Let's All Blame the Troops for the Mess They're In
There is a quiet prejudice that shadows much of the war-dialogue I'm reading online; and that is that if you are dumb enough to actually VOLUNTEER to serve in the military during a losing war, then you are, for the most part, a loser yourself. And that, furthermore, we shouldn't feel sorry for hardships enforced on military families since they are, basically, mercenaries.
Over on Huffingtonpost.com, Iraq war vet and anti-war activist Paul Rieckhoff posted a blog, "15 More Months in Iraq? The War is Breaking Our Military."
Here are some of the comments:
"Here we go, another person complaining about the broken military who overlooks the fact that the current US military is an all-volunteer force. In spite of the billions of dollars taxpayers pay to support this so-called best military in the world, the US has not been able to "win" the war in Iraq and Afghanistan...
So much for a "professional" military which sounds alot like a mercenary military. Personnally, I can not offer an opinion about the military because I am not there. But I do know since they are all volunteers, they can leave at the end of their committment. Go work at some other job."
"Can anyone explain to me why anyone in their right mind would enlist or re-enlist to fight in this ill-conceived and mismanaged war? While I have some compassion for those that were fooled into believing that they were going to be fighting the terrorists that attacked us are now trapped in this war, I have none for anyone that signs up now. Surely they have to take some responsibility for their decision, no one is forcing them to sign up and there is more than enough information around to show what an incredibly stupid mistake this war has been. "
"Why are the soldiers putting up with this? As long as you guys sit back and be good soldiers you're going to get sh** on by these guys."
"Only the most rabid right fanatics continue to believe the propaganda coming from the White House, so does that mean that the new enlistees are rabid right fanatics? And if they are do they deserve our support?"
"Who would enlist in this military knowing that once you sign on, you may never be able to sign off? Who in their right mind would ever believe that the US military, any branch of it, will stick to the contract that the recruits sign? Anyone with a lick of sense will never trust what the government says, and if they don't know what a lie is, and they want to find out, they can sign up."
I consider myself a bit of an expert on this subject, since my son, three nephews, and one brother-in-law, are all either active-duty military or just got out.
My husband, brother, father, and one brother-in-law are all combat vets of Vietnam. My husband was a lietenant, an Army infantry platoon leader. His brother was a captain in the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) and did two tours. My dad retired a Master Gunnery Sgt. in the Marines. He requested Vietnam when he was over 40 and had five kids at home.
My son enlisted in the Marine Corps after 9-11, as soon as he graduated college, because he believed he would be fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. Instead, he did two infantry combat tours in the Anbar province of Iraq. He is still active.
One nephew enlisted in the Marines after high school in order to earn money for college, and because he respected the men in our family and wanted to walk in their footsteps, and because he loves his country. He did three combat infantry tours in Iraq and is in college now.
My brother-in-law (not the Vietnam vet) retired at the rank of Brig. Gen. in the Army Special Forces. His sons are both Army captains, one in SF, and one just deployed to Baghdad. Before he retired, he had deployed to Afghanistan, and one of his sons has been there twice.
I have been fighting against this war since 2002, and my daughter marched against the war in NY during the Republican convention, with her brother's photo pinned to her shirt. Like Barack Obama said, "I'm not against all wars. I'm against dumb wars."
We all love our country, and one of my greatest heartbreaks is seeing what this unneccessary war has done to drive away good NCOs and junior officers like my nephews, who had all planned a military career. One got out as soon as he could. The other two have doubts, now. These multiple deployments are too hard on family life.
My son tends to vote Democratic, and calls me sometimes, asking what the Democrats are doing to end this war. Both he and my nephew returned from Iraq frustrated and angry at the waste of lives they saw there.
Most of the ignorant morons who posted these messages assumed that the entire military who is fighting in Iraq only recently enlisted. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, most of the military who are serving over there right now have been there at least once, twice, or even three times.
NONE OF THEM wanted to return, once they had been. THEY DID SO BECAUSE IT IS THEIR DUTY.
They did so because they are warriors, and this is what warriors do.
They did so because they desperately want the terrible sacrifices paid by their buddies who died and lost limbs and minds over there NOT BE IN VAIN. They want, more than anything, for their own sacrifices to COUNT FOR SOMETHING.
