Unfortunately, Presidents (and candidates for the office) aren't allowed to be depressing. That's partly what sunk Carter.
A better term than "wasted" would be "tragically cut short."
Dear Democrats: Stop fucking apologizing every time some right-winger objects to what you say!!!
Acknowledging waste was what made the young Kerry's "last man to die for a mistake" line so good.
of cousre, i can't fathom making sacrifices just for some honour/praise
When I'm in a more conciliatory mood I rationalize it by saying they died for the principle of the Republic--that is, that the soldiers go at the citizenry's command---but that the citizenry clearly has abused that command and must stop.
Right now I'm more feeling the yeah, I'm sorry, it was a waste, let's please make it stop.
The pounding the Washington Post's Bill Arkin has been taking after lashing out at that "supporting the troops means supporting the war" video has been insane. He's a good man for saying what he said, and the immense shitstorm he triggered is probably going to keep anyone from saying it again:
These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President's handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.... Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.... So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society? ...The notion of dirty work is that, like laundry, it is something that has to be done but no one else wants to do it. But Iraq is not dirty work: it is not some necessary endeavor; the people just don't believe that anymore. I'll accept that the soldiers, in order to soldier on, have to believe that they are manning the parapet, and that's where their frustrations come in.... Cut off from society and constantly told that everyone supports them, no wonder the debate back home confuses them. America needs to ponder what it is we really owe those in uniform.
Well, I'm certainly with 3 and 4, but "wasted" is too strong. While clearly Iraq has been a fiasco, it's far too early to say that nothing whatsoever good will come out of it. I don't know what could, but none of us will really know the results for a few decades. And if it does out to have some positive effects (butterfly theory and all), then they won't strictly have been wasted.
I can't believe how much I sound like a Republican.
don't know what could, but none of us will really know the results for a few decades.
Can someone please explain the model that validates these results in a few decades? How is this different than the Ho quotation about the French Revolution?
13: come on, you are talking about what is widely said to be "the greatest foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States." If any good comes of this, it will be like trying to shoot yourself and accidentally removing a brain tumor.
Yep. Good column on this here.
It really annoys me, in a way that goes beyond the noise machine: there's this firmly ingrained sense that politicians can't say things that are too depressing even if everyone knows they're true. It's infantilizing: shh! Be quiet! You'll upset the voters, or hurt their feelings!
I think there's more of this in America than other democracies, and more now than 50 years ago, but maybe that's not actually true.
As for Arkin, he was trying to do a good thing but went about it all wrong.
Soldiers in prior futile endeavors - say, WWI, Vietnam, seem to have had little trouble understanding that their lives were being wasted. I wonder what the difference may be.
"This was was a giant error of judgment. Lots of soldiers and many more Iraqis died in pursuing a project that now looks like a mistake. Draw your own conclusions, but don't actually utter them."
In other words, more deaths will not honor those who have already died. What's so difficult about this concept?
16 - I agree that the article could have been a lot more persuasive if that was actually his goal, but I think he was hust mad. He's steadfastly refused to mention this, but he's an Army veteran from the 1970s (although he was an intelligence officer and not, I believe, in Vietnam), and I think part of the reason his column is so shrill is that he's comparing attitudes between then and now and finding things wanting -- clearly his sense is that soldiers today have it much easier in terms of public respect and that they, in turn, are responding in precisely the wrong way.
Also, he's a shrill dude -- he's one of the people who was pushing the Gen. Jerry "my God was bigger than his" Boykin story, he's hugely contemptuous of the Bush administration, etc. But on this one, I think he's just genuinely enraged at how an all-volunteer Army's responce to fighting a futile war seems to be blaming the people who suggested not driving off the cliff. (Note the reference to the draft in the original column.)
This is the most idiotic thing. The idea that Obama should have pussyfooted around the statement that the soldiers who have died in Iraq weren't doing anything useful, and we'd have been better off (as, also, would they) if we hadn't sent them to their deaths, because it's somehow disrespectful to acknowledge that the whole stupid endeavor was pointless? I'm sure there are people out there with bad attitudes toward the military generally, but what Obama said had nothing to do with that.
I mean, whether their deaths count as "wasted" on the assumption that the war was a bad idea is kind of a quibble, isn't it? Lots of decent people were killed doing their duty, but the people who made the big decisions f'ed up. There's something noble about giving your best effort in a bad situation, and there's something noble about sucking it up and following orders. There's something terrible about dying for a bad cause. Call it what you will, but thems the facts, as far as I can tell.
I think there is another fear at work for some of the "support the troops" crowd. If the soldiers know the war is futile, they might resist deployment. When deployed they might disobey orders. They might frag Sargent Needermeyer.
From my perspective, the first of these outcomes is not a bad thing at all. Soldiers should resist deployment.
24: Right. Anyone objecting to 'wasted', is demanding that the pointlessness of the war not be mentioned without simultaneously addressing the fact that the soldiers involved are doing precisely the same thing they would be doing in a necessary war, and so deserve just as much kudos. And sure, that's fair, but it's not the topic under discussion.
I'm not sure if it's really all that good of an idea for soldiers to be resisting deployment. Our participation in this particular conflict needs to end, of course, but that's not the job of the individual soldiers. It's a bad precedent to set.
25: Should they also decide the civilians have really screwed up and they should take over and do things right?
I'm okay with soldiers who refuse to deploy and are willing to stand trial and go to jail.
There's a real difference in risk between a soldier deciding his orders are stupid and refusing to serve on that basis, and one deciding that he and his buddies are going to run things better than the stupid civilians giving the orders. Even the first is an extreme reaction, but it's nothing like the second.
I have a very negative view of the military, but I can't see how calling the deaths in Iraq a "waste" have anything to do with what one thinks of the military generally. In fact, it seems to me that having a high regard for the military would incline one more toward viewing their deaths as a waste. But I have no credibility on this question because I'm a fucking hippy, as everyone who has met me in person knows.
Are the troops in a union? Can they go on strike?
22:Back from shopping.
22 is a great example of the machine. Arkin did slip, called the soldiers "Mercenaries" meaning... you work for me, soldier, I don't work for you...and the Wurlitzer turned on him. He apologized or clarified, but that isn't the point. The VRWC has a target with a vulnerability, and may not be stopped.
Because there is not an equivalent machine to stop them.
From my IM conversations with my friend in the bad place, a lot of them know exactly how they're being wasted, and for whose vanity. Many are pissed because they aren't in a position to say it for themselves -- when the hell did the US Army employ zampolits? 'cause it does now -- and it feels like some bastard at home is trying to use them to score points. It's not Emerald City, despite the preacher's kid law professor's pet YouTube heh-indeedely-dooderies.
Tangentially, I'm kind of wondering about Generation Y's Tim McVeigh. Because you know there's going to be one. Or several.
