LCDR (Ret) Ernest G. Cunningham and famous (infamous) survey

COMBAT ARMS SURVEY

By LCDR (Ret) Ernest G. Cunningham

Much controversy developed and ensued with regard to the Combat Arms Survey, its creation, administration, intent, results and its author. To this day, the controversy continues.

The author was a Naval Officer attending the Navy Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, CA, 1992-1995, securing a MS (Manpower, Personnel and Training Analysis) March, 1995. Thesis requirements were fulfilled with the submission: “Peacekeeping and U.N. Operational Control: A Study of Their Effect on Unit Cohesion”. His background included tours with the 101^st Airborne (Infantryman) and 5^th and 20^th Special Forces Groups (Senior Medical Specialist) on Operational Detachment A-Teams. His Navy background prior to attendance at NPS consisted of tours as a Navy Aviator/Mission Commander with P-3 Orion Patrol Squadrons Five and Sixty-Seven, Instructor Pilot at Training Squadron Ten (Basic Navigator Curriculum) and Senior Instructor/Program Manager, Basic Navigator Program, Training Air Wing Six, NAS Pensacola, FL.

In the early Fall of 1993, the author read an article printed in The Conservative Chronicle written by Pat Buchanan entitled, “PDD-13”. Presidential Directive 13 was being introduced by the State Department authorizing the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief (CIC), solely, to place United States of America military personnel under the command and field operational control of United Nations’ appointed Officers and Noncommissioned Officers (NCO) conducting Peacekeeping Operations. These United Nations appointed Officers/NCOs would be non-American by virtue of their foreign national origin.

The author hence created the Combat Arms Survey to capture data which would portray the current day opinions of the author’s selected population with regard to orders given by the Commander-in-Chief under the authority of PDD-13. That population was predetermined. The selected population consisted of 300 male, combat trained United States Marines located at 29 Palms CA, home of the United States Marine Corps Air/Ground Combat Training Center. The population consisted of military rates from E-1 through E-7 and O-1 through O-3.

During early 1994, the State Department revised PDD-13 and renamed it PDD-25 (Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations). On May 6, 1994 the State Department released for public dissemination an abstract denoting the range and/or limit of authority, competence, responsibility, concern, and intentions of PDD-25. www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd25.htm

In constructing the Combat Arms Survey, the author, after asking demographic questions, presented 3 distinct Operations Other Than War (OOTW) mission and command and operational control scenarios. The scenarios progressed from OOTW missions under U.S. Officers/NCOs command and operational control on U.S. soil, to OOTW missions under U.S. Officers/NCOs command and operational control on foreign soil and finally, to OOTW missions under U.N. Officers/NCOs command and operational control on foreign soil. Several questions/considerations ensued to provide data intended to focus on specific group/individual responses. This was achieved by presenting the data breakdown in tables cross-tabulating the individual’s rate versus the OOTW scenarios stated above. All responses were categorized by the individual marking their opinion: “Strongly disagree; Disagree; Agree; Strongly Agree; No opinion”.

Finally, the Combat Arms Survey culminated with two distinct considerations expressed in Questions 45 and 46.

Question 45: “I would swear to the following code: I am a United Nations fighting person. I serve in the forces which maintain world peace and every nation’s way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.” The author took liberty to present a modification of the soldier’s Code of Conduct, Article I, established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on 17 August 1955 and modified by Executive Order 12633 of March 1988, which amended the code to make it gender-neutral. The author swore to the original gender specific Eisenhower version, wherein: “I am an American Fighting Man…". Q45 modified Article I to be: gender-neutral (“person”), “United Nations” versus American, and allegiance to the death, if necessary, in maintaining world peace and every nation’s way of life.

Table 50, UN Code of Conduct revealed:

1) Strongly disagree: 39.00 % Frequency: 117 Marines

2) Disagree: 30.33 % Frequency: 91 Marines

3) Agree: 17.33 % Frequency: 52 Marines Population: 300 Marines

4) Strongly agree: 6.33 % Frequency: 19 Marines

5) No opinion: 7.00 % Frequency: 21 Marines

The author was/still deeply disturbed that these results occurred on May 10, 1994 when the survey had been personally administered by the author in an auditorium on the 29 Palms installation. Not only by the 23.66% / 71 Marines who had cumulatively agreed to swear an oath to such a code, but also, that 7.00% / 21 Marines stated to have No opinion! As a reminder, the theme of the thesis pertains to the subject matter of Unit Cohesion. Therefore, based on the results, 30.66% / 92 Marines represented a significant aberration.

Chief of Staff Edward Meyer (1982) defined unit cohesion as:

“The bonding together of soldiers in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the unit, and mission accomplishment, despite combat or mission stress.”

Cited by: Frederick J. Manning, “Morale, Cohesion and Esprit de Corps”, in Handbook of Military Psychology, John Wiley and Sons Ltd., England, 1991, p. 457.

One may say, “This is ridiculous! Our U.S. Marines would never swear to an oath as stated!” Consider however, our OOTW history. Can you not conclude that by virtue of U.S. Marines having been ordered to conduct U.N. OOTW and in so doing have in fact given the ultimate sacrifice, their very lives, were in fact forced, contrary to their American Oath, carry out such an oath? Albeit, those U.S. Marines did not in fact, personally swear to said oath. Yet, by them being “conscripted” into OOTW actions which led to engagements resulting in their deaths, their DoD Seniors subverted their original oaths.

Finally, Q46

:(The U.S. government declares a ban on the possession, sale, transportation,and transfer of all non-sporting firearms. A thirty day amnesty period is permitted for these firearms to be turned over to local authorities. At the end of this period, a number of citizen groups refuse to turn over their firearms.

