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EDITORIAL: What to
make of the nation¡¦s military
As a country that uses conscription, it would be a fair guess that Taiwan is one
of the few nations where people know about and appreciate their troops.
Taiwanese have either served in the army, navy, air force or marine corps
themselves, or had a father, son, brother or boyfriend in the military. Some
conscripts have been lucky or unlucky enough, depending on your position, to
serve in Kinmen and Matsu, the front line of the Cold War against Chinese
aggression in the past.
Despite this familiarity or first-hand experience, the more people see and read
about the military, the more confusing their impression of it becomes.
Just recently, people have seen Discovery Channel programs about Taiwan¡¦s elite
special forces, including the amphibious reconnaissance team (frogmen),
underwater operations unit and army rangers. They have also seen news of the
death of army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (¬x¥ò¥C), who died on July 4 ¡X three days
before he was to be discharged from the army ¡X from heat exhaustion in an
alleged torture case.
At the same time as feeling respect and awe toward the elite troops who go
through hellish training to ensure Taiwan¡¦s security, people were reminded in
Hung¡¦s case about the stiff and dysfunctional military bureaucracy, the severe
culture and the numerous lives lost at its bases.
The military¡¦s reaction in the Hung case perhaps reminded them about the
instances of fraudulent documents and fake statistics when they served, and how
the culture of the military is to cover up every mistake and stop information
from leaking out to the non-military world.
In terms of transparent government, the military remains the last piece of
uncharted territory. With its refusal to open a joint investigation with
non-military prosecutors, the military has shown it is stuck in a time warp of
two decades ago.
There are more conflicting impressions about the military to be found elsewhere.
Retired generals have talked about Taiwan¡¦s military and the People¡¦s Republic
of China (PRC) military as ¡§all Chinese troops.¡¨ Meanwhile, a military
officer-turned-civil-servant was reported as telling incoming military recruits
in Hualien County that ¡§unification is inevitable.¡¨ However the Ministry of
National Defense¡¦s Quadrennial Defense Report lists the PRC as the ¡§enemy¡¨ and
the ministry calls for a larger defense budget to purchase weapons systems and
fighter jets to close the gap in an increasingly imbalanced military state of
affairs across the Taiwan Strait.
People see and hear of thousands of soldiers moving out in the middle of the
night to help with disaster relief after major earthquakes and typhoons. And yet
they also see how military officers defended their retirement pensions and
year-end bonuses in the government¡¦s pension reform plan harder than keeping
confidential information away from the Chinese.
Why have almost 4,000 soldiers either died or been injured from 2002 to 2011,
including more than 300 suicides, when Taiwan was not at war? If several
reported suicide cases were suspected to have been the result of torture,
inappropriate training or even murder, how many more soldiers met their fate
from unknown or unidentified reasons?
None of this is good news for a military that is trying to transform itself into
an all-volunteer force. It is facing exactly the same problem as its
commander-in-chief, President Ma Ying-jeou (°¨^¤E): a loss of credibility.
There is no shortcut to turn a boy into a man overnight. Everyone has to start
from square one, going through bootcamp and on to other stages before becoming a
real soldier. There is no shortcut for the military either. It too, must go
through a ¡§bootcamp¡¨ to rebuild its reputation one task at a time.
This is the only way Taiwanese will allow the military to win back their
confidence and trust.
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