Rant We Apologize While They Attack
Chris Bowers of MyDD was in meltdown over Amanda already. He is freaking.
"The substance of the charges against the Democrat in question do not matter. The past transgressions of the conservatives demanding apologies does not matter. The size of the misstep doesn't matter--reading one word wrong from a prepared speech is enough to warrant an attack. The apologies don't matter--the attacks keep coming no matter the apologies or scalps taken. No matter how amazing a run the Democrat is having doesn't matter--everything else stops when it is time to cover a new right-wing smear. And the attacks and apologies just go on without end. No Democrat ever calls out the media for abetting these unfair attacks. No Democrat ever attacks the right-wing back. No one ever refuses to issue some form of an apology. The beatings continue seemingly without end"
Does anyone want them to go on strike? That really would be an unparalleled disaster. We have, by far, the best and strongest military in the world. I like that I trust them implicitly to follow civilian rule. I can't imagine anything worth weakening that understanding of "the way things are to be done." If the soldiers go on strike, we're on our way to becoming the biggest, scariest banana republic of all time.
There's also a difference between not looking down on soldiers who refuse to deploy and saying "soldiers should resist deployment". The latter is a tacit indictment of soldiers who do follow orders, which isn't a fair charge.
I'd have gone with a non-apology apology on this one:
"I shouldn't have put it that way. I didn't mean their lives were a waste. I meant their deaths were. I have nothing but the deepest respect for our soldiers' courage and their willingness to lay down their lives for all of us. But this war was not worthy of their sacrifice. President Bush should never have sent them there, and he should start bringing them home now."
30: The differences are in rank, the firepower you command, and the support you have from the other generals, there's not any qualitative difference that I can see. Coups are not exactly rare events around the world when things get bad enough.
a lot of them know exactly how they're being wasted
Yeah, the linked NBC clip is pure warmongering propaganda, but the soldiers who think this is terrible aren't allowed to say so.
I'm with Biohazard; I don't want the military to ever say, "I'm not fighting this war; I didn't vote for those guys."
40: It's the difference between not shooting, or threatening to shoot, anyone, and shooting or threatening to shoot people. Someone who puts down his rifle and goes home, or to jail, isn't doing anything like a military coup, even on a small scale. Being a soldier who won't follow civilian orders is scary -- refusing to be a soldier isn't.
And while Bowers is certainly excited about this, he's right -- Obama shouldn't have apologized. If he wanted to clarify, along Katherine's lines, that's great, but he shouldn't have apologized.
though I don't really go with "never apologize"; more "never apologize if you haven't done anything wrong."
Yes. Be concilatory if you must, mend fences, but if you did something right that you're going to need to keep doing (like, say, pointing out that this whole war is a pointless waste) you can't apologize for it.
Speaking of apologizing, Shakespeare's Sister just resigned.
What's that Wilde line? "Losing one [blogger] is a tragedy, but two just looks like carelessness."
47:Donahue wasn't letting up on Melissa either I am not sure why anybody ever though he would. This had nothing to do with substance or content or style or behavior. It had everything to do with raw power.
Now we know.
Crap. I don't know enough about what went down to actually blame Edwards, but this whole thing was a mess and a half. They should have stuck it out.
37, 40, etc.: The reason we're talking about soldier strikes and military coups is because our system of government makes the executive branch extremely unresponsive to changes in the public. As Yglesias has pointed out on numerous occasions, if America had a parliamentary system like pretty much everyone else, Bush would've been tossed out of office with the last election (or with a vote of no confidence from his own party before that). Under our deeply fucked constitution, however, we get to keep a president everyone knows is insane for another two years, barring a two-thirds vote from the least responsive, least democratic deliberative body in the United States - and in the meantime George Bush gets to do whatever the fuck he wants with the most powerful military in the world. If you can imagine the military wanting to overthrow the government in this scenario, it's probably because the government is broken.
Talking about wasted lives usually occurs in the context of choices people make that affect their own lives, and it's a pretty heavy thing to say to/about someone that their own actions have resulted in taking the value out of their time on earth.
But that's exactly why "wasted" is the right word here: in this case, other people's choices have resulted in the reduction in value of soldiers' lives by shortening them. The decision makers responsible for this horror-show wasted the lives of people they controlled, just as surely as they wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, wasted international goodwill, and wasted every opportunity to do anything constructive for America. They have been wildly profligate with all the resources of America, including the lives of its young soldiers. Waste is precisely what these people specialize in.
Maybe it says something about how far gone I am, but it didn't even occur to me that Chris Bowers was sounding "excited."
The Democratic apology thing is infuriating. And now Donohue and friends smell blood in the water.
Katherine should seriously be on Obama's press team, though.
For soldiers to take things into their own arms would be a total disaster; for them to refuse to deploy would be understandable on an individual basis--I could respect the whole refusing and sitting for trial thing, a la Jackmormon--but if they felt the need to do that en masse, that would be a pretty big disaster for us as well. There might come a time when we actually need a strong army for a necessary war again, and I'm not sure I'm willing to call for the gutting of its spirit.
Have any of you seen Sir! No, Sir!? I'm annoyed with myself for missing all the local showings.
49: Apparently Shakes' Sis felt that the shit she was getting exposed her family; you can hardly blame her for not expecting (or wanting) a job as a technical advisor, for chrissake, to expose her to threats. Fucking assholes.
Really good Salon interview with Francis Kissling about it. Kissling's the head of Catholics for a Free Choice; Donohue's been going after her, too, for years. She's a little older and savvier, though, than Amanda or Melissa.
26
I don't agree that the soldiers deserve just as much kudos, it seems intuitively wrong to me. I think it is like working for Enron, some fiascos taint everyone involved. And to the extent they are voluntary participants knowing the nature of the enterprise that is even worse.
47: God, this pisses me off. Not just because I'm a fan of Amanda's and Melissa's, but because it gives a higher profile to assholes like Donohue. From now on he's going to be the guy who got those Edwards bloggers fired, which means he gets more of a veneer of power, which translates into respectability, which translates into more air time and more media taking this jackass at face value, which will set up more opportunities for the next rightwing clusterfuck to begin the cycle anew.
46: Possibly. OTOH, this is one of the higher-profile things he's done, and maybe it'll finally expose what a bigot he is.
52: hah. I wish.
I am trying to volunteer, being in Chicago and all, but I don't think they even have a headquarters. And I have too little free time to spend any of it phone banking etc., which I frankly suck at anyway.
I'd have to turn off my ad-blocker to click on the ad to read that full interview at Salon, and I'm not sure how to do that, or whether I really want to---since I am very fucking tired of hearing Amanda and Shakes referred to as "potty-mouthed." It's so infantilizing, so ineffably prissy; it's the stupidest euphemism for coarse language I've ever read, and I've never heard anyone over the age of twelve say it in person.
