Guardians vs. Warriors

[Hissho]

http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion...licexxxml.html

Interested in the discussion here - working on a counterpoint to this.

[gquaresma]

I think it's all semantics. Guardian, warrior, sentinel, sheepdog, are all synonymous for the same thing. Sure a warrior can be a person with ill intent, but our societal concept is not, that being a warrior in a democratic society.

I remember in the marine corps we had the tactical concept called "fighting the three block war" Basically the idea was that as a junior leader you might in one block be providing humanitarian assistance in a permissive enviroment, in another you might be conducting intelligence gathering by talking to locals in a semi permissive enviroment, and in the third block you could be in full combat operation. I think the same holds true for the police.

Greg Quaresma

[Hissho]

To some extent it is, however there is a clear, and concerning, bias with which the whole "Guardians" thing is front loaded. It also appears not clearly thought out the deeper you peer under the first - political - layer.

[Carina Reinhardt]

I think a soldier follows orders and a police officers needs to take decisions on his own for his own safety and the safety of those he must to protect. The education of an police officer has to be military style with a big dose of psychology, calmness and verbal convincing .

[Kendoguy9]

I've been contemplating about what it means to be a warrior in recent weeks so I have a few thoughts about this topic. "Warrior" is a term that is somewhat difficult to define because each culture and era has a slightly different take on it including how it is used today. My definition that I've settled on is someone who has specialized combative training, occupies a unique and distinct sub-cultural group in society that is empowered by that greater society and is bound to a code of ethics. So are police warriors? If we go by my broad definition than yes they are warriors. Police are taught defense tactics, arrest and control, how to use various weapons ranging from batons to long guns. Police are often a sub-cultural group and members form various fraternal organizations, frequent certain establishments and carry themselves in a way that is unique and identifiable even out of uniform. Society has given law enforcement officers a unique trust and empowers them to do things no one else can. Society also provides the training for this to happen. Finally police have a very unique code of ethics based on the law and a high level integrity. They are held to a higher standard than most citizens and they face stiffer punishment for breaking those ethics. Breaking the code of ethics can get an officer fired, arrested, in the case of perjury keep them from doing vital part of their job, ostracized from the group or even killed. There is often very little forgiveness from society or the sub-cultural group if the code of ethics is broken.

I think where it gets very confusing is that a police officer's role is beyond simply that of a warrior. They are expected to be a guardian when the worst this world has to offer shows its head and the innocent are victimized. They are expected to be a civil servants when politicians or people need them in that capacity. They are expected to be medics when people are hurt. They are expected to be paper pushers when someone needs a report for insurance claims. They are expected to be a mental health worker when someone is in an unsafe place in their head. They are expected to be friendly when someone asks for directions to the nearest restaurant and then turn it on from 0 to 100 when something bad happens. People always complain that there is never a cop around when you need one but if a highly visible officer is having lunch in a Panera Breads people say all cops ever do is take breaks when they should be fighting crime. The funny thing is when you get looser with the definition of warrior as they do in various dictionaries all of the above things make it even more clear that policeare warriors and warriors first.

One who is engaged aggressively or energetically in an activity, cause, or conflict: neighborhood warriors fighting against developers.

a person who has shown great vigor, courage, or aggressiveness, as in politics.

a man engaged or experienced in warfare; broadly : a person engaged in some struggle or conflict <poverty warriors>

This isn't really polished thought but just some ramblings that have been going through my head.

[TonyU]

Mr. Covington, great post. While trying not to diminish or denigrate you musings I gave up trying to figure out who, what, or why.
I've gotten to the point where "I am what I am. I do what I do."
Simplistic I know, but much less confusing.

[Ichiro]

I think a soldier follows orders and a police officers needs to take decisions on his own for his own safety and the safety of those he must to protect. The education of an police officer has to be military style with a big dose of psychology, calmness and verbal convincing .

If all a soldier was capable of was following orders he wouldn't last long on the battlefield. Especially now when the enemy does not wear a uniform and uses the civilian population to their advantage. I spent almost six years in the middle east. Almost 4 years as a member of the US military and 2 more years as a security contractor. Trust me, there's a lot more involved than just following orders. The rules are different, but there are still rules.

