What is Andrew Bacevich's Son's Life Worth?
Or any of our sons? or daughters? on any side of this incredibly reckless escapade in Iraq?
Boston University Professor Andrew J. Bacevich is a brave, thoughtful public intellectual who has tried -- in reserved, serious terms -- to challenge the legitimacy of the Iraq War. He has been one of the most articulate leading thinkers among military-policy dissident conservatives who have exposed the inanity of this war and the damage it has done. He authored the critically-acclaimed book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War.
Now his son by the same name who was serving in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom is dead -- announced today by the Department of Defense:
DoD Identifies Army CasualtyThe Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
1st Lt. Andrew J. Bacevich, 27, of Walpole, Mass., died May 13 in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit during combat patrol operations in Salah Ad Din Province, Iraq.He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
To get some insight into the pain Professor Bacevich, who teaches at Boston University, must now feel, read this clip from a moving and important article he wrote titled "What's an Iraqi Life Worth?" [Washington Post, 9 July 2006]:
As the war enters its fourth year, how many innocent Iraqis have died at American hands, not as a result of Haditha-like massacres but because of accidents and errors? The military doesn't know and, until recently, has publicly professed no interest in knowing. Estimates range considerably, but the number almost certainly runs in the tens of thousands. Even granting the common antiwar bias of those who track the Iraqi death toll -- and granting, too, that the insurgents have far more blood on their hands -- there is no question that the number of Iraqi noncombatants killed by U.S. forces exceeds by an order of magnitude the number of U.S. troops killed in hostile action, which is now more than 2,000.Who bears responsibility for these Iraqi deaths? The young soldiers pulling the triggers? The commanders who establish rules of engagement that privilege "force protection" over any obligation to protect innocent life? The intellectually bankrupt policymakers who sent U.S. forces into Iraq in the first place and now see no choice but to press on? The culture that, to put it mildly, has sought neither to understand nor to empathize with people in the Arab or Islamic worlds?
There are no easy answers, but one at least ought to acknowledge that in launching a war advertised as a high-minded expression of U.S. idealism, we have waded into a swamp of moral ambiguity. To assert that "stuff happens," as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is wont to do whenever events go awry, simply does not suffice.
Moral questions aside, the toll of Iraqi noncombatant casualties has widespread political implications. Misdirected violence alienates those we are claiming to protect. It plays into the hands of the insurgents, advancing their cause and undercutting our own. It fatally undermines the campaign to win hearts and minds, suggesting to Iraqis and Americans alike that Iraqi civilians -- and perhaps Arabs and Muslims more generally -- are expendable. Certainly, Nahiba Husayif Jassim's death helped clarify her brother's perspective on the war. "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here," he declared after the incident. "They have no regard for our lives."
He was being unfair, of course. It's not that we have no regard for Iraqi lives; it's just that we have much less regard for them. The current reparations policy -- the payment offered in those instances in which U.S. forces do own up to killing an Iraq civilian -- makes the point. The insurance payout to the beneficiaries of an American soldier who dies in the line of duty is $400,000, while in the eyes of the U.S. government, a dead Iraqi civilian is reportedly worth up to $2,500 in condolence payments -- about the price of a decent plasma-screen TV.
For all the talk of Iraq being a sovereign nation, foreign occupiers are the ones deciding what an Iraqi life is worth. And although President Bush has remarked in a different context that "every human life is a precious gift of matchless value," our actions in Iraq continue to convey the impression that civilian lives aren't worth all that much.
That impression urgently needs to change. To start, the Pentagon must get over its aversion to counting all bodies. It needs to measure in painstaking detail -- and publicly -- the mayhem we are causing as a byproduct of what we call liberation. To do otherwise, to shrug off the death of Nahiba Husayif Jassim as just one of those things that happens in war, only reinforces the impression that Americans view Iraqis as less than fully human. Unless we demonstrate by our actions that we value their lives as much as the lives of our own troops, our failure is certain.