JM, email me--bitchphd at yahoo, etc--and I'll just send you the full text as an email. It's an interview with Kissling, who's very right-on.
55: I think this is wrong under the current circumstances, if you aren't a pacifist. In the world as it is, we need to have a military, and we need to have an army that responds to civilian control rather than acting as it sees fit. Given those facts, I don't think it makes sense to judge a decision to join the army negatively just because you might have known that you were likely, in the army, to be ordered to do stupid and counterproductive things.
There's some tipover point, at which our foreign policy could become so evil that I'd start considering it blameworthy to join the military and become the instrument of carrying out that foreign policy, but I don't think we're there or close to it yet.
Yeah, jm, I find "f-bomb" incredibly annoying so "potty-mouthed"....As far as I can tell it's just reporters getting in digs. Yeah, geniuses, people curse in informal settings like a weblog post and not in formal ones like a newspaper article. Give yourself a Pulitzer.
You know, having said "those lives were wasted" means Ogged will never be employable again.
Other than as a Farsi-speaking ninja assassin.
64: dude, are you trying to get him drafted?!
"F-bomb" is so, so annoying. Look, you're a prude. Deal with it. Don't euphemize your own prudishness. It's fucking OK to be a prude! You don't have to dress it up in cutesy language!
62: s/b "Give yourself a fucking Pulitzer."
That may come off as a bit more threatening than really warranted, but as the new Progressive playbook is never to back down and never to apologize, particularly not in response to mealy-mouthed moderate euphemism, I'll just let it stand.
He volunteered on 9/12/01. This blog is a cover story, and everyone else posting here works for the CIA. You weren't fooled, were you?
Tensions are rising. Good.
I am revisiting the Publius' post/thread over at ObsWi. To paraphrase:Shakes is ok, I love her work. Now the rest of this is about Amanda. Not to single out Publius, there was a lot of that going around.
Maybe we can blame Amanda for the threats Shakes got toward her family.
71: And "kill Iranians" is the new conservative playbook, so it's kind of a twofer.
Topic has moved on, but let me add that the wasted lives remark strikes me as pretty offensive. I'm okay with "died in vain", "lives tragically cut short", "died for a mistake", "wasted promising futures", etc. But on what possible measure of human life can one dare say a life was "wasted", merely because it was spent in service of a needless war?
Of course I'm sure Obama meant it in the right spirit, and I'm sure he didn't really mean their *lives* were wasted so much as something like one of the above. But that only underscores that it was a poor choice of phrase.
Apology warranted.
I have been known to refer to myself as a pottymouth. I think that's rather different, though. "F-bomb" is beyond the pale.
76: Brock, you pussy. You're letting down the side. Rowr! You're an animal! Rowr! Stop whimpering!
But on what possible measure of human life can one dare say a life was "wasted", merely because it was spent in service of a needless war?
I think the proper reading of the phrase is that the lives they would have lived were wasted, not the ones they had lived.
61
There is a whole spectrum between completely admirable and completely blameworthy. I just don't see volunteering for Iraq knowing you will be asked to kill people for no good reason as completely admirable.
79- right, which makes it very bad phrasing.
(I didn't click the link, so I don't know Obama's exact quote. I'm just going off the post.)
76: But you have to be looking for offense to take it that way. Does it make any sense for Obama to be passing judgment on the totality of each soldier's life ("Yep, it was a waste") rather than on the wasteful manner in which the lives were lost("These lives could have been saved, but instead the civilian leadership wasted them by going to war")? The insulting interpretation is nonsensical and strained, while the non-insulting interpretation is both a clear literal interpretation, and obviously what he meant.
Context makes it completely, completely clear that by "wasted their lives" he means "died in vain," and that's a totally common and accepted use of the phrase. As I suggested above, there's no harm in clarifying that, but it's already utterly clear that's what he meant.
Atta girl
You'll want to be careful with your accusations.
76: Bullshit. We refer to "wasted lives" in two very different senses. One applies to the 40 year old drunk who's never achieved anything that his daddy's friends didn't hand him: the life he's living is a waste. The other applies to the teenager killed in a car wreck: untimely death wasted all those years of life the kid had ahead of him. Obama was using the second sense and his attackers are pretending he was using the first. Don't buy the bullshit.
Right. The attempt to construe this as offensive is an attempt to take any criticism of the war as an attack on the troops. It shouldn't be catered to.
61: I'm glad to hear that what we're doing in Iraq doesn't quite qualify as "evil."
I don't even understand 84, but I'm sure it means Ogged is being sexist.
I think it does, just not yet evil enough to impose a responsibility on individuals to stay out of the military.
72: Yes, but let's leave him with the CIA. We don't want Blackwater appropriating him. They look less kindly on teh blogging.
75: Gah. I thought you were making some kind of bizarre AQ satire there. As in Atta as a last name.
pwned by the ninja master himself. I quake in my boots.
I've never heard this use of the phrase "wasted life", that all of you regard as standard. I'd be equally offended if I was at the funeral of a teenager killed in a car wreck, and the speaker referred with sadness to the youth's "wasted life". Again, I'm just not familiar with the life=future reading of this phrase.
You've never heard someone say "what a waste" when someone dies an untimely death?
I find it utterly insane that we're even having this debate. Move it to the context of another, more distant war and the phrase "wasted lives" becomes utterly uncontroversial: the millions of soldiers who died in World War I, for example, or those killed in the Iran-Iraq war, or the Soviet troops who died in Afghanistan. It's only when we talk about an American war - a war that we as a nation are morally culpable for - that we become unable to face up to the thousands of lives we've destroyed for no reason at all.
93: Were you honestly confused by what Obama was talking about? Because I find that surprising. If you understood him clearly on the first hearing (which I am guessing is the case) then being offended because a perfectly understandable turn of phrase sounds like something else that would be offensive in a different context is strange.
94- I'd read "future" into that phrase. That his future had been wasted, not that his life was a waste. I've never heard someone say "what a wasted life" when someone dies an untimely death, to my recollection at least.
To be fair, I think we've made clear in a few past threads that I come from Mars, so it's not that odd that this is all new to me.
93: here's Obama's exact quote:
"We ended up authorizing a war that should never have been authorized and never been waged ... we've seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted ... 25,000 amputees"
Your reading's just not even plausible.
Come on, Obama, hit back harder. This isn't a faux pas, this is them having a heart attack because someone said their war was a dumb waste of time. WHICH IT WAS.
96- like I said, I haven't listened to Obama, I've only read the post. Maybe if I heard him, I'd think the accusation ridiculous.
Not only is Obama perfectly right, but if he had phrased the next part as "25,000 limbs wasted" he would have been right too.