[Hissho]

Revisiting this thread as well as Peter mentioned it in the Jeopardy thread.

The problem with quoting Plato - and out of his particular cultural context - has already been noted: even a cursory reading found searching Plato and "guardian" shows that Plato saw two kinds of guardians: rulers and soldiers. The latter were responsible for defending society against enemies without and enforcing its laws within. You can't get much more "warrior" or "soldier" than that, and yet that is specifically what the ostensible move toward changing "culture" was intended to address. Unfortunately it is not a case of a deeply researched, analyzed, and carefully considered new approach, rather it seems more a hasty patch to fill a subjectively created "need" with half-formed theories.

I attended the Blue Courage train the trainer course this past year as well, and found a similar thing: some good stuff and some well meaning ideas, but plagued by a cut-and-paste approach that was not really adapted to LE culture as it stands now. This is apparently being addressed.

Returning to Armstrong's Exemplar, I think there is some meat there. I have long thought that a budo based training - hearkening to concepts and tales like WuDe and the old Chinese knight-errants, the Bokuden Mutekatsu-ryu story, the Kamiizumi story about the bandit with the hostage and his tossing the ball of rice, etc. properly adapted and given its due in terms of time and focus as part of a career-long training regime - is one way to go.

http://exemplarpath.com/2014/12/the-...nd-of-warrior/

[P Goldsbury]

http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion...licexxxml.html

Interested in the discussion here - working on a counterpoint to this.

Well, I think the author was unwise to quote Plato without giving some context. Plato had little time for democracy and the training regime for guardians was such that they were pretty old by the time they had finished. The philosopher kings ruled the guardians and the auxiliaries did every thing else, everyone being intensely happy with the pay grade in which they found themselves -- the whole operation being propped up by slaves. The philosophers ruled a society that was similar in some ways to Japan in the Edo period, with no movement across the four ranks of samurai, peasants, craftsmen, merchants, and the non-human or semi-human remainder.

I also think that 'warrior' is too heavily romanticized and culture-laden to be of much use in this discussion. The term is rather like 'samurai': a term that martial artists sometimes like to use, but which is too tied to a particular epoch in Japan to be of much value. I taught a graduate seminar once and asked my students -- all Japanese pursuing their further education studies after work and doing their doctorates in management -- about their view of bushido and the warrior ethic. Half the class believed they were upholders of bushido values and reeled off the virtues that bushido is supposed to uphold, but the other half had no time for such ideas, believing that they were too close to wartime militarism. This half of the class were all company employees or ran their own businesses; the other half -- the warriors -- were exclusively bureaucrats working for the local or central government.

[Hissho]

Carina - won't get into the issue over "shouldn't have provoked them.." I think that is akin to blaming the victim for rape or domestic violence. I'll stick with the comment that it does happen in Europe - for the same widely varying reasons it does in the US.

Professor - I'd agree that the best discussion would involve perhaps too much contextual bases to be useful in the kind of way this article was intended. I remember reading something from - I think it was Dr Friday - who described the Bakufu as "kind of a warrior union." Put together with the historical contexts of bureacracy, a highly litigious society (medieval Japan, that is), brought a chuckle when juxtaposed with modern American law enforcement....

[Carina Reinhardt]

Carina - won't get into the issue over "shouldn't have provoked them.." I think that is akin to blaming the victim for rape or domestic violence. I'll stick with the comment that it does happen in Europe - for the same widely varying reasons it does in the US.

Hi Kit,
We are going away from the original thread, but just wanted to reply to your answer:
Of course isolated cases happen also in Europe, fortunately there are seldom, because we are not allowed to own firearms except for having a hunting licence.
As for your example, I disagree, I’m not defending the solution of conflicts by violence, but I also think that we should respect other religions .

[Hissho]

Greg

Yes I too have had some interest in where Armstrong is going with the Exemplar thing in terms of Ethos.

[Kendoguy9]

I just saw this: http://www.aol.com/article/2015/01/3...6pLid%3D606535 It looks like the gun was a fake and no one got hurt thankfully but it can happen even in Europe.

Stay safe everyone,
Chris