Now we must add to the count of this tragic conflict another American son -- and of course, more Iraqi sons and daughters and American daughters.
I had the pleasure of meeting Andy Bacevich at the home of former Congressman Dave McCurdy this last holiday season. We spoke for a bit about the Iraq war as well as the absence of American strategy and dearth of strategists in government today. I had no idea his son was serving until now.
But this young man did serve his nation -- but his death is so incredibly tragic, like the others -- but his even more because his well-respected father has been working hard to end this horrible, self-damaging crusade. It's incredibly sad.
To answer my own question above. Andrew Bacevich's son's life was precious -- and his life and his untimely death matter greatly for just waking up and realizing we are achieving nothing in Iraq today and that responsibility must be borne by the perpetrators of this mess.
My sincere condolences to the Bacevich family.
-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note
Another horror inflicted on another family by George W. Bush's arrogance and ignorance.
Tom
May 14, 2007 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
But this young man did serve his nation . . . .
How so? And kindly be specific.
May 14, 2007 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
So sad.
My heart goes out to the Bacevich family.
May 14, 2007 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought most of us here understood that serving in the military is service to the country. There is always the risk that the military will be abused by morons or scoundrels placed in charge by our TV-infected voters, but when that happens, individual service members aren't properly blamed.
Surely you don't believe that the US should have no military.
May 14, 2007 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Surely a better target for a kiss."
Stephen Spender
May 14, 2007 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
" It's not that we have no regard for Iraqi lives; it's just that we have much less regard for them."
Exactly. And that was the problem in Vietnam --and in the Gulf War.
May 14, 2007 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Young men and women who want to serve their country should be given that opportunity. Their bravery and gallantry are admirable. But they should never be asked to give their lives for anything other than defending our country. All the noble courage and sacrifice the young men and women in todays' armed forces are making is for naught. This horrible, criminal war is not defending our country and all the young men and women on our side and all of the men, women and children of Iraq who have died and will die are losing their lives in the most tragic and unholy way I can imagine. My heart goes out to Prof. Becevich and his family and all the others who lose loved ones as a result of this criminal regime's irresponsibility. What a terrible waste of life and lives.
May 14, 2007 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take your anger out on me if you want. Don't take it out on Professor Bacevich's son through mocking Steve Clemons' eulogy of him. I promised myself I wouldn't use my kin and their choices in my comments here, but I'm going to break that rule just this once. One member of my very small family returns to Iraq for his second tour of duty later this summer. Everything Professor Bacevich must have feared for his son I fear for this member of my own family. I fear for his life, and I fear for the lives he may endanger through his own service there. But though I would have preferred he made nearly any other choice than the one he freely made, I love him and respect that choice he made in full good faith.
Rest in Peace, Lieutenant Bacevich.
aMike
May 14, 2007 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
HOW TO START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK
1. Open a new folder on your computer.
2. Name it "George W. Bush"
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your computer will ask you:
"Do you really want to get rid of "George W. Bush?"
6. Firmly Click "Yes."
7. Feel better.
PS: Tomorrow we'll do Dick Cheney.......
My sister sent me this today. I could only marvel at the clarity-
Empty folders all.
Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran
May 14, 2007 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
To Bush, and his hard core backers and Loyal Bushies, the only lives that are 'worth' anything are their own. That fact is worth remembering for those who might be considering serving under our current Commander in Chief.
May 14, 2007 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we all could use more clarity in our thinking. Members of the military, all volunteers today, joined for a variety of reasons, but a desire to serve our country is always one of them. We owe a lot to those who did that.
Did the soldiers of the German army in WWII serve their country when they invaded Poland? As a direct result Germany suffered terrible destruction and loss of life by the end of 1945. Didn't those soldiers actually just serve Hitler and his henchmen? Of course the choice was not theirs, and they had no way to make a judgement about if they were really serving their country by invading Poland. While we on that line of thinking, let's consider the German SS who manned the concentration camps to kill Jews. Were they serving their country?