101: So look at the quote, it's in 99, and then tell me if, coming on it cold, you yourself would interpret it offensively, as a judgment of the soldiers' lives rather than of the war that killed them.
See, I don't like 99. To answer LB (and to re-stress what I originally said), I wouldn't be "confused" about what he was talking about -- I'd assume he meant their futures had been wasted -- but his phrasing still grates. Which, again, makes it (in my mind) a poor choice.
But of course, no, I wouldn't raise a stink about it, because I would know what he meant. But I don't think an apology was unwarranted.
102: Uh, whoa, I hadn't actually played the video. . .is that really how many amputees we've had? Good god. . .
Not only is Obama perfectly right, but if he had phrased the next part as "25,000 limbs wasted" he would have been right too.
Probably significantly more limbs than that, actually.
That's just nuts. He called them 'the bravest young Americans', he's clearly speaking against the war -- what is the offensive thought that you think his words express? And in the absence of any such thought, what on earth is offensive about it?
The use of 'wasted' also carries a pretty clear reading of 'sacrifices that would have been tragic but important in the service of some worthwhile cause, but in *this* cause, are wasted sacrifices' ... which seems true.
'course I'd have been less rather than more diplomatic. Fuck 'em if they can't hear the truth.
Like I said, I see no harm in an 'apology' that says: "of course their lives weren't a waste, their deaths were a waste" or words to that effect. If you can quiet the fake outrage machine a bit without conceding anything substantive, fine. But his meaning's clear enough.
76
I agree with everyone else, he was clearly using "waste" in the meaning of "squander". So 3000 lives wasted is 3000 lives squandered by the administration.
107- I don't know what else to say other than what I've already said. Of course I'd be able to infer what he meant. But the fact is I'd have to stop and make that inference, and reassure myself that he wasn't saying something rather offense. The "lives of ... young Americans wasted" phrase is just jarring. If nothing else it carries too much potential for misinterpretation. Again I'm not in any way trying to imply that Obama has anything against or troops, just to say that in my opinion it was a bad choice of phrase. Note in this regard that Obama himself apparantly agrees with me.
Exactly -- the offensiveness or not is completely dependent on who was doing the wasting. It would be offensive to say the soldiers had wasted their own lives, but simply true to say the administration had wasted the soldiers lives. And Obama's statement isn't even close to ambiguous in that regard.
105: One of the under-covered stories of the war is the number of people who are surviving really horrific injuries that they wouldn't have survived in past wars. The 3000+ killed are tragic are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this war is doing to fuck up American soldiers.
You know, this smacks of "Edwards had a gaffe, Biden had a gaffe, now Obama needs a gaffe. Let's take our stupid pills."
If nothing else it carries too much potential for misinterpretation.
Can you seriously imagine a sane person misinterpreting it in good faith? And what would such a sane person take it to mean?
115: Eh, I'm getting overexcited. I ban myself.
too much potential for misinterpretation.
It's really impossible to discuss anything controversial without opening yourself up to "misinterpretation" by determined ideological opponents.
107
It is offensive in that the family members of the fallen would naturally prefer to believe that their relative died fighting in some noble and necessary endeavor rather than in some stupid and pointless war.
115- well, I can imagine a soldier or a soldier's family reading Reynolds and being offended. And attributing it to Obama. All in good faith.
You know, I think I figured that out as what pissed off the right about Obama's statement. But given that Brock agrees that the war is stupid and pointless, I'm wondering what he thought one might find legitimately offensive about it.
I think Brock is sane. I am surprised he hasn't heard wasted used that way. But he does say he's from Mars.
120: See, that doesn't mean that Obama misspoke. That means he's being misrepresented. Apologizing when someone else misrepresents you is wrong.
120: Taking anything Reynolds says at face value pretty much excludes any possibility of good faith. The fact that your Martian understanding of the English language works similarly to Reynolds' bad-faith interpretation doesn't say anything useful about how most of us use the language.
LB, would it help if I said it's *not* legitimately offensive, but *is* legitimately poor phrasing?
But are you saying that it's poor phrasing because it lends itself to bad-faith misinterpretation or because there's a legitimate reading that's negative? What Obama seems to have explained/apologized for was that it was poor phrasing in the first sense and that he's sorry if anyone was hurt by the way his words were twisted.
Really, no. Because it's not legitimately misinterpretable -- no one could, in good faith, listen to that in context and think that he was saying something negative about the soldiers. If bad faith is necessary to create offense or incomprehension, then it isn't poor phrasing.
121
A statement can be both true and offensive. I think it is justified in this case as it is more important to get us out of Iraq than to spare the feelings of the families of the dead. However I would not say something like that at a soldier's funeral.
127
But he is saying something negative about the soldiers, he is saying they did not die in a good cause.
129:"Not in a good cause" does not really reflect on soldiers. Reagan at Bitburg.
127: It's not something negative about them it's something negative about their leaders. And it is something uncomfortable, literally--taking away comfort. When someone dies in a good cause, it's of some comfort to their otherwise inconsolable parents. Did anyone see Flags of Our Fathers? Difficult to take away from that one mother that it wasn't her son up on the mountain; important to tell the other mother that it was hers. And yet neither condition reflected on either soldier at all--they were both young and brave and faithful dead Marines.
114: word
127: that's not saying something negative about the soldiers, it's saying something unfortunate about the soldiers.
How can this be so hard? The military had control over the soldiers' lives. Those lives could be used for a good cause, or not. They weren't. Their lives were wasted. To say so in the present context is not at all like saying some individual's life was a waste. There is a clear difference of meaning here, and the meaning is indicated by the context.
I don't think Obama's apology is nearly the capitulation to right-wing critics that you all are making it out to be. From the linked article:
"He immediately realized he made a mistake, he later told a reporter.... 'I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term,' he said. 'Their sacrifices are never wasted. . . . What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.' By Monday, reporters covering Obama ... asked ... if military families deserved an apology. 'Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.'"
So he "would absolutely apologize" is anyone was insulted. And he immediately realized it was poor phrasing because it could easily be taken as criticism (even if only by political opponents -- that's enough).
I think Obama's reaction was just right. Where's the capitulation?
133: Pretty good for a Martian. I mostly agree.
If we spend half a trillion dollars and kill 3000 of our own people and 100,000+ Iraqis, and don't get any of the outcomes that we were aiming for (and it seems clear that we won't), then that's all wasted by definition.
Recommended response: "Oh, fuck you already."
Whatever. Obama made a political call. To date, he's shown better political skills than any of the other available candidate. As he's won federal public office for the first without the benefit of a machine (IIRC, he wasn't the Dem Party choice for Senate), he's probably got better skill than I have. He made the correction/apology/whatever that he thought he ought to make. At this point, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he's doing.
132.---How can this be so hard?
