The Few, The Proud, The Brainwashed

As the Fourth of July approaches, we have the predictable spate of news articles about the military -- not in the abstract but in "real people" terms -- the guy (or gal) down the street who is on his (or her) 2nd, 3rd, or nth tour in Iraq or some other garden spot. And yes, they are all good, they are patriotic, they are doing their duty, and when their time in the battle zone is over they will return to their communities amidst laurels, parades, and testimonials. This is the universal theme, and in this area of traditional patriotism and "family values" it is extremely strong, and considered invincible to argument or criticism. The local war industries are having a field day of their own, it should be added, and this is a not-infrequent subject of news articles. But the main point is that the war is about people, and we can worry about the whys and wherefores later... if ever. To this I should add that articles about soldiers who _don't_ come back -- at least not alive -- or who come back missing limbs or vital bodily functions, do not ever venture into questions as to the justification for the war. That is a subject for another day, and it would be considered boorish in the extreme to append it to an article about a hometown hero. Thus, we already have the groundwork for the thoroughly schizoid mindset of the American public when it comes to military adventures and misadventures. The reasons for war are something for philosophers to speculate on, and the causes of any particular war are the concern of our elected representatives, in whom we implicitly and completely trust. All the public knows is the importance of patriotism, duty, and long-suffering... and count on it, these are all intimately related. These folks don't change their mind about war when a son or neighbor comes home in a body bag; if anything it solidifies their fervor and support of the effort (through a mechanism called "cognitive dissonance", which I think I've explained previously). Of course, when a soldier comes home in one piece that's even better, and no one can argue with a war in which no one gets hurt -- at least no one we know personally. So either way, the promoters of war will have the public on their side, today and always.

People are also clueless as to the social and economics impacts of war. They live in a society that is slowly impoverishing itself with overseas adventures, and at the same time becoming more repressive with each passing day, and yet they never make the connection. It's as if war brings with it its own form of inoculation -- or maybe amnesia -- or failure of logic. Basically, it turns people into idiots -- but they are happy idiots, as long as they can continue to have parades and celebrate their heroes. And what "average joe" doesn't remember his time in the service as the highlight -- or one of the main highlights -- of his life? Very few. The war experience becomes the benchmark, the point of reference, for all that follows. A guy might grow up in some deep, dark hollow in West Virginia, and return there to spend the rest of his days, but at least he got to go to Iraq, or Vietnam, or wherever. Is this primitive? Is it atavistic? Does it contradict all that the theoreticians of the remaking of the human race have been preaching for a century or more? Of course. But it is nonetheless true.

Let's add to all this a quote from a real soldier, a reservist who just came back from a year in Iraq and got to greet her three small children (yes, that's what I said) in a local high school parking lot. She said, "It was painful to be away from my kids. But the whole purpose of us being in Iraq is to create an environment stable enough so my children and other people's children don't have to go back ever again." Now, I would say that this is the most typical core attitude of the average person in uniform who is headed for Iraq, or is in Iraq, or who has come back from Iraq. And the first question has to be, where do they get these ideas? Who tells them these things, and when, and where, and how often? Do they awaken every morning to the blare of loudspeakers like in a North Korean "re-education camp"? Do they get it from the media (hardly likely)? But count the number of misconceptions in that one statement. For one thing, her children and other people's children don't ever "have" to go back to Iraq, or anywhere else. That's what the politicians want them to believe, but it's totally untrue. No American "has" to go halfway around the world to "defend" a country that barely exists except on maps, and people who would be much happier if we would just get our asses out of there, against a ghost-like "enemy" that is probably there only because we are. Then, as to "the whole purpose of us being in Iraq" being to create a stable environment, all I can say is that the very last thing the war profiteers who have so much to do with our being over there want is a "stable environement". What they want is what we have -- i.e. perpetual war, and to hell with the body count. Plus, even if it were possible to create a stable environment over there, what makes that our job -- today, or ever? Nothing I can think of. So the whole thing is a massive delusion -- and yet this soldier, as so many of her contemporaries, has bought into it totally, and I'm sure would seriously question the patriotism of anyone who expressed skepticism. So that's what we have facing us in this conflict -- not just war industries, not just evil politicians, not just entangling alliances, but the everyday ideas of everyday people, who simply will not believe that anything that is that much trouble, and is that expensive, and is that dangerous, is not worth doing.