Our fighting forces are not a bunch of mindless morons marching in lockstep to their Fearless Leader's commands. In a recent Army Times survey, a majority of active-duty military polled think it was a mistake to go into Iraq and want the war to end.
And there is a dirty little secret that I seldom see in the news coverage of this war, and that is the "back-door draft" that John Kerry was talking about in '04. Many, many in the military ARE NOT BEING PERMITTED TO LEAVE ONCE THEIR CONTRACTS ARE UP. They are not being allowed to retire, either.
Or, they are allowed out, and then only a few short months later, get yanked up as "reservists" and sent back into the war. Most reservists serving today were active-duty, had gotten out and started whole new lives. It was not their choice to go back in, not by a long shot. Some have been forced back into the military after AS MANY AS 20 YEARS out of the service.
One of the consequences of Sec. Gates's recent announcement is that, let's say, you are deployed, you've been there a couple months, and your military contract runs out. Before, you could go home early, your service completed. No more. Now, you have to stay until the unit goes home.
Some units are being sent months early, without sufficient training. They are being sent when they were told they would not be. They are being forced to remain in-country months past their chance to come home.
Every single time a soldier or Marine re-deploys, he or she knows they are playing a deadly game of Russian Roulette. They know, especially if they are combat troops and not support troops, that their chances of survival are diminished. I can't count the tragic stories I've heard of troops getting killed a week before time to go home after a third deployment.
As for those "new recruits," well, the Army is so desperate to find new cannon fodder that they are waiving high-school diploma requirements and relaxing felony-conviction restrictions. They are offering more money as enlistment bonuses and re-enlistment bonuses, and if your contract is up, you can count on IMMENSE pressure from up above to stay in. A struggling young NCO, trying to support a family, can be tempted by a nice signing bonus.
Not only that, but keep in mind that many new recruits are from poor areas. The vast majority of them come from rural white America--the very place that worships at the feet of Limbaugh and all the neocons that wave the flag so proudly as long as it's somebody else's kid.
What is being done to our United States military is criminal. There is no other word for it.
Most of the people who serve in the military are decent, kind, smart, brave, hard-working young men and women. Their love of country and sense of duty and honor has been CORRUPTED AND ABUSED BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION and anybody else who just loves to use them for photo ops.
But to blame them for volunteering to serve their country, as if it is a stupid, uninformed, ignorant and blatantly mercenery thing to do...well, that's a crime almost as bad, because what it does is soak into our national consciousness...that we don't really need to worry all that much about ending a war that is being fought by a bunch of dumbasses.
And that is the true shame.
Great blog!
April 13, 2007 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wonderful entry. The humanity shines through. I think, unfortunately, the 'support the troops then support their mission' meme has taken hold.
Some of the Huffpo responses really smack of class snobbery and condescension.
I remember seeing some documentary about an Iraq infantry group (hazy) but I very clearly remember the motto of one of the regiments "We Will Always Win." Struck me as just a tad overconfident.
It seems like we should never have wars without drafts, because:
A: We've been trying to exchange 'technology' for boots on the ground at least since the Vietnam war - it has never worked. In the last important war the US won: WWII, the US had, BY FAR, inferior equipment to the Germans. They had a jet fighters for Chrissakes. The Panzer tank made the Patton tank look like Yugo parked next to Mercedes. Didn't matter though, because the US/allies had more of everything.
B: Strategic bombing DOES NOT WORK. I've been reading John Kenneth Galbraith's biography and he talks in detail about his work in Europe, evaluating the effect of bombing cities. Turns out, it actually INCREASED production of weapons because all the waiters and shoe salesman went to the munitions factories once their livlihoods were destroyed.
C: The 'lean' Army does not work. Exhibit A: Afghanistan, exhibit B: Iraq. You must have hundreds of thousands of people - better cranky draftees than none at all - way better.
D: "Guns and Butter" does not work. Their was a theory in the UK and US in WWII that the German economy was a 'taut wire' - it was stretched as far as it could go. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like Rumsfeld, Hitler thought you could get more support by stoking nationalism, but not really asking that much of people. While the US started 'total' mobilization only weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Germans didn't embrace 'total war' until it was way too late.