It is hard because military service is wrapped up in layers and layers of gauzy sentimental propaganda, aimed more, I would say, at the families of military people, who have to sit at home and fret. To describe soldiers as tools of the State's policy, as true as that is, reminds everyone of how powerless and terrified they are.
I guess I could go on here, but a recent book was written detailing the rise of the nation-state and the creation of the national army and the ideological soldier. Napoleon.
Soldiering used to be always noble, in and of itself, within the bounds of honour, of course. Condottieres have statues in Venice & Milan. Pure-d mercenaries, fight for anyone with the money. But still noble.
I have to find that link, that article. For it said that when the Enlightenement determined that war could be evil, or bad in itself, it dialectically created its opposite: the total war to annihilate nations. This reflects on soldiers as citizens represent something larger than themselves in some way different than say Crusaders.
Soldiering used to be always noble
Wait, wha? No offense Bob, but I totally do not buy that. It sounds like a Eurocentric fairy tale to me. It did not take the Englightenment to determine war is evil.
Soldiering used to be always noble, in and of itself, within the bounds of honour, of course.
I take it that the wandering bands of mislaid soldiers during the Thirty Years War were outside of the bounds of honor, then.
And Jackmormon's 137 is exactly right. There's a lot of propaganda we tolerate to make an all-volunteer force viable, and now the interests of that force and the propaganda are in conflict.
139:Again, that war may or may not be evil speaks not to soldiering.
I have to find that article, because I mostly agree, which means I must be mischaracterizing it.
But I do see traces of an argument here, by myself.
140 may mark the change, or the argument.
We see Achilles as the bad guy, Hector as the good. But in a sense they are professionals creating a product. Where and how that product is used is not their decision, not to their credit or discredit. A sword is not evil.
There's a lot of propaganda we tolerate to make an all-volunteer force viable, and now the interests of that force and the propaganda are in conflict.
The idea of the military as an honorable profession predates the volunteer military by centuries. Obviously, views differ.
138: I think I saw a review of that book in a recent New Yorker, by Adam Gopnik. You may be thinking of a different review though.
Recommended response: "Oh, fuck you already."
No, no. You can't use the "f-bomb."
This is tough. Arkin caught so much hell for calling soldiers "mercenaries" implys that the value of the cause is critical to soldiers sense of self-worth. So maybe the honour is not in the professionalism, skill, courage and we have to pick the good guys from the bad guys out of the mud of the Somme and the Marne.
In the second video, when the soldier says that he wishes "skeptics [would] come over and see what it's like first hand, before criticizing", I have to disagree. There is no worse place to gain an objective perspective on a war, than at the receiving end of an improvised explosive device.
143: War did not go in a line from Hector and Achilles to the Enlightenment. There are no Geats anymore. Rome was expanded on the backs of slaves. Genghis Khan raped so many women his genes form a star across the map of Eurasia. Etc. Etc.
I'm just deeply suspicious of arguments about war that rest on carefully strained timelines.
144: The idea that soldiering is an honorable and admirable profession is not contradictory to the idea--counteracted by propaganda--that governments might not use those soldiers well. Parents and spouses left behind are well within their rights to agitate for new management if they feel the leadership entrusted with their loved ones' lives is doing a bad job. If every family did that, however, it would probably not help the leadership out so much. Hence the need for propaganda. The existence--and potential harmfulness--of such propaganda in no way diminishes the honor of pledging one's life and effort in obedience to one's country.
147: You need to work on your penmanship. The little circle needs to be *closed* at the bottom.
This is tough. Arkin caught so much hell for calling soldiers "mercenaries" implys that the value of the cause is critical to soldiers sense of self-worth. So maybe the honour is not in the professionalism, skill, courage and we have to pick the good guys from the bad guys out of the mud of the Somme and the Marne.
What, exactly, is tough? There's nothing wrong with being a soldier. I'm not sure what's supposed to be ignoble about signing up to protect your country. You have to go pretty far along to claim that someone joining the service is making a moral mistake; as LB says above, we're nowhere near that point. None of that mean we can't criticize the war. I don't believe the soldiers are moronic, and I'm pretty sure they either do, can, or will later make the necessary distinctions.
I don't understand what you're arguing.
For what little a soldier's view of this might be among philosophers, I would note that part of what soldiers base their sense of pride and professionalilsm on is something that appears to seem evil to many, and that is that notwithstanding that war is horrible and that they are called upon to do (or at least to stand ready to do) horrible things, soldiers do so--within the bounds of the rules of war which bind them--simply because their country tells them to. JM's 137 fundamentally misunderstands the professional ethos. Part of the sacrifice you make for your country is that you surrender your fate to the service of the country. And people take pride in that sacrifice. Obviously, that sacrifice is harder to make if you are being told that your life is being wasted in an evil endeavor. But that is the choice a soldier makes.
(no offense to the sailors, airmen, marines and coast guradsmen out there, I'm an old soldier, I say soldier, but you all, too, of course)
154: Admit it, Ideal, you think the AF should be folded into one of the other services, too.
154 describes something of what I was considering "tough."
you think the AF should be folded into one of the other services, too.
The Army kicked them out in the 40's. Why would we want them back? And they have their occasional uses.
I thought JM's 137 was describing the propaganda aimed at soldier's families, rather than the soldier's ethos. Soldiers are willing to go where they're called, but part of what we tell ourselves (and their families) is that they're called to do noble work.
Idealist, I'm sure I get a lot wrong. Military life is pretty foreign to me.
I do wonder whether the people who themselves serve don't have a different relationship to their duty than do their families.
148 - Well, the whole way that the military works is that you get young men (and a few women) and offer them crappy pay and a great deal of stress on their home life in the best of circumstances, and in return they get to be a part of something bigger than themselves and we civilians thank them for giving us a few years of their lives. The thing that is eating at Arkin -- and I agree that he didn't express this very temperately -- is that various bad actors and institutional forces that are not intentionally bad have muddled this over the years to the point where civilians are not merely supposed to thank soldiers for suffering through crappy pay etc. under good circumstances and getting legs or eyes or faces blown off in bad ones, but to meekly get out of the way of the civilian leadership that puts the finest fighting force in world history to work.
On preview, pwned by 154.
You forget, snarkout: you tell young men who are unsure what the fuck they're going to do after high school that they can do a job that'll give them "professional training," and money for college. And then when they sign up, you assign 'em to infantry or truck driving or something.
