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July 20, 2008

New Tomdispatch

link

Having the "Best Military" Is Not Always a Good Thing
Reclaiming Our Citizen-Soldier Heritage

By William J. Astore

When did American troops become "warfighters" -- members of "Generation Kill" -- instead of citizen-soldiers? And when did we become so proud of declaring our military to be "the world's best"? These are neither frivolous nor rhetorical questions. Open up any national defense publication today and you can't miss the ads from defense contractors, all eagerly touting the ways they "serve" America's "warfighters." Listen to the politicians, and you'll hear the obligatory incantation about our military being "the world's best."

All this is, by now, so often repeated -- so eagerly accepted -- that few of us seem to recall how against the American grain it really is. If anything -- and I saw this in studying German military history -- it's far more in keeping with the bellicose traditions and bumptious rhetoric of Imperial Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II than of an American republic that began its march to independence with patriotic Minutemen in revolt against King George.

So consider this a modest proposal from a retired citizen-airman: A small but meaningful act against the creeping militarism of the Bush years would be to collectively repudiate our "world's best warfighter" rhetoric and re-embrace instead a tradition of reluctant but resolute citizen-soldiers.

The rest.

—Jonathan Schwarz

Posted at July 20, 2008 05:49 PM
Comments

Nice, Jonathan, but the days of Willie and Joe ain't coming back. No way the boys and girls from our elite colleges gonna serve and no way their mentors at Goldman Sachs or on Capitol Hill will propel them to do so. I was in the citizens' army when Yalies pitched tents on the frozen ground on NATO maneuvers in Germany with hillbillies from the South--and the mix still had the feel of a WWII squad. Nevermore. We're a two-tier country now. The upper tier makes money, the lower tier serves.

Posted by: donescobar at July 20, 2008 06:09 PM

When I signed MY contract I swore to defend the CONSTITUTION, a document I NOW know I knew nothing about at the time. That's the way it IS.

Posted by: Mike Meyer at July 20, 2008 07:07 PM

Getting rid of the draft, raising military pay, technical training required to back up the "world's greatest military' and of course, the omnipresent military-industrial-prison complex have all contributed to isolating the actual miltary experience from most citizens and substituting a hollywood cgi'ed take on the 'fight between good and evil'.
As someone who was in during vietnam, I can attest that there were few enlisted guys who got out without thinking that only really positive thing to take from the experience was working and making friends with guys from every kind of background. And a not great but still good GI Bill.
My hope is that Barry's promise of 100K more troops combined with Webb's new GI bill will do just the opposite of what the militratists want, that is it will create a get in, get it over with and get out mentality that will actually weaken the military zietgiest.

Posted by: john in california at July 20, 2008 08:04 PM

Getting rid of the draft, raising military pay, technical training required to back up the "world's greatest military' and of course, the omnipresent military-industrial-prison complex have all contributed to isolating the actual miltary experience from most citizens and substituting a hollywood cgi'ed take on the 'fight between good and evil'.

On the other hand, having the State send random citizens to die for useless wars...I don't know, is this military experience you're talking about worth tens of thousands of deaths ? And from people who probably didn't really want to risk their lives anyway.
You don't need to be drafted to know that war is wrong. There are other ways.

Posted by: littlehorn at July 21, 2008 02:18 AM

Jesus fucking Christ. I hadn't seen the new 'warrior's creed' before this. Clearly, the US is over and done with as a democratic republic, and is well on its way to fascism.

Only a bunch of psychopaths trained to expand the Reich could possibly internalise that.

Posted by: Mike at July 21, 2008 07:34 AM

You liberals Suck! You all need to be shiped to a island far away from America, because your not American. And you know what if it were not for our, no you know what it's not "our" military because your not an American, Americas military being the best, you and your retarted ass hippie friends would not be able to state your dumb ass opinions! And if you and your little liberal friends didnt know, The House and Senate were and are democrate and if you know anything about how it works in D.C. they had to ok everything President Bush wanted to do. So dont blame everything on President Bush. Oh and your peoples hero al gore is living it up on your money, he is feeding you liberals lies and your taking them in like the truth. By the way your article SUCKS and your opinion is right behind it! Oh yeah and that global warming shit that you people keep crying about, its not real! the earth has not warmed in years. And when it does it will be the earth doing it, not us!