This is a brutal comparison, but my intent is just to demonstrate that a member of the military serves his commanders, and may or may not be serving his country. I don't believe the US military in Iraq are serving the US at all, and I cast no blame on them. They are doing what they are required to do. But, let us not mistake serving George Bush with serving the US.
Hoppy in Sacramento
May 14, 2007 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen
Am quite a fan of his father and am profoundly saddened by this, yet another, waste of a young life.
May 14, 2007 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Men of concience must go to war, even an unjust war.
Because if it is not the man of conscience who goes, a man of lower morals will be sent in his place. And arming only the lowest among us is a bad thing.
May 14, 2007 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
The GOP knows that Iraq is lost. They hope enough time will pass under their bullshit PR campaign about a "new strategy" to which they are adding a chorus of complaints of Iraqi non-feasance, that Americans will soon be more pissed at the Iraqis than they are at Bush. Thus will appear the needed justification for the beginnings of a pullout late this year or early next.
Nixon and Kissinger weren't any better.
May 14, 2007 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those wishing to read the views of Andrew Bacevich on the Iraq war, may do so in the March, 2007 issue #375, of "The Sun".
May 14, 2007 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
No; I don't believe in "service" to abstractions. And pro patria mori has got to be the biggest lie the state has ever sold. There are lots of reasons for young men to join in martial enterprises but patriotic service isn't one of them.
As for having a military, of course we should have one -- one large enough to fight off the only country in a position to do us any damage -- Canada.
May 14, 2007 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
In Nazi germany, like all fascist regimes, they sent the sons of dissenters to the front lines as dogfaced infantry even if they had earned officer status and high ranks before dad got in hot water.
Even tho most of us did not know of this gentleman (or if we did) that his son was serving. But it is a signature of this regime's particular genius and evil that THEY would be aware of the Baceviches. They have smeared every vet they come across, and emasculated or humiliated every one of their team who has disagreed with them over time.
Think Regionally. Act Regionally
May 14, 2007 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand that you don't believe our involvment in Iraq constitutes "defending our country."
But then, what does? How do you define your term "defending our country"?
May 14, 2007 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hoppy's unfortunately hit it on the head. For those of you who think that George Bush truly respects OUR troops you are poorly mistaken. He expects them to kiss his feet because he's their number one commander-guy. They are his personal wrecking crew, and in his view they're performing their job perfectly well. Why would he want to bring them home?
I think any rational American would want OUR troops actually protecting OUR interests, and to be put in harm's way only under the most dire of circumstances, and only then after exhausting all other options.
Hey, maybe I'm uncaring or unpatriotic for not having a yellow magnet on the back of my car, but I'll never endorse the service of OUR troops at the whim of an idiot against OUR wishes. Support that.
May 14, 2007 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
We owe a lot to those who did that.
Sure do. Generous, fulsome satisfaction of all contractual obligations owed to them and -- to assuage our guilt -- a heartfelt apology for ever teaching them "The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori."
May 14, 2007 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who will be the last man to die for Bush's ego?
May 14, 2007 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ok then...Let's reinstate the draft. Seriously. Pure statistics will show that a good deal more "men of conscience" will be sent to fight this war. That is, as long as everyone with the last name of BUSH and/or CHENEY is marked off the list, which they surely would be anyways.
May 14, 2007 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me see if I get you straight, Hoppy:
- When you pay your taxes, you are willingly supporting Bush's war and thus killing Americans, Iraqis and others and seeding future acts of terror?
- When you obey this nation's laws and do not take part in efforts to overthrow it forthwith, you are supporting the deaths of many thousands and perhaps millions?
- You commit these acts of terrorism without the compulsion of a military life and in full knowledge that it is wanton murder and destruction?
I think you are probably a fine fellow in spite of your confessed crimes against humanity. :-)
Please, friends, do not call down the crimes of our leaders on the heads of our soldiers anymore than on your own. Consider honoring our soldiers rather than condemning them.