Idealist, I also don't see how JM's recognition of the role of propaganda greasing the homefront--and the problems engendered whent that propaganda is built on too shoddy a foundation--contradicts or misunderstands that professional ethos? Soldiers sign up, or take an oath, as the case may be, knowing they give over their fate to the judgements of the state. There is some pride in being willing to do that. Meanwhile CivilianFamily is sitting at home, fretting over their Soldier, who has just given up this huge amount of control over his or her fate. Their satisfaction that this Government is doing a good job using the Soldier's life and fate is going to make the whole procedure go a lot smoother. So it is important for the Government to keep reassuring the CivilianFamily that this is so, even when it often isn't. But when it really isn't, and CivilianFamily really needs to help stop a bad war---then the propaganda, and people's relationship to it, is a bad thing. What's the conflict?
part of what we tell ourselves (and their families) is that they're called to do noble work.
True. All I am saying is that to a soldier, rightly or wrongly, there is more focus on the nobility of the profession and the willingness to sacrifice for your country than debate over the substantive merits of whatever war they are being asked to fight. Obviously, that does not mean that it helps--a lot--to believe that the cause your country is fighting for is just. Why would you make such a sacrifice for a country that does evil things? But people do not, I think, spend a lot of time agonizing over the merits of what they are called to do, because part of soldiering is going where you are told, whether or not you think it is a good idea.
I do wonder whether the people who themselves serve don't have a different relationship to their duty than do their families.
I do not think so. Obviously, my knowledge of being in a military family is second hand.
you tell young men who are unsure what the fuck they're going to do after high school that they can do a job that'll give them "professional training," and money for college. And then when they sign up, you assign 'em to infantry or truck driving or something.
This is mostly not really so, in my experience. The intelligence testing mostly weeds out people too stupid to realize, at least in general, what they are signing up for. Now the power of self-delusion, that is harder to deal with.
you assign 'em to infantry
A trivia point. When I was an ROTC instructor, and I imagine still today, one of the most sought after brances for officers was the infantry. If I had it to do over again, I would have sought my commission in the infantry.
153
Actually I think someone who signs up for Iraq is probably making a moral mistake. I think you need better reasons than presently exist to morally volunteer to kill people.
re: 164
I understand that many share your view. It is something on which you and I disagree, obviously, even though I can see the logical and moral basis of your position.
very well stated, ogged. the blunderous paradox of GWB and Viet Nam the sequel.
165
Is this because you don't agree that the Iraq war is stupid and pointless or because you don't think that matters?
When I was an ROTC instructor, and I imagine still today, one of the most sought after brances for officers was the infantry. If I had it to do over again, I would have sought my commission in the infantry.
I can believe it. Prior to our current Iraqi adventure, I was seriously considering enlisting around 2005. The 18x option was by far the most attractive one, at least to me.
civilians are not merely supposed to thank soldiers for suffering through crappy pay etc. under good circumstances and getting legs or eyes or faces blown off in bad ones, but to meekly get out of the way of the civilian leadership that puts the finest fighting force in world history to work.
Without agreeing to whether or to what extent this has happened, I agree--and I think most professional soldiers would agree--that in general honoring the troops requires only thanks part, not the meekly getting out of the way part.
When I was an ROTC instructor, and I imagine still today, one of the most sought after brances for officers was the infantry.
I knew a ROTC guy at Teo U. whose grades were too low to get an infantry commission, so he transferred to the University of Oklahoma.
164. But nobody (well, not many) sign up to kill people. The killing is incedental to accomplishing the mission.
Is this because you don't agree that the Iraq war is stupid and pointless or because you don't think that matters?
While confessing that I was wrong about how things would look this long after the invasion, the answer is both, but mostly the latter.
I have several times looked into getting back on active duty. Sadly, as my wife pointed out to me in the course of making clear her lack of enthusiasm for that course of action, I am too old, too fat, and have a family.
172: Idealist, could it matter? Could you imagine a scenario in which a war was so awful and pointless and stupid that you would not want to soldier for America, and would be askance that anyone would? I'm just wondering what the parameters here are. . .
Could you imagine a scenario in which a war was so awful and pointless and stupid that you would not want to soldier for America, and would be askance that anyone would?
Yes, obviously.
172: I'm taking that to mean that even if the Iraq War were proved to be pointless and stupid (moreso, it having already reached that threshold for a lot of people in and out of the military) you wouldn't care. Why is that?
174: Well, I didn't think it was totally obvious--I could imagine some logic in which a soldier sticks to his oaths no matter what. But if the very issue is that soldiers are willing to trust their fate to the good judgement and moral character of a Republic, then what are the Big Red Safety buttons that get turned on to put the brakes on that trust? Doesn't a soldier who is theoretically willing to put the brakes on that trusting oath in the case of some awful war always have to be querying the judgements of the Civilian leadership with some test, making sure some brightline hasn't been crossed?
173: doesn't the answer have to be
yes? Going to the extreme, would anyone think it morally okay voluntarily to sign on specifically for Holocaust concentration-camp duty? If you're in the service, "just following orders" is actually a pretty damn good defense, but willingly signing on to that is a different story.
I think this is what Shearer is hammering on upthread.
Of course, this doesn't mean that even voluntary enlistment by Germans in WWII were immoral, much less that enlistments by our troops are today. You don't sign up to go to Iraq, you sign up to go where you're told, which may or may not be Iraq. You'd almost have to believe that *everything* our military was doing at home and around the globe was immoral before you'd be forced to conclude that enlisting itself was an immoral act.
(Can I say this post title is making me cringe? As opposed to wasted for a purpose?)
In my limited experience, kids join the service for lots of reasons: a mixture of family pride; patriotism; a desire to see the world; a vague desire to change the world to make it better, brighter, and safer; a way to pay for university; a way to prove they are the best of the best (service academies); a way to get out of where they are now through hard work.
Those are all noble impulses. The perversion of the Iraq war is how it squanders that nobility of purpose because someone thought it would be cool to try to make over the middle East, secure his place and history, and didn't bother to think it through.
Sorry, 175 is already answered by 163, except in that it's not clear to me how "nobility of the profession" persists in stupid and pointless situations.
and history, in history, bleh. I need a drink.
Why is that?
[warning, the following response will no doubt be offensivly sentimental and irrational to many readers. Read at your own risk]
For the same reason I volunteered--rather persistently--to go to the first Gulf War. Because I am a soldier. Because I was pretty good at many aspects of what I did, and becasue my fellow soldiers are fighting and dying and maybe I could help them. Maybe, despite my age and condition, I could be there with them and help make the mission more acheivable or make more people get home alive and in one piece. Because (as laughable and trite as it will sound to many of you) they are my brothers and sisters and I should be with them. Particularly now, when things are hard.
And I hate that I cannot.
177: Well, I had actually gotten a tad confused between signing up, laying down arms, and re-signing up.
Let's not get to the extreme Holocaust case, and not just to keep Godwin at bay though. . .I think really meant, is there a state of war conceivably achievable by this nation, given its past history and current conditions and trajectories, that would be too much to sign up for?
