"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.
The notion that criticizing the administration war policy is unpatriotic and worse is one that the hardcore Republicans can be expected to use as long as American troops are in Iraq. And long after.But the Dark Lord of Torture, Dick Cheney, perhaps unintentionlly illustrated in a recent speech why the accusation that dissent over the war demoralizes the soldiers will remain well-nigh unprovable.
Now, in the reality-based world, it's well established, in both theory and practice, that soldiers in combat are not focusing on what newspaper editorials back home may be saying about US foreign policy at the moment. They are focused on fighting for themselves and their buddies in their unit and keeping each other alive.
Combat morale does not depend on individual faith in the wisdom of the policy that put them in that spot. It depends on leadership and unit cohesion. Inadequate field leadership will undermine morale in the most popular of wars. Miserable and impossible conditions, like American soldiers often faced in Vietnam and now in Iraq, will also produce morale and other problems even in a war with much greater public and Congressional approval than the Iraq War has now, or ever will again.
(Combat morale is a subject that has been intensely studied. People don't have rely on guesswork on this topic.)
But those are not the things that the Dark Lord mentioned: Vice President's Remarks on the War on Terror at the American Enterprise Institute 11/21/05 (white House Web site). He first makes the accusation against the war critics:
One might also argue that untruthful charges against the Commander-in-Chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself.
He then told his audience at AEI:
I'm unwilling to say that, only because I know the character of the United States Armed Forces - men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts. They haven't wavered in the slightest, and their conduct should make all Americans proud. They are absolutely relentless in their duties, and they are carrying out their missions with all the skill and the honor we expect of them. I think of the ones who put on heavy gear and work 12-hour shifts in the desert heat. Every day they are striking the enemy - conducting raids, training up Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers. Americans appreciate our fellow citizens who go out on long deployments and endure the hardship of separation from home and family. We care about those who have returned with injuries, and who face the long, hard road of recovery. And our nation grieves for the men and women whose lives have ended in freedom's cause. (my emphasis)
We saw a few days ago in the venomous Republican response to Congressman John Murtha's criticism of the war just how much Republicans honor the service of veterans when they venture to criticize Dear Leader Bush's war policies. And in their shameful failure to provide adequate body and vehicle armor to the troops they sent into war based on lies, distortions and forged documents. And in the Swift Boat Liars for Bush and their Rovian attacks on John Kerry wartime service. And on and on.
But the Republicans have made idolizing the military and, in particular, "honoring the troops" such a key part of their image among their supporters, particularly the Christian Right, that they dare not say that any particular battle was lost or objective not attained because of a lack of morale. And since the honest generals reassure us that they regularly win every single battle, it's hard to see how they could ever claim damage to the troops morale.
This inevitably sounds a bit like comma-dancing. And that's because it's a reflection of the absurdity of the idological binds in which the Republicans have wrapped themselves. Since they've insisted on fighting the Iraq War without calls for general public sacrifice of any kind, they have to claim everything is going great in order to sustain what public support is left. If they actually do intend to reduce the troops presence in Iraq, they have claim everything is going great.
But the charges they are making against the critics are so nasty, it's worth doing reality-checks on them from time to time.
It's interesting to see how what I'm calling here the idolization of the military plays out in different ways. Probably none of them really good. Andrew Bacevich devotes a chapter of The New American Militarism (2005) to the efforts of the Christian Right to claim the US military as their own special cause. As he explains, Protestant evangelicals (a wider group than fundamentalists or the Christian Right) were particularly disturbed by what they saw as a cultural crisis in the 1960s, involving not just Vietnam but the "counterculture", the civil rights movement and the dramatically increased independence of women.
But he argues that, more than for any other group, conservative evangelicals reacted to the loss of the Vietnam War as not only a failure of foreign policy but "a manifestation of cultural upheaval". And he describes a shift in attitudes that took place as a result:
Certain in their understanding of right and wrong, growing in numbers, affluence, and sophistication, and determined to reverse the nation's perceived decline, conservative evangelicals after the 1960s assumed the role of church militant. Abandoning their own previously well established skepticism about the morality of force and inspired in no small measure by their devotion to Israel, they articulated a highly permissive interpretation of the just war tradition, the cornerstone of Christian thinking about warfare. And they developed a considerable appetite for wielding armed might on behalf of righteousness, more often than not indistinguishable from America's own interests.
