Responding to Robert Kaplan, Reach for the Civics, Not Psychology, Text
Posted by David Shorr
With all due respect to both Shadi and Heather, the issue at the heart of Robert Kaplan's "Modern Heroes" piece really boils down to the basic concept a military mission, and how a small 'd' democratic nation sends its sons, daughters, wives, fathers into battle. It's not, as Kaplan claims, Americans' discomfort with traditional warrior virtues that is troubling us; it's our slowly dawning sense of responsibility They are there on our behalf. Yes, the choice to serve was (is) theirs, but the choice of the fight, this fight, is ours. Through the lens of the civics book, the duality of heroism and victimization is clear. This isn't cultural ambivalence, it's the political system righting itself.
Kaplan is correct that respect for skill and professionalism in the art of war, rather than appreciation for sacrifice, is in some ways a more appropriate form of honor. But if, as the old saying goes, "theirs is not to reason why," then whose is it? Who decides the tasks to which these skills are applied? We do. Ultimately, we're the deciders. [Just to avoid confusion, let me be clear that I mean the nation as a whole. In one sense, the war is fought 'not in our name' for the war's opponents -- in another sense it's in all of our name (about which more below).]
Kaplan resists the sentimentality that seems to pity the troops, but gets so wrapped up in his own romantic notion of valor that he misses the central issue: have we sent the troops into a battle that's winnable, no matter how great their professionalism? At root, the public's reaction isn't pity; it's buyer's remorse. The point isn't the hardship the troops are enduring. The point is that we put them there, and does what we've asked them to do make any sense??
A few last words about civilian casualties and detainee abuse. Again, there are important issues regarding the relationship of the nation and its people to such misdeeds. National Journal last week had an excellent Sydney Freedberg cover story about rules of engagement and proper use of force. We cannot absolve fighting men and women of their duty to conform to the rules of engagement and obey the laws of war (I suspect Robert Kaplan would agree, on the grounds of respecting rather than pitying). But it must also be said that there are heightened stresses associated with being an occupying force surrounded by guerrillas and militias -- again the issue of the situation in which we have placed our troops. Finally, I am perplexed that Kaplan is perplexed by the focus put on the detainee abuse committed by US troops. Here there is the added issue of the ramifications for the United States' standing in the world. We believe in individual rather than collective guilt, but again, the troops represent the country (and maybe even official policy). I didn't think it needed pointing out, but, to put it mildly, this is a really big deal. Do we really think the media has overplayed this? Really?
I am often filled with admiration for some of the people fighting in Iraq. Many show high degrees of tenacity, skill, resolve, courage and professionalism. Some have shown an admirable capacity to react with improvisational intelligence to complex and rapidly evolving conditions. I don't think pity is a prominent emotion in my attitudes. In some cases, I might think that the soldiers' dangerous labors are exploited, and that they have been used for purposes that they don't understand, and of which they wouldn't approve if they did understand. But for the most part, I'll pay these guys the respect of thinking that they are not dunces and suckers, and participate in the US military and its operations with their eyes wide open.
I agree with David that negative public feelings toward the war are based in good part on a sense of responsibility for the war. But I disagree that the central issue is whether the war is or was "winnable". The war itself was a horrible error to begin with, whether or not it could have been won. In fact, "error" is too weak a word. It was a fraud and a crime. If the US did not occupy the privileged position it does in the international order, if its leaders were not shielded from justice by the potent ring of our defenses, we could fully expect that our leaders would now be under indictment and hunted down for war crimes - for launching an illegal war of aggression.
Some of us believed from the beginning the war was a fraud and a crime; others came eventually to see it as a fraud and a crime. But the reason that, outside of the FOX newsrooms, there isn't a lot of that rah-rah war spirit Kaplan longs for is that a large number of Americans simply don't think the war is anything to be proud of. They are increasingly ashamed of it. And rightly so.
We're way past the time for reasonable people to hold that our warlord leaders were duped by bad intelligence. Most of them weren't duped; or if they were duped, it was irrelevant since they were determined to launch the war anyway for strategic reasons, and the stovepiped intelligence and fishing for pretexts was just a sideshow. They actively participated in a public relations snow job. They had a strategic plan for the Middle East that involved conquering Iraq, converting its government into a US client, and turning the country into a base for further aggression. The official pretexts were just designed to garner public support.
Now while these sorts of strategic rationales for a war are ho-hum in cynical imperial Washington, wars fought for such motives are illegal under international law, and also under the religious and common-sense moral codes under which most Americans were raised. Most decent people think it is just wrong to intentionally kill people who are not trying to kill or injure you. They think it is wrong to shock and awe others into abject submission to the national will via a spectacular televised display of killing of innocents and destruction of homes and cultural riches. But for vandals like Dick Cheney, the display of barbarian might and sheer philistine insouciance was the whole point. That shows the natives not to count on any delicate America sensibilities about precious historical artifacts or trebly precious human beings.
This war was just an act of two-bit aggression, not much different in kind from similar criminal acts in the recorded and unrecorded past. That's why people aren't tooting the national horn and parading the heroes. The war was a deeply wrong and wrongheaded endeavor carried out in support of deeply wrong and wrongheaded national policy objectives. It was conducted for reasons of state that are no different in kind from the reasons that have propelled most empires in the past. Sadly for Kaplan, many American remain at bottom, hostile to imperialism. And once the morally dubious nature of the war was revealed to them, it was no longer something they could support.
Kaplan no doubt hates all this whiny moral stuff. He thinks it is weak and pathetic, an unnatural triumph of the perverted outlook of the downtrodden over the hardy guilt-free will to conquer of the ubermenschen. Kaplan thinks war itself is glorious, and is its own justification. Conquest and power and domination are noble. Blasting things and people is the health of the state and the apotheosis of manhood. That is part of the pagan Nietzschean ethos that Kaplan has extolled in print. But most Americans are not Nietzschean pagans - they are Christians, or observant Jews, or descendants of Christians or observant Jews who still hold onto much of their ancestral moral codes, even if not all of the theological trappings.
It would be nice to be able to separate our soldiers and their many virtues entirely from the war itself, and to honor the soldier fully while disdaining the soldier's civilian commanders. But this involves an effort of conceptual distinction that is too high for humanity, at least where issues of war and peace are concerned. How much honor can one give to those who carried out a criminal act against the Iraqi people? How much glory can one bestow for showing doggedness and professionalism in killing hundreds of thousands of people who never attacked us? One can, to a limited extent, hold that the soldiers did not fully understand what