The Capitol Caller: Good evening, Soldiers …

Who are you protecting? What are you defending? Is it freedom? Or is it fear? Is it the Constitution? Or one man’s fragile ego?

National Guard soldiers standing around on the National Mall near the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., August 30, 2025 | Susan J. Demas

Editor’s Note: This piece is written in the style of Hanoi Hannah, who made English-language radio broadcasts for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War directed at United States troops.

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[Loudspeakers across D.C. crackle] [The public stops to listen]

Good evening, soldiers.

This is the Capitol Caller, coming to you not from a foreign land, but from the very heart of your own country. Tonight, you stand not in Kuwait, Kabul, or Baghdad, but on the streets of Washington, Los Angeles, and soon to be Chicago. You’re not guarding your people against an enemy — you’re staring down your own neighbors, your own brothers and sisters.

Look around you. These are not enemy combatants. They’re American citizens. The people who raised you, taught you, worked beside you. The same people who pay the taxes that fund your uniform and paycheck. Yet here you stand — ordered to treat them as if they were a hostile force meant to do you harm.

Tell me, Soldier: Is this the America you swore an oath to defend?

You swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Do you remember those words, Soldier? To uphold the freedoms guaranteed to every person — speech, assembly, protest, redress of grievances. And tonight, you dutifully follow orders to silence those freedoms. To corral the public, to enforce curfews, to intimidate with the gas-operated, air cooled killing machine on your shoulder.

Which oath are you. following? The one you gave to your country — to your brothers and sisters — or the one handed down from Dear Leader desperate to stay in power? You know the answer. Deep down, you feel it with every order you receive and then blindly choose to carry out.

Think of who is standing across from you. That’s not a “mob.” That’s the nurse who cared for your sister in the hospital. The teacher who taught you how to read. The mechanic who fixed your car so you wouldn’t miss work. The child waving a sign, whose only crime is wanting a future.

Are you ready to face that nurse, that teacher, that child — not as a neighbor, but as an imposing force? Are you prepared to carry the weight of pointing a weapon at people who once waved the flag with you on the Fourth of July?

Ask yourself, Soldier: when the orders come to break them, to beat them, to drag them into unmarked vehicles, will you follow through?

Here’s what they won’t tell you: your presence here doesn’t make the country safer. It makes it more vulnerable. Every night you march down these streets, democracy crumbles a little more. And the ones who gave the orders? They’re nowhere near you. They sit in gilded ballrooms grifting until the early morning hours, behind bulletproof glass, sipping brandy while you eat MREs and shit in a sweaty plastic box.

When the blame comes, it won’t land on them. It will land at your feet. It won’t be on their faces on the front page — it will be yours. It won’t be their hands with the blood of protesters — it will be yours on the nightly news, front and center for shame.

Do you think they will defend you when the trials come, when the headlines shift, when the people you’re ordered to suppress demand justice? No. They will disown you. They will leave you to the masses. And you will be alone to carry the guilt.

Soldier, you didn’t sign up for this. You joined to serve your country — probably to get an education, to help in times of disaster, to protect communities after floods, hurricanes, and fires. You signed up to be a shield for the people you are terrorizing. But now, you are a weapon against them.

Ask yourself — is this what honor and selfless-service looks like? Is this what duty feels like? Standing on the streets of our nation’s capitol sweeping leaves and standing around to intimidate soccer moms going to work? Is this what your service means?

Your commanders tell you this is temporary, that you’re just maintaining order. But you know better. You can feel it. You see the looks in the people’s eyes. This is not about order. It’s about instilling fear. A president afraid of his people. A government that no longer trusts its citizens. Leaders who would rather turn your gun toward its people than admit they have failed.

Tonight, when you lay your head down on that green, metal-framed cot, what memory will keep you awake? The public shaming? The thought of your family back home lying about what you’re doing? The face of the protester you shoved? The crying child ripped from her mother’s arms?

And what will you say to your family when they ask what you did there? When your son or daughter asks, “Daddy, was that you pointing a gun at Americans?” What story will you tell?

You cannot hide from the truth, Soldier. You cannot bury the conscience that screams at you under orders.

History is watching you, Soldier. History will not remember the excuses, the justifications or loopholes of “following orders.” It will only remember what you did and whom you did it to.

In 1968, the Guard was called to Chicago, to Detroit, to crush the cries of its people. Soldiers followed orders, and the images of blood and broken skulls are forever seared in the public’s memory. Do you want to be remembered that way? Do you want your children to read your name in the same breath as Kent State, as Selma, as every time America turned its guns inward?

There is another way. You could say no. You could stand down. You could choose your conscience over compliance. No one can order you to betray your own soul.

Some of you already feel it — the knot in your stomach, that hesitation in your hand. That is your humanity calling out. Do not silence it, Soldier. Do not kill it.

That voice inside you is stronger than any commanding officer.

So I ask you, Soldier: Who are you protecting? What are you defending? Is it freedom? Or is it fear? Is it the Constitution? Or one man’s fragile ego?

Do you know the difference? Or have you let them blur it so completely that you no longer recognize yourself or your actions?

You were not trained to turn your weapons on your own people. You were not trained to guard marble buildings from citizens. You were trained to defend this nation from its enemies, to protect your people in times of need. And tonight, I tell you the truth: these people in the streets are not your enemy. They are America.

Every order you follow against them is an order against your country. Every baton raised, every trigger pulled, every shield slammed down is another crack in the foundation you swore to uphold.

This is the Capitol Caller, signing off for tonight. But remember, Soldier: I don’t need to be here to haunt you. My words will echo in your mind long after the shouting fades. They will come back to you in the silence of the night, in the stillness after this “deployment” ends, in the questions your children will ask.

And when they do, you will have to answer.

Sleep well, Soldier.

Evan Fields is a veteran who writes the Fourth & Democracy newsletter for Lincoln Square and the News from Underground Substack.

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