181: That makes sense to me. It makes sense that once identified as a soldier, your fellow soldiers are your great concern. But what of the notion that if enough people like you didn't give in to your desire to be with your brothers and sisters they might all be brought home? If you knew that the most efficient way to get them home safe, and the most efficient way to accomplish the overarching goal of defending the nation, was to not join in, then what?
181.---No, I do understand that, Idealist.
181:
You might want to take a look at S.L.A. Marshall's "Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command "
and
William Ian Miller's "The Mystery of Courage" for some ideas. I suspect it's all much more complicated but there are some themes that repeat themselves throughout the history of combat.
Well, how about 183? I plead that there's blood in my caffeine system.
So if you're a Democratic candidate for office, how do you express this exact sentiment attack-proof? My first attempt: "American soldiers, when the enlist, enter a contract offering to give their lives for this country. In return the Commander in Chief agrees that he will not use this offer recklessly and needlessly. The American troops have held their part of the contract. The Commander in Chief has not."
There's a lot of overt sentimentalizing of military service in the above discussion which looks pretty bloody weird to a non-American. But then, I've argued repeatedly that you (Americans) have a deeply strange relationship with your own military.
There's no other (modern) nation where people bang on repeatedly about the greatness of their military, and the nobleness and sacrifice of their troops. Even people on the US left find it hard to have any kind of discussion of foreign or military policy without slipping into their conversation how great their military is, and how special and awesome their servicemen and women.
I cannot stress how different you, Americans, are in this respect.
And given the fact that you have launched* one catastrophic unprovoked military disaster and look like possibly beginning another, that sentimentalizing soldier-worship looks pretty damned problematic from this vantage point.
* with the enthusiastic and active participation of my own despised government ...
How do people feel about the military in your godless nation?
189: What's your sampling criteria? I think India has a fair amount of this going on, at least.
I agree with you that our sentiments are deeply problematic given our history and condition, but they are also part of who we (in total) are and cannot be tossed aside for lack of normality
181 183
I think feelings of group solidarity and professional pride are understandable but I don't think they are a reliable moral guide.
177
Not everything just on balance. Iraq is hardly a minor part of what the military is doing.
re: 190
Really not at all like you lot, as far as I can tell.
You'd just never really hear those kinds of sentiments expressed. Here it's more like:
Soldier's are professionals, doing a job. They may (sometimes) be brave, but what they are doing isn't especially noble nor is it some great sacrifice on behalf of national greatness, and while it's welcome that they are generally good at what they do, that's it. All the other sentimental baggage is largely absent.
People may be moderately proud that the British military is, relatively speaking, fairly bad-ass, but you just don't hear the sort of endless use of superlatives or the soldier-worship that you hear whenever you talk to Americans. It's genuinely very different.
re: 191
Actually, my (late) grandfather was in both the British and Indian armies so it would have been nice to have been able to ask him about that.
188
You can't. Telling the truth about the war will inevitably alienate some war supporters. You should try to frame things so as to attract majority support making attacks risky.
194
Is this a recent development? I was under the impression that there was quite a bit of Admiral Nelson worship and the like in Britain. And what about Kipling?
Quoting idealist: "to a soldier, rightly or wrongly, there is more focus on the nobility of the profession and the willingness to sacrifice for your country than debate over the substantive merits of whatever war they are being asked to fight....."--well, but see Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est"--which links up with the Briton's distinction. Q: how can that connection between sacrifice and nobility have survived the horrific years of trench warfare? A: It hasn't--but Americans weren't in those trenches!
195: You can't. Telling the truth about the war will inevitably alienate some war supporters. You should try to frame things so as to attract majority support making attacks risky.
That was sort of my point. How to frame it in a way that it can't be misrepresented as "Obama bashes the troops", or at least not plausibly so.
Kipling's views became a bit more nuanced than people often remember.
re: 196
I mean now, obviously, not deep in our colonial/imperial past.
Which is the point: that soldier-venerating US attitudes are redolent of the bad old days of imperialist militarism which most European countries have been through, and then past.
I don't believe in the cycle of history or anything, but nations which are able to be militaristic are, and those which aren't, aren't. The Germans I know are uniformly anti-militaristic, but that wasn't the German national character before 1945. Nations which have been militaristic and/or imperialistic at some point in history include Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Hungary, and Czechia.
I've been against American militarism my whole life, but I do get miffed hearing from the British, Germans, or French how American militarism shows the essential defects of America. America is an imperial power because Germany, France, and Great Britain blew their chances during the 1914-1945 period. And not from lack of trying.
In Europe, Irish, Estonians, Latvians and Finns can say whatever they want. The third world is too much to cover right now, but some of the loudest victims of imperialism were imperial powers once.
There's nothing 'essentially' bad about America.
American happens to be behaving like a militaristic imperialist power. This is a bad thing.
It wasn't a good thing when we, the Brits, did it and we, the Brits, know a militaristic imperial power when we see one; having been all about travelling the world taking other people's shit and killing and/or co-opting their people for several centuries.
I haven't read all of the comments, but the thing that stands out most for me in all of this is the absolute hypocrisy indulged in by many on the pro-war side. What possible justification is there for saying that you venerate soldiers, while you take no serious stand on the fact that veteran's benefits are in terrible shape, even to the point of our country having a serious problem with chronically homeless veterans of the last major conflict, 30 years ago? Then too, what twisted moral calculus allows us to say that Iraqi and foreign volunteers, who have risked their lives and exposed themselves to the possibility of torture and indefinite imprisonment contrary to the Geneva Convention, in order to resist an invading force of far greater military strength, are not heroes? What causes this hypocrisy? Simple, unadorned nationalism and chauvinism. That's the only possible explanation. Soldiers and others may work very hard to convince themselves that something else is at play, but it's simply not the case. If you go to war for "your" country, you are engaging in a chauvinistic, nationalistic exercise. If you can't acknowledge that, then don't expect me to applaud your bravery and sacrifice, because I think it's pretty clear that your manifest capacity for self-delusion will obscure any of your virtues.
ttaM, I agree, but I often hear Europeans mixing cultural nationalism in with their war opposition, even as they adapt cheesy aspects of American culture and make it even cheesier (i.e. Swedish pop.)
Bush and the other leaders use the soldiers as a protective screen to divert attention from themselves. The soldiers can be portrayed as young and innocent men and women who have chosen to do something brave and good. The fact that a lot of them didn't know what they were getting into and that many of them want to get out is hushed up. They aren't proper soldiers.
Once they're out of the military, with or without ruined bodies and minds, The Troops tend to be hushed up. The Bush administration has been as frugal with veterans benefits and VA medical care as they have been with other social spending that doesn't work as part of their their graft stream.
Soldiers themselves and their families often have a feeling of helpnessness leading to an identification with authority in the futile hope that maybe the authority will help them. It's pretty much the definition of certain soldiers (front line infantry) that they're expendable, though. there can be no help for them.