Moreover, at least some evangelicals looked to the armed services to play a pivotal role in saving America from internal collapse. In a decadent and morally confused time, they came to celebrate the military itselfas a bastion of the values required to stem the nation's slide toward perdition: respect for tradition, an appreciation for order and discipline, and a willingness to sacrifice self for the common good. In short, evangelicals looked to soldiers to model the personal qualities that citizens at large needed to rediscover if America were to reverse the tide of godlessness and social decay to which the 1960s had given impetus. (my emphasis)
So it would be especially problematic for an administration so extremely dependent on the Christian Right as its most important mass base to start claiming in any specific instances that our sacred soldiers were so human as have lapses in moral based on the criticisms of those culturally decadent Democrats.
Of course, this won't stop the Dark Lord and other Republicans from claiming that criticism of the administration might damage soldiers' morale. But it could wind up backfiring on them in unexpected ways. At the very least, their self-imposed need to declare that that our invincible generals are always and everywhere winning and winning again deprives that sleazy charge of much of its emotional force.
Probably the darkest side of this idolization of soldiers as models of the ideal qualities "that citizens at large needed to rediscover" is that it encourages people without a personal or family connection to military service to think of soldiers as sentimental creatures, not quite human, and therefore easy to sacrifice in preventive wars of choice.
One article that I've quoted a number of times here at Old Hickory's Weblog is "The Art of Politics" by Duncan Murrell Oxford American May/June 2003. Murrell's article is about a long interview he conducted with Gen. Wesley Clark. But it's so well expressed that it's worth quoting again:
"I think a time like this is an interesting turning point in American history. Many of the things that we've taken for granted, that have shaped our international strategy, our domestic environment - they're up for grabs right now. We got walloped on 9/11. and now Americans are asking themselves what's out there. They're saying, 'Hey! Man, these people are supposed to like us! And what happened with Russia and the Soviet Union? Where is China?' Ordinary Americans are now much more interested in the world beyond. And in combination with the war on terror, you've got a rollback to a sort of imperial presidency, a presidency that's much more private, and an investigatory service with greater authority to come after ordinary Americans. We thought we put that to rest after the excesses of the Nixon administration and Vietnam. I believed that when I fought in Vietnam I represented the right of all Americans to express their views. So I'm concerned."
There is an idealism that underlies such outspoken skepticism toward the Republican administration, one that creeps in when Clark recounts his life and the choices he's made. When asked about his decision to leave Little Rock for West Point, he put it this way: "I wanted to serve my country. I wanted to be a leader. I wanted to be in the armed forces. I was worried about the threat to the country from Russia, and so I went to West Point."
Clark recognizes such feelings as somewhat anachronistic. The irony, as he sees it, is that while the relationship between the military and the general public has improved since Vietnam, the experience of actually serving in the military has become less common. The result is a perception of soldiers as the embodiments of ideals - duty, honor,
country - reinforced by a sentimentality unsullied by first-hand knowledge of soldiering. Such admiration for the military is powerful, but not quite powerful enough to drive the sons and daughters of the middle and upper classes into recruiting offices. "We've been the beneficiaries of that lack of familiarity," Clark says, which has allowed the leadership of the United States to use the military as a symbol, sending soldiers off to wars that don't affect most American families directly by putting their children in harm's way.
When Clark wants to demonstrate the weakness of certain arguments, he often mimics the people making them. To demonstrate what recent college graduates might say if he suggested they join the military. Clark leaned forward in his chair, eyes wide, hands folded in his lap: "Well, General Clark, that's a very interesting thing. If it's what some people want to do, great. I mean, we really need people like that. And thanks a lot for going out there and risking your life for our country. For myself, I've got lots of other things to do, and but, you know, I'm really glad someone wants to serve. As for me. I really want to be a lawyer. I'm really looking forward to being a journalist, or getting into my family's business. Or," he added with asmile and a pause, "just enjoying my freedom."
Clark didn't mean this to be funny. His earnestness was palpable.(my emphasis)
With that in mind, another look at Cheney speech puts it in a grimmer context:
I know the character of the United States Armed Forces - men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts. They haven't wavered in the slightest, and their conduct should make all Americans proud. They are absolutely relentless in their duties, and they are carrying out their missions with all the skill and the honor we expect of them. I think of the ones who put on heavy gear and work 12-hour shifts in the desert heat. Every day they are striking the enemy - conducting raids, training up Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing weapons, and capturing killers. Americans appreciate our fellow citizens who go out on long deployments and endure the hardship of separation from home and family. We care about those who have returned with injuries, and who face the long, hard road of recovery. And our nation grieves for the men and women whose lives have ended in freedom's cause.
A little less sentimentalism and a more serious approach to the responsibility of sending soldiers into war to kill and be killed would be a vast improvement.
When you start looking into one of Dick Cheney's speeches, it's a little like turning over rocks in a swamp. You can fight some strange and scary things under there.
"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05
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