Posted by: Alexzandra at July 21, 2008 10:51 AM

You liberals Suck! You all need to be shiped to a island far away from America, because your not American. And you know what if it were not for our, no you know what it's not "our" military because your not an American, Americas military being the best, you and your retarted ass hippie friends would not be able to state your dumb ass opinions! And if you and your little liberal friends didnt know, The House and Senate were and are democrate and if you know anything about how it works in D.C. they had to ok everything President Bush wanted to do. So dont blame everything on President Bush. Oh and your peoples hero al gore is living it up on your money, he is feeding you liberals lies and your taking them in like the truth. By the way your article SUCKS and your opinion is right behind it! Oh yeah and that global warming shit that you people keep crying about, its not real! the earth has not warmed in years. And when it does it will be the earth doing it, not us!

Posted by: Alexzandra at July 21, 2008 10:51 AM

You liberals Suck! You all need to be shiped to a island far away from America, because your not American. And you know what if it were not for our, no you know what it's not "our" military because your not an American, Americas military being the best, you and your retarted ass hippie friends would not be able to state your dumb ass opinions! And if you and your little liberal friends didnt know, The House and Senate were and are democrate and if you know anything about how it works in D.C. they had to ok everything President Bush wanted to do. So dont blame everything on President Bush. Oh and your peoples hero al gore is living it up on your money, he is feeding you liberals lies and your taking them in like the truth. By the way your article SUCKS and your opinion is right behind it! Oh yeah and that global warming shit that you people keep crying about, its not real! the earth has not warmed in years. And when it does it will be the earth doing it, not us!

Posted by: Alexzandra at July 21, 2008 10:51 AM

You liberals Suck! You all need to be shiped to a island far away from America, because your not American. And you know what if it were not for our, no you know what it's not "our" military because your not an American, Americas military being the best, you and your retarted ass hippie friends would not be able to state your dumb ass opinions! And if you and your little liberal friends didnt know, The House and Senate were and are democrate and if you know anything about how it works in D.C. they had to ok everything President Bush wanted to do. So dont blame everything on President Bush. Oh and your peoples hero al gore is living it up on your money, he is feeding you liberals lies and your taking them in like the truth. By the way your article SUCKS and your opinion is right behind it! Oh yeah and that global warming shit that you people keep crying about, its not real! the earth has not warmed in years. And when it does it will be the earth doing it, not us!

Posted by: Alexzandra at July 21, 2008 10:51 AM

You liberals Suck! You all need to be shiped to a island far away from America, because your not American. And you know what if it were not for our, no you know what it's not "our" military because your not an American, Americas military being the best, you and your retarted ass hippie friends would not be able to state your dumb ass opinions! And if you and your little liberal friends didnt know, The House and Senate were and are democrate and if you know anything about how it works in D.C. they had to ok everything President Bush wanted to do. So dont blame everything on President Bush. Oh and your peoples hero al gore is living it up on your money, he is feeding you liberals lies and your taking them in like the truth. By the way your article SUCKS and your opinion is right behind it! Oh yeah and that global warming shit that you people keep crying about, its not real! the earth has not warmed in years. And when it does it will be the earth doing it, not us!

Posted by: Alexzandra at July 21, 2008 10:52 AM

You liberals Suck! You all need to be shiped to a island far away from America, because your not American. And you know what if it were not for our, no you know what it's not "our" military because your not an American, Americas military being the best, you and your retarted ass hippie friends would not be able to state your dumb ass opinions! And if you and your little liberal friends didnt know, The House and Senate were and are democrate and if you know anything about how it works in D.C. they had to ok everything President Bush wanted to do. So dont blame everything on President Bush. Oh and your peoples hero al gore is living it up on your money, he is feeding you liberals lies and your taking them in like the truth. By the way your article SUCKS and your opinion is right behind it! Oh yeah and that global warming shit that you people keep crying about, its not real! the earth has not warmed in years. And when it does it will be the earth doing it, not us!