April 13, 2007 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would tend to disagree about drafts, both due to the dynamics and assumptions of the volunteer military, and also because I don't completely agree with some of your reasoning why drafts are inappropriate. Basically, the fundamental problem is that civilian leaders, in recent years, have tried to use a military for things not best solved by military means. I use that latter term deliberately, as it's out of Clausewitz's definition that "war is the continuation of national politics by military means."
Most competent strategic thinkers have evolved from Clausewitz. His assumptions still have merit for military strategy, the doctrine of what kind of military you develop, what wars you choose to fight or are likely to have forced on you, and the kind of troops you will need. Tactics were the lower level dealing with how you fight. Principally from German and Soviet thinkers, an intermediate level of "operational art" evolved, which is the doctrine about where you want to fight campaigns (sets of battles) and battles, how to get the enemy to play to your strengths, how to task-organize for the battles you are likely to fight, and how to avoid fights that do not involve your strengths. Other than the third, these operational principles also are characteristic of guerilla/insurgent thinking; it’s interesting to compare the underlying idea of his three phases of protracted war.
We now have a concept of “grand strategy” or “national strategy”, which includes but is not limited to military means. At a minimum, along with conventional military means, it includes diplomacy, economic pressure, law enforcement, unconventional military operations, “information warfare” -- a broader scope than propaganda and psychological warfare, covert operations, multinational alliances with peacekeeping, foreign aid and training, etc.
Let me address your points.
A: We've been trying to exchange 'technology' for boots on the ground at least since the Vietnam war - it has never worked. Depends what you mean by technology, which, in military terms, includes the doctrines by which you use the hardware, and the national industrial mobilization (see also your point D). Part of the US advantage over the Germans was that we standardized on a lesser number of designs that might individually be inferior to the German ones, but then could produce and train faster. One German officer complained, after Normandy, that the six or eight kinds of German tanks were generally inferior to the Sherman, but that we produced more Shermans than the Germans had antitank shells.
Today, the doctrine, again not properly used by civilian leadership, includes the idea of “force multipliers”. US units, in 1991, were crushing Iraqi tank units 9 times their size (e.g., Battle of 73 Easting), because the US units could communicate, think, and adapt faster. Yes, the US tanks were superior, but it was doctrine and information sharing that won those engagements.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
April 14, 2007 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
But to blame them for volunteering to serve their country, as if it is a stupid, uninformed, ignorant and blatantly mercenery thing to do...well, that's a crime almost as bad, because what it does is soak into our national consciousness...that we don't really need to worry all that much about ending a war that is being fought by a bunch of dumbasses.
at the end of the day, a job is a job and people do their jobs to get through life.
for those of us who aren't sentimental about military service, and only see it as a job, we do think it's a dumb choice.
ultimately, from what I've seen, wars come to an end because the enlisted army no longer wants to fight it and that isn't an easy feat. i've heard that the army shoots those who try to dessert. so the mutiny is a long, difficult and hard.
getting angry at the bystanders, for whatever reasons, just won't end it.
April 13, 2007 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
They [returned to Iraq] because they desperately want the terrible sacrifices paid by their buddies who died and lost limbs and minds over there NOT BE IN VAIN. They want, more than anything, for their own sacrifices to COUNT FOR SOMETHING.
I understand these wishes, but how does returning to Iraq (that is, keeping the occupation going) do anything to make them come true?
April 13, 2007 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well said!!
I hope they all come home, soon and sound!
April 13, 2007 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
King Elvis, you are right, we should bring back the draft, if only to echo another Huffingtonpost blog by Jason Rothenberg, which I loved, called, "End the War in Iraq With One Word: Draft."
Plus, if they brought back the draft, THEN the campuses would explode, people would scream at their congresspeople, and it would be over.
mcs, those who serve in the military are not sentimental about it either; to them it is also "just a job." But people who have no experience with military life, I've found, either do sentimentalize it or, like you, are woefully misinformed. They don't shoot deserters, dear, they take them to court. Sometimes they just give them a dishonorable discharge. Depends.
And Ellen, I agree with you that keeping the occupation going does not really help to make their sacrifices matter. But if you have to return to a bloody war, and you don't wanna go, but you know you have to, then you have to find some way in your mind and in your heart of hearts to justify it, to live with it, to make it count.
