Our army at war

“Our boys and girls.” This is a near-universal locution in popular discourse from left to right; the U.S.’s volunteer, professional army is constituted of boys and girls, in some sense “our” sons and daughters, even mine though I have no children and am young enough to fight. I have no interest in how the right employs this image. Everyone knows that they’re about family, patriarchy and filial duty—of course they see the army as their children, obligated to die for them and due only the obeisance of dull hackneyed tributes.

(Douglas Tour of Duty Brinkley was just on C-Span2 talking about his new book, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc, which he seems to think is pronounced point duh hock. Reagan, he approvingly explained, used World War II triumphalism to revitalize the American spirit: “morning in America” referred not to the Eisenhower ’50s, but to the WWII generation when things were black and white, the Germans and Japanese were the black hats and the Americans were the white hats who liberated Europe. What hats the Russians wore goes unmentioned. About transparent nonsense like this it is hardly worth talking anymore.)

But when people on the liberal-left or socialist left talk about “our boys and girls”, the purport of the phrase bears examination. “Our boys and girls”, we are told, join the military because they have no other opportunities. They live in slums or trailers, have had a poor education, have no prospects of higher education or better wages and are set up in Wal-Mart parking lots by smartly-uniformed recruiters. Then they join the army and are sent off to lose their bodies or their souls, to be shot to death in their unarmored humvees or to torture their prisoners. How dare we treat “our sons and daughters” this way! They deserve to be loved, to be educated, to have a chance for the future. They don’t deserve to be forced, yes forced, into a war when they didn’t know any better, didn’t have a choice.

Now this account is largely true, but there’s something in its tone we ought to reject. I’m not going to lecture anyone about their choices and their options when they weren’t born with the chances I was given. At the same time, however, isn’t it a little insulting to call them children? And a little ideologically disturbing to account for their behavior with the neoliberal behavioral model of self-interest and profit-maximization, as if people were automata? Much as I won’t lecture the victims of our economic system on their choices when I’m not subjected to their pressures, neither am I willing to condescend to them by assuming that the exalted realms of moral choice available to me are not available to them. I’m not much of a believer in total systems or economic/ideological determinism. We here seem to have escaped many of the prejudices that ought to be ours by virtue of our class. If, as Emily Dickinson said, “The brain is wider than the sky,” then surely it is wider than capitalism. This is probably insufficiently theoretical, but then I’ve heard a lot of people who never read much at all overcome false consciousness. Education makes a difference, to be sure, but there is no direct correspondence between moral choice and education.

I overheard a conversation on a bus last summer between two men, one about twenty years older than the other, perhaps co-workers or relatives. They were arguing about whether or not the U.S. basketball team ought to boycott the Olympics because of Bush’s presidency. The younger man was in favor, the older man against. He said that the Olympics was bigger than who was president. Then they started arguing about whether or not they ought to feel sorry for the soldiers in Iraq (both men obviously were against the war). This time it was the older man who was more militant: “There’s nobody over there for free.” He seemed to think they had made their choice and had to live with it and didn’t really warrant our pity.

I recall this conversation because it was really the first time I had notice anyone express that unsentimental assessment of the troops. He was talking about them like they were people who had choices and the brains to make them. He was talking about them like they were adults. Are we so smart that we should do any different? Perhaps it shows more respect for a soldier to spit on him than to pity him.

The military is failing to meet its recruiting goals. People are saying no. Maybe they’re merely self-interested and maybe not—does self-interest ever exhaust explanations for behavior?—but in any case they’re wise to what’s going on. I dedicate this poem, culled from The Vintage Book of Dissent, to all those people, certainly not my children:

‘Fight? What for?’

I am ‘wanted to go in the army.’
Well, what would they give me to do?
‘You’ll have to be killing your brothers
If one of them doesn’t kill you.’

I am ‘wanted to go in the army.’
Say, what is there in it for me?
‘You’d help to be saving your country
From brother-men over the sea.’

My country? Who says I’ve a country?
I live in another man’s flat
That hasn’t so much as a door-yard—
And why should I battle for that?

I haven’t a lot nor a building,
No flower, no garden, nor tree.
The landlords have gobbled the country—
Let them do the fighting, not me.

—Celia Whitehead, c.1900

This represents self-interest, I suppose, but it’s also the interests of the community, and of the brother-men over the sea; in other words, it’s solidarity. It’s intelligent and no more than we should expect from adults.

Comments

[Matt]

(tin hat firmly in place) It's too bad Kerry is too politically entrenched now to genuinely reflect on reaching out to Veterans with the properly respectful lack of pity. Indeed, who is?

Reminds me, though just a bit, of the "Leaflet For Soldiers" poem by Judith Malina, which can be found in the rather hopelessly iconic (if also useful) Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Alan Kaufman, 1999)

[Matt]

Boys and girls, literally, seems to be the solution. Get 'em while they're younger:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2136/

[John]

Jesus. This is my favorite part:

Herman Barnett, director of Lavizzo's award-winning MSCC program, asks the public to give the students the benefit of the doubt. "They don't look at it as getting ready for the army," he says. "They're just doing it for entertainment and fun."

That's their answer to everything! No matter what we object to, it's just fun and entertaining. What? You say it's cruel and anti-humanistic? You just don't like fun!

[Matt]

http://limitedinc.blogspot.com/2005/06/starve-beast.html

[John]

Thanks for that. I went to that site LI linked with the info about local anti-recruitment efforts and of course there was nothing for where I'm at. Where am I? Only in Harrisburg PA, the state capital and the most significant urban center in hundreds of miles. I guess some politics can't make it to the capital.

[rogergathman]

John, that is the great thing about the internet. You can still get this information out, to a certain extent, just by publicizing those links. Surely there are bloggers and people in Harrisburg who can spread this around.

Use their own weapons. Those D.C. egghead/assholes depend on our weakness. But the truth is, we aren't really weak.

[John]

Thanks, Roger. You're right of course, and I will work those links into a post soon enough.

(Your blog is new to me, by the way...quite brilliant.)