Ambiguity

            

Recently, we celebrated Veteran’s Day.  Let me begin by saying, everyone who honorably served in the military deserves a day and probably a whole lot more.  But, Veteran’s Day reminds me of a bit comedian, Louis CK, does in his stand up entitled “Of Course, but Maybe.”  The bit is built around certain facts that every right thinking person should embrace, but there are these darker thoughts that creep into one’s mind that may be wrong, but have a certain rationale to them.

I think part of the uncertainty I feel about Veteran’s Day is that it is just too easy.  The NFL hands out camouflage towels and underwear, finds a local member of the military to sing the national anthem and everyone feels good.  People slap yellow ribbon magnets on their cars and thank soldiers in the airport for their service and then go on with their day.  These are nice gestures, but are they enough?

Since the inception of our all-volunteer military, we have placed tremendous burdens on a tiny sliver of our population.  We have been at war for over ten years now, yet our citizens have not been asked for any contribution beyond standing at attention when the jets fly over the stadium.  The press has treated these prolonged wars as not being worthy of coverage and we end up treating war like it’s a bad reality show that has run its course and now bores us.  There is no pressure applied by the press or public to end the war because it doesn’t affect the vast majority of us.

I wonder how the veteran, who is number 750 thousand on the waiting list to have his or her disability claim processed, feels when they are being thanked for their service in an ad sponsored by Walmart.  Did the many hundreds of service members who have committed suicide in recent years feel they were appreciated?  Does the show of public support ring hollow for the soldiers in Afghanistan, whose rations were cut to two meals a day this year or the soldiers who were sent to Iraq without the armored vehicles they needed to protect themselves from the enemy’s most prolific and deadly weaponry?

It all just feels like a PR campaign sometimes.  In my lifetime, the country has engaged in three major wars and numerous military operations that haven’t risen to full-scale war.  The older I get, the more convinced I get that when the first bullet is fired both participants have already lost.  Vietnam was fought, supposedly, to keep the dominoes from falling in South East Asia.  We lost that war, yet the dominoes did not fall as predicted.  Was all the blood and horror and killing worth it?  Was all the money that could have been used for research, education, food programs, and infrastructure, better spent killing tens of thousands of American soldiers and at least a million Vietnamese?

After 9/11, a shocked and frightened nation was rushed into a war in Iraq despite the Iraqis having nothing to do with the attack.  The plan for this war was drawn up years before the Bush administration brought the neocons into power and the trauma of 9/11 was used as a triggering event to justify their dreams of restructuring the Middle East more to their liking while securing hegemony over the region and its resources.  A compliant press beat the drums of war and administration officials gave the public visions of mushroom clouds and poison gas labs to build support for their war of choice.   The voices of caution or protest were labeled naïve or un-American.  And, over three thousand of our soldiers died and tens of thousands were wounded as a result. 

What did the Iraq war achieve?   An evil dictator, who was our evil dictator a little over a decade before, was removed.  We spent somewhere in the neighborhood of two to six trillion dollars, lost thousands of our soldiers, brought about the death of at least 100 thousand Iraqi civilians and displaced as many as two million and strengthened Iran’s influence in the country.  Today, Iraq is a country torn apart by the instability brought about by our war.  This year, more than 8000 Iraqi civilians have died in terror bombings and targeted killings.  If this war was a success, I would hate to see a disaster.

In Afghanistan we are wrapping up twelve years of war and we have no idea what victory looks like.  Our Afghan allies have killed as many of our soldiers as our Afghan enemies in the last couple years. In 2012, more U.S. military personnel killed themselves than were killed by the enemy.  Again, we have spent enormous amounts of money and spilled more of our soldiers' blood without seeing much of a return.  Now the Obama administration is in negotiations with the Afghan government to reach an open ended agreement to keep our troops there for at least the next ten years.

By all accounts, our soldiers have performed well, but that is a different question than whether the sacrifices we have asked of them were worth it. Can we honestly say that the U.S. is better off today because of these wars?  Therein lies another conflict that pops up for me when we celebrate Veteran’s Day.  I know it is a day to honor our veterans, but it seems to me that in honoring our men and women in uniform, we too often conflate their service with the policies put forth by the civilian leadership of our military.  I fear that supporting our troops gets perverted into supporting disastrous military actions that are paid for with the blood, bodies, and minds of our troops.

