a legally binding United Nations Security Council resolution that would compel all countries in the world to take steps to “prevent and suppress” the flow of their citizens into the arms of groups considered to be terrorist organizations. 

This is where the problem may arise.  The government of the United States, as well as governments in many European countries, has been extremely reluctant to name militant Islam as an enemy, fearing to antagonize any Muslim that may take offense.  Rather than target groups that are true terrorists – calling a spade a spade – it will be tempting to broaden the category to include about any group that is armed and fighting in these conflicts.  Should such a broad definition be adopted, it will be the nation states attempt to kill a New Knights Templar in its cradle and could put any volunteer in legal jeopardy.  To be continued…

A New Knights Templar? (Part 3)2021-06-15T18:00:19-05:00

A New Knights Templar? (Part 2)

 

Pope Francis: stopping aggression is legitimate

Certain conditions would have to exist before a New Knights Templar be formed in such a way that it could endure for the long haul, as the battle against militant Islam will not be won in the near future – in fact, it may become the Second Hundred Years War.

A New Knights Templar would likely differ from the original version in many respects.  The Catholic Church officially endorsed the first Knights Templar in 1129; the New Knights Templar – while it may contain many Roman Catholics – could very well consist of non-Catholic Christians, Jews, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and members of other faiths; it is not inconceivable that Atheists might even join.  The commonality of volunteers for the New Knights Templar will not be religion – which was the common denominator of the “Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” that later became known as Knights Templars.  The common denominator will not be nationality, just as it was not in the original warrior group.

The most-likely common characteristic of all would-be volunteers to participate in the New Knights Templar would be a belief that there is both Good and Evil in the world and that militant Islam – such as ISIS – has demonstrated on a daily basis that it is Evil.  Furthermore these volunteers, brave men and women from around the world, would likely believe that Good should be triumphant, that Good must defend those who cannot defend themselves and that each individual can make a difference in this struggle against Evil.

Not every would-be volunteer for the New Knights Templar would be a member of an organized religion or would even be interested in what the leaders of major religions might think of the concept of the New Knights Templar taking up the sword to combat militant Islam and defending those innocents in its path.  However, for some volunteers, it would be important to have the moral support of those leaders and it appears that they will.

Enroute to South Korea on August 14, 2014, Pope Francis commented on the military victories by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL) that have resulted in persecution and murder of Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities.  Earlier, a papal communique against this violence was sent to all the nunciatures and the Pope wrote a letter to the United Nations’ Secretary General.  The Pope, additionally, met with the governor of Iraqi Kurdistan and named Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as his personal envoy to Iraq.

Pope Francis made the following remarks on that flight with respect to ISIS/ISIL in Iraq: “To stop the unjust aggressor is licit…One single nation cannot judge how you stop this, how you stop an unjust aggressor…Stopping the unjust aggressor is a right that humanity has, but it is also a right of the aggressor to be stopped so he does not do evil.”

In April 2015, the Community of Sant’ Egidio, a Catholic lay movement focused on ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue as well as conflict resolution, called for the creation of “safe havens” for Christians in Iraq and Syria, as well as the creation of an international police force capable of identifying and apprehending the authors of terrorist acts.  In May 2015, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York marked  the desperate plight of Christians in Iraq and Syria with an urgent plea for Americans to take action before it’s too late.  “When it comes to the persecution of Christians, we are talking about an… international emergency.”

For would be volunteers for a New Knights Templar that are Roman Catholics – or other denomination Christians that take interest in the words of the Pope – it appears that the pontiff’s words would clearly permit men and women of conscience to stop the unjust aggression of militant Islam so it does not do evil.  It is equally clear that the Pope is leery about a single nation determining the level of force that it will use to stop aggression, probably because that nation may allow selfish national objectives to cloud the issue of how much force is adequate to stop the aggressor versus how much may be too much.  That concern, while valid, probably would not applicable for members of a New Knights Templar, whose volunteers will be from many countries around the world, not just one.  Each individual would bring the norms and values of the nation from which he or she comes.  No single country would hold sway on the activities of these volunteers.  As will be described later, a New Knights Templar would probably have no world-wide governing body; the power of the organization would rest in the individual conscience, spirit, initiative and creative talents of each member, and every level of bureaucracy layered above the individual would have a stifling effect.

Leaders of Protestant Christian faiths seem to be in the process of making their own declarations that good men and women have their full blessing to fight evil and defend the innocent.  In September 2015, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby decalred that the aerial bombig campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) was a just war.  He stated that military action was justified on the humanitarian grounds that te victims of ISIS needed help in escaping the barbarity of Islamic extremists.  The Archbishop, principal leader of the Church of England and the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, went on to state that: “There is justification for the use of armed force on humanitarian grounds to enable oppressed victims to find safe space.”

If they wish to support the fight against militant Islam, similar proclamations need to be made by leaders of other faiths and some have already come on board.  Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, born in Israel but now a prominent public figure in New York said the following: “A child who grows up with a Torah education knows that there is good and evil in the world, and knows that he is expected to strengthen the good and counter the bad.  Wrote King David in the 97th Psalm: “Ohavei Hashem sin’u ra” – if you love God, hate evil!  That is the moral passion that Judaism has encouraged for 3,500 years – and that is why those who are imbued with its values understand that the evil of this world is very real indeed, and that all of us have an obligation to do our best to fight it.”

For a New Knights Templar to come into being, with a chance to be viewed as the good of humankind, Muslim Imams must endorse that groups such as ISIS and other militant Islamic entities should be fought by all true Muslims of good faith, along with their brothers and sisters of other faiths.  In March 2015, Imam Syed Soharwardy, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, created the edict which condemns radicalization and recruitment for ISIS.  Muslims around the world have long been condemning ISIS, but this is the first time there will be an official fatwa stating so.  Within days, 38 imams and Islamic scholars from across Canada signed the fatwa.  It is a start.

However, another hurdle to the formation of the New Knights Templar would be that entity of which Pope Francis was concerned – the modern nation state – and that will be addressed next.  To be continued…

A New Knights Templar? (Part 2)2021-06-15T18:00:37-05:00

The Fifth Field Wins the Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry Award

2013 Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry Award

LTG Richard G. Trefry, Inspector General of the United States Army

(June 18, 2014)  The Army Historical Foundation has recognized two authors for 2013 with the Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry Award for their contributions to the literature on the history of the U.S. Army.  Colonel French L. MacLean was honored for his book, The Fifth Field:  The Story of 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II (Atglen, PA:  Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.).  Rick Atkinson was recognized for his highly praised Liberation Trilogy, consisting of the books An Army at Dawn:  The War in North Africa, 1942-1943; The Day of Battle:  The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944; and The Guns at Last Light:  The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (New York:  Henry Holt), on the U.S. Army in North Africa and Europe in World War II.

Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry, who had served as an enlisted man in World War II, retired from the U.S. Army after 33 years of active duty.  He served as the Inspector General of the U.S. Army for six years under three Chiefs of Staff and Secretaries of the Army, revolutionizing the Army’s approach to the Annual Inspector General Inspection by transforming it from a compliance event into an inspection that identified and corrected systemic failings that inevitably led to recurring deficiencies and interfered with the ability of unit commanders to accomplish their missions.  After retirement, General Trefry served in the White House as the Military Assistant to the President of the United States, directing the White House Military Office during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, as a military advisor to President George H. W. Bush.

In 1995, General Trefry served on the Board of Directors of American Military University and today, continues to serve on the Board of Trustees of the American Public University System as a member and committee chair.  In addition, he has served as a Senior Fellow for the Institute for Land Warfare in the Association of the U.S. Army and is Program Manager of the Army Force Management School at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.  General Trefry teaches and speaks frequently at service schools, public and private organizations, and at public and private schools and colleges.  In 2009, the Secretary of the Army established the Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry Lifetime of Service Award, honoring Lieutenant General Trefry’s extraordinary achievement and service to the Army, the Department of Defense, the Federal Government, and our Nation.

General Trefry holds a B.S. degree in Military Science from the United States Military Academy, West Point, and is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College and the Army War College.  In 2006, he received the Distinguished Graduate Award from the United States Military Academy Association of Graduates.

His presentation on “How the Army Runs” has become legendary in military circles in explaining the Constitutional and legal underpinnings of what the Army has and what the Army does.

 

He had this to say about The Fifth Field:

“I couldn’t put it down… a hell of a good book…the subject is fascinating… you have done yeoman’s work and produced a great book.”
“I had been an enlisted man in World War II and knew that soldiers had been executed, but I did not know how many.  Later, when I was the Inspector General of the United States Army, I was visiting the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg about 1980.  As I looked at the crosses, I wondered where the soldiers who were executed were buried.  Now, I finally know.”
The Fifth Field Wins the Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry Award2023-06-20T14:18:30-05:00
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