Best, Terry
May 14, 2007 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, it's easy to be superior and condescending when you are anonymous. Now, most people that are as opposed to war as you claim to be tend to be rather up-front about it. While I didn't agree with the Berrigans, I respected them for having the courage of their convictions.
The Hippocratic Oath is rather an abstraction as well, and I don't see any evidence that you've done much for world health. Spent any time with Medicins sans Frontieres recently? No? Maybe risked your own ass in a biological hot lab? Oh, yeah. Disease is an abstraction.
Actually, Ellen, you strike me most as someone that has inherited a great deal of money from merchants of death, and try to rationalize your guilt by dumping on everyone else, from the comfort and safety of your keyboard.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 14, 2007 9:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Consider honoring our soldiers rather than condemning them.
Would the simple act of excusing them be adequate?
May 14, 2007 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
As criminal as the specific operation may be, one who intends to defend our country needs to prepare for doing so well in advance of specific campaigns. Many soldiers do not know where they are going to deploy until in a staging area.
Units and personnel train without knowing where they may be in a year. Most commonly, Marines afloat do noncombatant evacuations from Africa, but sometimes their ships aren't in the right place at the right time. A thrown-together task force from Germany did the evacuations from the last coup in Liberia, not exactly what they had signed up for.
There may be criminals specifying the missions, but the actual troops may do noncombatant evacuation, shows of force, international operations, and humanitarian missions as they come. I don't think anything in Iraq contributes to the defense of the United States. I do think that the units deployed there prepared for a wide range of contingencies.
One friend, now retired, was a National Guard first sergeant. He had two tours in Iraq, but his more recent deployments were to New Orleans after Katrina, and fighting forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 14, 2007 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will not endorse the idiot. I will support hearings likely to lead to impeachment.
Precisely how do you propose to enforce those wishes? Mutiny by public opinion poll?
George W. Bush has utter contempt for the troops, and yellow magnets don't mean much.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 14, 2007 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
All of my hopes and good will to the Bacevich family.
I have a friend who went to Iraq and he served a few tours. The first time I saw him home, he was a machine. I was frankly in awe over how the military had turned him into a mass of confident muscle.
The last time I saw him, after he'd been in an armored personnel carrier that got flipped after an IED explosion... he was just not the same guy. Hell, he'd tell you that. Something had been taken from him and it's obvious and he knows it.
All of us war opponents are criticized for notg supporting the troops. That's BS.
I support all of our troops. As individuals. That's why I hate the fact that people who volunteered to do what I wouldn't do are coming back hurt or not coming back at all.
I hate the war but love the troops. We all do. It should be a no-brainer. Opposing this war is not opposing our volunteer soldiers, it's demanding that our volunteers don't die for an unworthy cause.
Anti-war thought is, at least in this case, the kind of thought that actually honors and respects those who enlisted to defend us.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 14, 2007 9:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just awful. I've very much appreciated
Andrew Bacevich's writings. I hate to think of the pain he must be going through. My condolences to him and his family.
I am not here to judge why his son volunteered to go to Iraq. A father who loses his son because of evil men who themselves will never risk anything. Breaks my heart and makes me very angry.
May 14, 2007 9:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I expected a knee jerk reaction. I'm not surprised to get one. Read what I wrote. I did not condemn any soldier, including those of Nazi Germany.
It just doesn't pay to check our brain at the door any time American troops are in action in a foreign country.
Hoppy in Sacramento
May 14, 2007 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Antiwar thought in the prevention of wars, and of adventurism such as Bush's? Yes. It does honor those who can't pick ahead of time.
Contempt for those who do enlist, such as Ellen's? That isn't antiwar, pacifist, humanistic, or anything but smarmy superiority without risk.