In the last couple of years, tapes of Lyndon Johnson talking about the Vietnam War at the beginning of his administration revealed that he knew before he escalated the war that the cause was lost.  He escalated it anyway fearing he would expose himself and his party to political attacks along the lines of the “who lost China” debate after Mao’s revolution.  Tens of thousands of American soldiers died because of domestic politics, not to mention somewhere in the neighborhood of a million Vietnamese.  In 1968 Richard Nixon was elected partly on the promise that he had a secret plan to end the war.   At the end of his first four-year term the war raged on. Our veterans paid the price.  No amount of medal ceremonies, Veteran’s Days, or proclamations of support can make that right.

When I hear some pundit piously intoning how the troops are protecting our freedom, I can’t help but think about Vietnam and Iraq and wonder how our freedom was protected by these policy disasters.  The deaths, displacements, suicides, PTSD victims, the draining of our resources, the corrupting influence of war (torture, etc.), and damage to our prestige around the world seem the more likely result of these wars than any defense of freedom.

I think if we really want to support our troops, we need to step back and ask ourselves some very hard questions.  Why are our troops stationed in 132 countries around the world and who’s interests are they serving?  Why do we have over 700 U.S. military installations, not counting “black sites” around the world and, again, who’s interests are they serving?  What exactly are we getting for our $700 billion a year in defense spending (not counting the billions being spent by the various Intelligence organizations whose budgets are top secret) and who is profiting from our spending more than all other developed countries combined on defense? One has to wonder how that 700 billion a year is being spent when our soldiers or their families were out buying their own body armor and back home their families needed food stamps to keep from going hungry.

 

These are the big questions that are never even discussed.  The topic is taboo and so we go on and on.  If we really want to support our troops, we should make sure when they are committed to war, the vital interests of the country are at stake and not just the interests of the energy extraction industry.  When we spend such stupendous amounts every year we make it more likely we will engage in continuous war.  Not only do we create a very powerful war lobby, but also it is unreasonable to believe a society that spends like we do on defense will not eventually feel tremendous pressure to use the machinery it has spent such a large portion of the national treasure creating.  I am not even necessarily arguing for drastic cuts in the military budget.  What I am arguing for is an honest debate.  The people of the U.S. really need to more fully understand what is being done in their name and weigh in on whether or not they think we are pursuing the right, or even a sustainable, course of action.   That would do more to support our troops than all the flag-waving ever could.

And one last thing makes me queasy.  There seems to be this idea out there that everyone in uniform is a hero.  From all reports of people on the left, right and center, the people in our military are exceptionally dedicated to their mission and represent some of our best and brightest citizens.  They are not all heroes.  Doing your job well, even exceptionally well, does not make you a hero.  To say so is to cheapen the concept and if everyone is a hero than no one is.  I have a good friend who was a clerk typist on a U.S. ship during the Vietnam War.  We joke about him being the hero of the Subic Bay bars.  He scoffs at the idea that everyone is a hero.

Why does it matter?  Because when things go seriously wrong, (for example, the record of rape committed by military personnel upon other military personnel and the complicity of the command structure), it makes it harder for voices to be raised and for people to criticize military behavior when it needs to be criticized.   No organization on earth is made up of all heroes.  The concept of an all hero military makes it easier to indiscriminately throw money and resources into the defense pot and deflect inquiry whether or not it is in the best interest of the country.  Demagogues are well stocked with pithy sound bites to use against anyone who questions policy when it involves an organization made up entirely of heroes.

 

In 2012 we had a presidential election.  Not once during the numerous Republican debates or the three debates between the President and Mitt Romney were the 132 countries, 700 plus military installations, or the $700 billion dollar defense budget seriously addressed.  It wasn’t discussed or debated in the 2008, 2004, 2000 elections or any other election in my memory either.  We need to ask ourselves about the state of our democracy when fundamental issues like how and when we use our military and what we will spend on it aren’t even issues for public discourse.

Supporting the troops should go beyond lip service and we as a nation need to examine the role our military plays in the world and when and where we will ask our men and women of the military to spill their blood and endure the horrors of war.  I don’t pretend to know the answers but I sure as hell would like to hear the discussion.