For instance, the mother of my nephew who was in the Marines and did three deployments to Iraq, is very gung-ho, 100 percent behind "our president," and buys into all that propoganda and sentimental crap--but she also works tirelessly for the USO, sending troops off to war every single week at DFW airport, making hundreds of care packages, and so on. To her, all of these men and women are her children. She is a dear lady, I think.
She knows that I don't believe in this war, and sometimes she will yell at me because she knows how I feel, but I never really say anything back. I don't get in her face with the way I feel because I know that we have each got to survive this terror of sending our children and loved ones off to war in each our own individual ways. She needs that mythology to get her through the night, and I would never take that away from her.
God knows, I wish I could feel it myself.
These guys fighting this war that they know is probably a lost cause--this is a terrible mental strain on them. They want so much to make this right somehow, but they were betrayed by their commander-in-chief, and nothing they do can ever repair that breach.
April 13, 2007 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...for those of us who aren't sentimental about military service, and only see it as a job, we do think it's a dumb choice..."
Dumb choice, umm-hmm.... What it boils down to is this--there are any number of reasons people join the military. Maybe they're young and idealistic. Maybe they need the money for school or the discipline to pull themselves together. Maybe they've got a little bit of crazy in them and they need the adventure. It doesn't really matter--they sign a contract and Uncle Sam says "Gotcha!"
And gotcha he does. Unlike the rest of us, they just can't walk away from a crappy job. Nope, 'cause that means jail or life on the run so they suck it up and deal with multiple deployments and worn out equipment and working conditions that would never pass an OSHA inspection. They see things no one should ever have to see and do things no one should ever have to do and if they're lucky they'll survive and be allowed out when their enlistment is up.
Dumb choice? The fact is they chose and you don't have to. You can sit home and drink your latte and watch the latest movie and sleep in the comfort of your own bed and unless you live in the bad part of town you don't have to worry about being shot on your way to work. You can even bad mouth the troops and call them stupid. Heck, you can bad mouth their commander-in-chief and call him stupid (and I sincerely hope you do). You can do all that because men like my son and Deanie's son would lay down their lives and die protecting your right to do so.
I'm not sentimental about the military, not at all. But I am protective of those who serve. They don't have the luxury to pick and choose their conflict or speak out against a corrupt administration that sent them there. They volunteered to defend this country and instead became trapped in a preemptive war of aggression. Whether they signed that contract out of idealism or dumb choice doesn't really matter. Point is they volunteered to protect us, to die for us if necessary--least we can do is give them a country, a government, a citizenry worthy of that sacrifice.
April 14, 2007 2:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I understand and sympathize with a soldier's need to believe that there's a purpose greater than making money for rich folks that justifies his or her sacrifice, but it's not clear there is. Smedley Butler wrote about it, here, and said it more forcefully, below.
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." Smedley Butler (1933 Speech)
April 14, 2007 4:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good post. Joining the military isn't an option I'd pursue -- but I have relatives and close friends in the military who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is a sad fact that even now, over 4 years after the Great Triumphal American Sweep Through the Middle East began, some young Americans join the military because they simply don't have much else as an option.
It shouldn't need to be said, but the mess in Iraghanistan ain't their doing but is the fault of their political leaders. Anybody who says to the contrary is both unfeeling and not as politically savvy as they'd like to think.
April 14, 2007 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Suse--powerful stuff, eloquently stated, and I'll post more on that later.
Ellen--Your arguments are purely intellectual, but you have to understand that the only people in the armed services who actually have the luxury to consider such lofty ideals are ranking officers, maybe some sergeants, staff positions.
But the vast majority of "grunts on the ground," enlisted, are KIDS, 18-23 years old. Many of them just got out of high school and have never been away from home before boot camp. They don' think in terms of geopolitical considerations.
I assure you that the only things a combat soldier or Marine has on his mind are: (a)getting home alive, in one piece, and of relatively sound mind and (b)getting his buddies home in the same condition.
My son was atypical of most enlisted. He was a college graduate--a psych major--who packed Jung and Lao Tsu and Thoreau in his seabag, along with a journal. And in that journal, during his first deployment to Iraq, he wrote,"At the end of the day, all I care about is the guy in front of me, the guy behind me, and the guys to either side of me."
This is one reason that wars are fought on the backs of the very young and the very impressionable.
April 15, 2007 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink