I was recently at a meeting where a senior JAG officer made two points:
1) You do not disparage your Commander in Chief. You do not criticize your government leadership. This is long-standing policy.
2) Something new -- you do not speak about political issues. Everyone has an opinion on various policy viewpoints, but you do not talk about that. Expressing your opinion about pending legislation or court cases can get you into trouble.
On the first point, the guy was strong and definite. Nothing new there; it's just the way it is. Sure, it might be a First Amendment thing, but just let it go.
On the second point, he was very nervous. Kept saying it was a new approach. Kept saying that some people disagreed with it. Kept saying that it was started by the current administration. Said more than once that -- in his opinion -- it violated the First Amendment pretty badly. But [big sigh] it's what you should be aware of if you want to stay out of trouble.
Hatch Act
You are entitled to your opinions privately just no officially
Nothing new
The caveats to 1) and 2) are that you don’t do it in uniform or in an official military capacity. Individuals can have and express opinions. If I get on the news in uniform and do it, then there’s a real problem there.
Unless your name is Watada, of course.
That's very disturbing. I agree that military shouldn't (and generally never have) go about disparaging the President or anybody else in leadership. I was referring to the fact that Bush - and, so far as I can see, just about every other US President - consulted them for their opinion on pending military moves and actually sought out their professional advice and often accepted it, even if they disagreed.
But perhaps your second point explains this. Now even disagreeing with or having reservations about current government strategy is considered political and no longer the product of expert military opinion and analysis, but instead is considered a dangerous rejection of Obama. And with the new climate of political fear, even the suggestion of this is probably enough to end a career, at best, or possibly even set oneself up for some kind of worse reprisal.
I've just started reading Rob Smith's Agent 6, the final book in his trilogy set in Stalinist Russia. One of the characters is a Soviet secret policeman whose particular focus is finding and reading people's diaries to see if there is any hint of criticism of Stalin in them.
The book begins this way:
The safest way to write a diary was to imagine Stalin reading every word.
While we haven't gotten to that point openly yet, the feeling is definitely in the air, and I'm sure this is especially true for people in the military.