Politics & Power Quote by Robert Jenkins

A soldier insisting he wants "military justice" instead of "civilians" is doing two things at once: declaring faith in the institution, and trying to control the narrative of his guilt before anyone else gets to frame it. Jenkins doesn’t sound like someone casually shopping for legal representation; he sounds like someone staking his identity on belonging. The line "assigned a very capable man to me" is almost bureaucratic gratitude, the language of a system that takes care of its own. That’s also the tell: he’s aligning himself with the Army’s authority precisely when that authority is poised to judge him.

The subtext is loyalty as strategy. "I don’t think I need no civilians" isn’t just mistrust of outsiders, it’s a rejection of a parallel moral universe. Civilian lawyers imply civilian standards, civilian press, civilian doubt. Jenkins narrows the arena to the Army’s internal code, where concepts like honor, chain of command, and unit cohesion carry real weight. "Clear myself with the American Army" reads less like a legal objective than a relational one: he wants reinstatement in the eyes of the only community that counts.

Context matters because military justice is not simply "court, but in uniform". It’s a venue where optics of discipline and loyalty are inseparable from the verdict. Jenkins’ phrasing suggests he believes the Army can both prosecute and absolve him in a way that preserves his self-concept: not a defendant versus the state, but a soldier asking his institution to set the record straight.