Consider the following statement;

I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government. )

whose unauthorized public dissemination began in early summer of 1994 in an article published by The New American (publication of the John Birch Society), resulting in an overall overwhelming of the thesis itself, published in March, 1995. The results of the survey and the author’s thesis to this day have not been, for the most part, widely addressed. Note however the exception in two articles written by James L. Pate for Soldier of Fortune, beginning with the Volume 20, #8, August 1995 SOF issue. The articles resulted from a two day personal interview exclusive Mr. Pate conducted with the author at Mr. Pate’s home in May, 1995.

One may ask, “Why, WHY would LCDR Cunningham ever propose such a scenario as in Q46 to active duty combat-trained United States Marine Corps personnel?”

Why, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” The author proposes the following for consideration:

1) President William Jefferson Clinton, USA Today, Mar 11, '93, Pg 2A:

“We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles that we can not think about reality.” Note that this quotation was publicly stated by a President with less than 60 days in office after having sworn to:

The oath of office of the President of the United States is an oath or affirmation required by the United States Constitution before the President begins the execution of the office. The wording is specified in Article Two, Section One, Clause Eight: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Also note the language of the quotation and the President’s Constitution Oath of Office with reference to the word, “preserve”.

2) The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was a subtitle of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law of the United States that included a prohibition on the sale to civilians of certain semi-automatic so called "assault weapons" including military-style semiautomatic rifles, derived from assault rifles but with lesser capabilities. There was no legal definition of "assault weapons" prior to its enactment, but assault rifle is a technical term referring to rifles capable of semi-automatic and full-automatic fire; no such weapon was affected by the AWB. The ten-year ban was passed by Congress on September 13, 1994 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The term and its legal definition were created by one Josh Sugarmann, a member of President Clinton’s political staff. The proposal of this legislation was well on its way to be incorporated as Law in early 1994.

3) Knowledge of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and why it was incorporated by the Federal government forbidding the use of Federal military personnel and organizational equipment listed in their Table of Organization to conduct/carry out law enforcement against American citizens.

4) Knowledge of the 2^nd Amendment of the Constitution granting the individual American the right to keep and bear arms, in concert with the definition of militia in context of the times (every able bodied man) with alluded reference to the opening of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, which states as follows:

“

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

”

5) Knowledge of the United Nations Charter in respect to Treaty Law of the U.S. Constitution.

On 25 April 1945, the UN Conference on International Organization began in San Francisco, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental organizations involved in drafting the Charter of the United Nations. The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945 upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council — France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States — and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.

Wondering why at this point these young Marines chose to swear to a proposed U.N. oath? They were products of our federal government controlled public school system. Of greatest influence in this system’s policies and practices is the National Education Association which early on in the U.N. NGO history became a member. This knowledge should help explain why American school children over the past several decades have been dumbed-down, brainwashed, and subjected to the vilification of Christianity. It is a fact that has been ignored and hence, systematically fomented that over 20 of the original signers of the Constitution held seminary degrees. None of those degrees were of the Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist religions. Yea, but of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

6) Knowledge of the fact that the phrase: “a wall of separation of church and state” is NOT in the Constitution of the United States, but an extraction absconded from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in January 1802 and sent to The Danbury Baptists Association of the state of Connecticut.

In consideration of space, I’ll stop here, though I can submit more of the considerations I realized during and formatting the context of the survey.

Below is a presentation of the original Combat Arms Survey:

(Stewart, this is the space I had reserved for the CAS.)

As I close, I want to provide the one example of President William Jefferson Clinton attempting to exercise his authority under PDD-25. It occurred in October, 1995, just 7 months after the publication of the thesis. Specifically, I’m referring to the unit stationed in Germany with Army Specialist Michael G. New. The 3^rd Infantry Division unit was issued uniforms with U.N. insignia and the Blue Berets and ordered to fall into formation the following morning dressed in the issued uniforms. Army Specialist Michael G. New was the ONLY soldier in formation who refused to wear any other uniform besides the U.S. Army Battle Dress Uniform. In essence, he was the only soldier, that adhered to his oath of office and the Uniform Regulations set forth and approved by Congress. When I say only, I’m specifically including every single Officer and NCO from the originator of this illegal order to the Company Commander of the unit. Rather than Specialist New being singled out for actually disobeying an illegal order and subsequently being court-martialed resulting in a Dishonorable Discharge, which stands today, it should have been Congress who had the responsibility and authority to court-martial every Officer and NCO in the chain of command who originated the order down through the ranks of those who passed on the illegal order. Note that it is an arduous and drawn out process to secure any changes to the Uniform Regulations. I submit that the Commander-in-Chief orchestrated the issuance of that illegal order. This illegal order was issued in conjunction with the standing unit orders deploying these personnel to Macedonia to be placed under the command and operational control and a U.N. Officer. Please go to this link to read the United States of America vs. NEW, Michael G.:

http://www.mikenew.com/deploy.html.

Well, there was such a public outcry that the deployment was canceled. Thank God! Specialist Michael New became my hero that day. He irrefutably provided a testimony of adherence to his oath of office which none of his chain of command did. What a shame mark on the history of the American Soldier and what a slap in the face to all the sacrifices of those who have served in our Nation’s service since its inception.

May God Bless America! As for me, you can call me M.A.D.! I’m Man Against Despotism! I serve my Constitution and not a man in office. When a President departs from his Presidential oath of office, he departs from all those who have sworn an oath of allegiance to the beloved and God Bless Constitution of the United States of America. Amen and Amen.

De Oppresso Liber!

ERNEST GUY CUNNINGHAM

LCDR (Ret)