I've had a couple of friends in the situation you describe. One was flipped by an IED, and had ribs broken not by the blast, but by an unrestrained passenger falling on him. He was selected for Sergeant Major, which had been his dream for decades -- but the nightmares of having had to scrape up too many bodies had gotten to him. Military psychologists gave him a choice of whether to stay in or take medical retirement, and he agonized over it. He finally retired because he no longer felt he could do his job and that he would be a liability.
Another took one last tour, mostly on command escort -- he's an Air Force parajumper, qualified both in close combat and as a physician's assistant. Politically, he's considerably to my left, and is now back teaching college history while he finishes his doctorate. The campus right-wing groups don't know what to make of him, especially after they happened to see him in uniform.
I know a couple of generals, all of whom retired long before Iraq. Of the more junior leaders I do know, without exception, their first priority is to protecting their own. One of the ways they do that is acting decently toward civilians. One prays daily in gratitude that a suspicious car, approaching her checkpoint, stopped just before she felt she could no longer delay firing her machine gun.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
May 14, 2007 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
He has been one of the most articulate leading thinkers among military-policy dissident conservatives who have exposed the inanity of this war and the damage it has done.
True enough. But Bacevich's critique goes deeper than the all-too-evident problems of the current war. The war in Iraq is for him one symptom of a pervasive culture of militarism that has taken hold of both elite opinion and popular culture in the United States, under both parties, and perverted American principles.
This is a subject on which our candidates are so far silent, and show no interest in addressing in the future, and on which themainstream media-political culture has so far not had the slightest reformist impact.
May 14, 2007 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
We liberals are known to be jerks. That is why there are so few of us.
I did. That's specifically what I addressed. It was as illogical as shooting the messenger. I tried to help you see your problem and this is the thanks I get.
I have been one of those troops in a dishonorable and stupid war. I deserved as little or as much dishonor or credit (generically) as any soldier in a glorious war against an evil enemy.
Shall we go over it again or do you prefer the darkness?
Best, Terry (knee-jerk liberal)
May 14, 2007 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for breaking your rule, Mike, just this once.
May 14, 2007 11:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will remember Andrew J. Bacevich in honor and appreciation for his sacrifice in the line of duty.
May 14, 2007 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tread softly, Mr. Clemons, please.
Godspeed Colonel Bacevich.
May 15, 2007 12:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just thinking... Although maintaining great restraint of verbalizing...
~OGD~
May 15, 2007 12:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sincere condolences to Andrew Bacevich, whose work I likewise appreciate and who himself has served with the US military. Thank you for your service to our country, Andrew.
And, in keeping with the spirit of Steve's post, sincere condolences to any readers, whether they live in the United States, Iraq, or any other country who have lost loved ones in this war. The vast majority of these individuals will not receive condolences from total strangers, as Andrew Bacevich is receiving here.
I try to make a point of thanking any individual I meet who has served in the US military. As Howard says, they don't get to choose for which wars they are going to answer the bell. It isn't their fault when the decisionmakers act on the basis of little or no insight into guerilla warfare or modern warfare, and the implications of same for whether, and if so how, to go to war.
May 15, 2007 2:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a travesty. If any of the Bacevich family are reading this thread, please know that my heart goes out to you at this most difficult time.
As Steve has said, the elder Andrew Bacevich wrote some of the most incisive critiques of the doctrine of preventative war. It is by no means a stretch to demonstrate that these critiques foretold the problems that awaited us in Iraq and the wider region.
So if there is any good to come of this, it will be to give greater exposure to Colonel Bacevich's ideas and writings. This is of course no measure of Lt Bacevich's "worth", but I would like to believe it could foster the debate, as referred to by Dan K, that is so urgently needed.
May 15, 2007 3:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
It was with great sadness that I heard this news yesterday evening. I don't know Professor Bacevich personally and I didn't know his son, but I've long admired Professor Bacevich's thoughtful commentary on the war and that made this loss feel close to home. I doubt Professor Bacevich will be reading this blog at this time, but I do hope he knows that many of us who have been touched by his work send our sincerest condolences to him and his family.
May 15, 2007 3:49 AM | Reply | Permalink