In some cases I think superstition is a factor. If everyone thinks positively and prays, maybe our boy will come home safely.
Anti-war sentiment is almost always overpowered or finessed into futility. Before WWI there was tremendous anti-war feeling, but the war machine operated flawlessly and was able to waste as many of The Troops as they could find in endless futile bayonet charges against machine guns.
I want to amplify my use of the scare quotes around "your" in my previous post. Those of you here who belong to the managerial class should realize by now that regardless of whatever material or psychological benefits accrue to you because of your identification with the ruling class, that identification remains fictitious. You do not decide where soldiers may be sent, nor which people they are ordered to kill. You do not decide, directly or indirectly, how much of your tax money is spent on ever more sophisticated killing tools. You do not determine whether the soldiers lucky enough to return home are afforded some measure of comfort to ameliorate the horrors they've been forced to endure and inflict. No, the only thing you can determine is whether you are going to be complacent and delusional, and whether you are going to maintain the pretense that this great crime which is being perpetrated in your name is somehow the result of a decision you have made.
At least in England, the truth is openly acknowledged in the names of the Royal Army, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Marines. Here in the United States, we cannot even bring ourselves to openly admit the fact that it is now, as it has always been, the elites who play the game of war on their map tables and computers, while the people who have most in common with those of us who pay for the wars are the ones (on both sides of the line) who are doing the actual fighting and dying. As the John Birch Society is fond of pointing out, this is a republic, not a democracy. It is is the republican elites who manage our wars, our workplaces, our media, our health and eventually, our deaths. Identifying with them and doing their bidding without a qualm or a complaint is not the mark of a free person.
These are not my troops, this is not my country.
ttaM, I agree, but I often hear Europeans mixing cultural nationalism in with their war opposition, even as they adapt cheesy aspects of American culture and make it even cheesier (i.e. Swedish pop.)
Yeah, and I'm fairly sure I'm guilty of that sort of cultural nationalism on occasion, myself. I suspect we all are to a greater or less degree and it runs both ways.
re: 205
Actually, the army isn't referred to as the Royal Army. It's the British Army.*
However, you are right that the air-force, navy and marines all have 'Royal' as part of their appellation.
* Although individual regiments may have 'Royal' as part of their name.
207: Huh, yeah, that sounded wrong when I typed it, but I figured that it would be the same as all the others. Should have googled it.
Also, post s/b comment of course.
It's the British Army in part because it's descended institutionally from Cromwell's army, which won the Civil War. And particular units, like the Coldstream Guards, descend straight.
Prior to WWII, the much smaller and more obscure Marine Corps was the president's private army. The army proper was not so likely to be used for tasks lacking popular support.
#024: Anti-war sentiment is almost always overpowered or finessed into futility. Before WWI there was tremendous anti-war feeling
Sorry, but what did you say? That's completely at odds with everything I've read. Yes, I'm sure there was some antiwar feeling, but it was pretty insignificant. I don't think that in any of the major combatants a largely unwilling population was dragged or tricked into war.
Maybe I'm wrong - can you provide more detail?
By "tremendous anti-war feeling" I didn't mean a majority, just that anti-war and pacifist themes had been well-developed and well-propagated and had a lot of support. Everyone knew about pacifism and about the evils of war, and many of the socialist parties opposed most wars in theory.
But when crunch time came it was overwhelmed by well-engineered pro-war feeling. Even Dadaists and decadents pitched in. The anti-war people were right about WWI, and the people had been told. But the machine wasn't even slowed down.
I should clarify what I meant by "refuse to deploy." I was not advocating a coup, obviously. I was advocating actions like those of lieutenant Ehren Watanda who is refusing to deploy on the grounds that the war is illegal and participation in it amounts to a war crime.
Soldiers are supposed to disobey orders when asked to commit a war crime. Exercising this duty is not a threat to democracy. You may doubt Watanda's case that merely deploying is a war crime, but you cannot deny the principle that soldiers can and should put down their guns and walk away from a bad fight.
John's right. The quality of the resistance, such as Randolph Bourne's War Is The Health Of The State salvages the honor of our country and letters. But it was tiny and stampeded.
And within a short time, by the twenties, the disgrace of it all became a widespread perception, and bitterness and shame were common in educated circles. People talked about feeling the country had awoken in a strange bed with a hangover. Mencken was important in this process.
Tuchman has a chapter on Disarmament movements in The Proud Tower. After the war started, I think there remained some anti-war socialism in Italy & maybe Hungary, but everybody else caved.
America a different & more ideologically complicated story, of course
Beyond what IDP said, there were a lot of people who thought in 1913 that they were pacifists, anarchists, socialists, or otherwise anti-war, who found themselves in the military in 1914. Abstract resistance to abstract wars is different than actual resistance to actual wars, and actual resistance was very harshly treated.
Stories of the way populations welcomed WWI are frightening. It really does seem to have been like the collective unconscious -- the reasons why people wanted war weren't very intelligible. Sometimes it just seems like boredom. But at the same time, the institutions carrying out the war and paying for it were relentlessly efficient, regardless of anyone's feelings or motives.
215: OTOH. The history I am reading says that many of the Socialists became pro-war in 1914-15 in a very calculated and rational way, and gained tremendously during and after the war by doing so.
216:The same is true for WWII. In America, for instance, the New Deal was still shaky before WWII, and Union membership skyrocketed during the war. England obviously has a similar story, Tory Churchill repudiated after the War.
This is enough a pattern (America 70-75) that it should be an important part of leftist political strategy. Oppose war in peacetime in order to gain credibility, then when war starts join the gov't in order to take advantage of the unifying impetus and momentums.
But they didn't listen to me in 2002, and the American left probably is incapable of taking advatage anymore.
I firmly believe that the Friedman/Greenspan/Nixon volunteer/high tech military is an intentional move to eliminate these leftward gains during wartime.
I've always disliked libertarians, but the antiwar libertarians look pretty good today compared to the Democrats.
215: Stories of the way populations welcomed WWI are frightening.
As are the stories of the curtailment of civil liberties.
202: we, the Brits, know a militaristic imperial power when we see one
Some of us on this side of the pond can see it & Robert Kaplan has written lots about it using "imperial" explicitly.
200
The Falklands war wasn't that long ago was it?
re:The Falklands War.
If answering the challenge to reoccupy some bleak islands, entirely occupied by your countrymen, with a small expeditionary force had a reasonable chance of bringing down a military dictatorship that had murdered and disappeared thousands of its citizens over a decade made me an imperialist, I'd be trying on my pith helmet right now.
Your countrymen and thousands of abused sheep.
I wish people would stop sentimentalizing our troops.
If you're a US soldier who dies in Iraq, your death isn't noble. It's a waste, and you're stupid.