Posted by: Alexzandra at July 21, 2008 10:52 AM

Regarding the preceding comment, it's hard to tell parody from reality anymore.

And without hearkening back to a mythical glorious past, it does seem that we're a lot more worshipful of the military than we used to be even 20 years ago. I think the old attitude was exemplified in the TV show MASH, which ridiculed the military mindset and yet still showed most of the people in the army to be decent human beings. Even a regular army guy like Colonel Potter was decent, but they had no mercy on most of the generals and any character who was too gung ho was portrayed as a fool. I'm not sure you could do a show like MASH on network TV today, not in a culture where our great progressive Presidential candidate takes such a worshipful view of generals.

And that word "warrior"--there is definitely something Conan-the-Barbarian like about that. It's Achilles fighting for glory, not people doing a nasty job that they'd rather not have to do.

Posted by: Donald Johnson at July 21, 2008 11:05 AM

Gosh, I guess I do Suck. Guess I'll take my not America and my retarded, head for my shipe, and shipe out.

Posted by: Mike at July 21, 2008 11:25 AM

Nor would anyone even think of making a movie like "Dr. Strangelove" today, when we accept the film's absurd world as normalcy or reality on the front page of the Wapost or on CNN. Even a voice like that of Archie Bunker (a decade later) couldn't be heard today. In the Sixties and Seventies we could still be horrified by and laugh at ourselves. Those were the days, but they did end. Bullshit ueber alles: the system works.
But, for whom?

Posted by: donescobar at July 21, 2008 11:29 AM

How does Alexzandra stumble on ATR? Was this post blurbed anywhere? This place is a freaking hole in a wall dive.

I'm going with an ATR regular doing some comedy.

Posted by: Labiche at July 21, 2008 11:43 AM

But what island, far away, would accept all of our liberals? Same idea, about another group, was floated in the late Thirties, but it work out then. Maybe the Falklands? Then the liberals could lie with the sheep.

Posted by: donescobar at July 21, 2008 12:13 PM

it didn't work out then...above

Posted by: donescobar at July 21, 2008 12:18 PM

Alexzandra: The military takes women these days, honey. ALL ya gotta do is sign the bottom line.

Posted by: Mike Meyer at July 21, 2008 02:33 PM

On the other hand, having the State send random citizens to die for useless wars...I don't know, is this military experience you're talking about worth tens of thousands of deaths ? And from people who probably didn't really want to risk their lives anyway.
You don't need to be drafted to know that war is wrong. There are other ways.

Littlehorn, I know you are right but look how many of those who didn’t put in time in the military rose to prominence in the dem party and then became apologetic about their lack and bent over backwards to praise the troops. I don’t want wars but I do want a healthy skepticism about the military within a large part of the population. The last guy that really wasn’t intimidated by or beholden to the military was Jimmy Carter, a career navy man. We need a massive reduction in the military budget and the best targets are weapons programs, not troop levels.

Posted by: john in california at July 21, 2008 06:15 PM

Swiss army is the best.

Posted by: abb1 at July 22, 2008 05:53 PM

He was talkin' 'bout the Army
As he passed his pipe around
An American deserter
Who found peace on Sweedish ground
He had joined to seek adventure
And to prove himself a man
But they tried to crush his spirit
'Til his conscience ruined the plan
Heed the threat and awesome power
Of the mighty Pentagon
Which is wasting
Precious trillions
On the toys of Washington---Steppenwolf

Posted by: Mike Meyer at July 22, 2008 06:19 PM

1/ Was Alexzandra for real ...?

2/
Littlehorn, I know you are right but look how many of those who didn’t put in time in the military rose to prominence in the dem party and then became apologetic about their lack and bent over backwards to praise the troops.

Well, I get your point and I think you're right. But I still think a draft is overkill for what we desire.

Simply portraying the real and crude aspect of wars should be more than enough.

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