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Thread ID: 10817 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-10-29
2003-10-29 15:50 | User Profile
Fewer Good Men Than You Think: Reflections on Empire Building and Its Effect on the Soldier's Character
by Chris Check Vice President of the Rockford Institute
In 1993, General Karl Mundy, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, after knuckling under to President Clinton's order to integrate sodomites into the Armed Forces, dispatched a "Message to All Marines" attempting to justify his cowardice. The message could not have been regarded by the average grunt (provided any read it) as anything but the usual general-grade equivocation, but it did reveal, perhaps more overtly than ever before, a widely held error regarding the primary purpose of a military.
For the propagation of this error, Madison Avenue must share some blame. The Corps has spent enormous sums at America's ad agencies in order to sell itself as a character builder-and not without some justification. Many Americans have long thought of the Marines, and to a lesser extent the other services, as an environment in which adolescents can be made into adults-and not mere run-of-the-mill adults, but honest, productive, and patriotic citizens. Nevertheless, asked the question, "What is a military for?" the warrior's response is "to kill people and break things." Not so General Mundy. "The greatest contribution our Corps has made to this Nation, or will ever make," he wrote, "is not that we win wars, but that we make Marines."
General Mundy's belief that the Commandant's job, first and foremost, is not to supervise the training and equipping of an elite fighting force but to run a good-citizen school, is troubling, particularly in light of recent reports that cast serious doubt on the readiness of America's Armed Forces. The unfortunate irony for General Mundy, however, and for those of like mind, is that in the last decade, the data to support the military's reputation as a character builder are every bit as disturbing as the readiness figures. The string of sex scandals, suicides, and cover-ups, the reports of waste, greed, mismanagement, and cowardice, along with the countless instances of bad judgement and bad behavior exhibited by American men and women in uniform, seem now to represent better the military character than do any concepts of good citizenship or soldierly virtue.
How to account for the military's tarnished reputation? It is no simple matter: A convincing case could be made that a particular brand of bad behavior has always been part of military life. As long as men have signed up driven by the virtues of fortitude and patriotism, others have joined because they saw in military service an opportunity to exploit the weak. (Recall John the Baptist's injunction to soldiers not to be bullies.) And sexual adventurism and other sins of intemperance have been in the inventory longer than the Mod Deuce. (Many argue, with good reason, that the dubious sexual ethics of soldiers are not improved by the aggressive integration of women into the Armed Forces.) Nevertheless, those who puzzle over the bad behavior of soldiers, have largely overlooked a set of factors that heavily influence the formation of a serviceman's character.
Too few social analysts, if any, have asked, "Does the type of army in which a soldier serves, or does the nature of the mission on which he is sent, affect his character?" Yet these questions get to the heart of any discussion of the behavior of soldiers, for a soldier in an imperial army on an imperial mission will be formed differently and will behave differently from a soldier called upon to defend his home.
At least one historian has pointed toward these questions. Bill Kauffman of Batavia, New York has argued that the more interesting questions about empires and empire building-albeit the ones never asked-are not those that examine the effects of empire building on the conquered but rather those that examine its effects on the conquerors. His recent book, With Good Intentions? Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America, reveals, for example, the devastating effect of federally directed projects such as the Interstate Highway System and school consolidation on life in America's small communities. These "virtually uncontested government policies," according to Kauffman, were pursued under the rubric of "national defense" -that is, the building of the American Empire. Yes, they helped build an empire, but they also uprooted the Old Republic based on "family autonomy, a minimal state, and human-scale communities."
Chief among the culprits, Kauffman argues, of modern American deracination, is America's standing army itself. "The single greatest cause of American rootlessness over the last half century has been our standing army", he writes, calling the U.S. Military "a government subsidized uprooting of the population." He adds "[t]hose who support a large standing army do more to undermine American families than do most of the exotic bogeymen of 'family-values' propaganda."
Kauffman's conclusion that empire-building has led to "the militarization of American life and economy" helps us make sense of the immoral behavior of American servicemen by encouraging us to ask, "What effect has empire building had on the character of the American military and, in particular, the behavior of individual servicemen?"
American soldiers have served in an imperial army-one that goes "abroad in search of monsters to destroy," contrary to John Quincy Adam's famous admonition-since before the War Between the States. Service of this kind requires young men (and today, women) to be away, for significant lengths of time, from what is real: blood, soil, hearth, home, and "human-scale communities." Service in an imperial army calls on young men (and today, women) to sacrifice the real, perhaps even sacrifice their lives, for the Enlightenment fictions and theories that have replaced the Faith in the post-Christian world: "democracy," "the international community," "equality," "the New World Order," and "universal human rights."
When theory takes the place of life, when the unreal replaces the real, the effect on the human person and on society is literally de-moralizing. Theories, fictions, half-truths, and lies twist the soldier's soul; add to this mix more power than better men than he could harness, and his soul is contorted beyond recognition. Some will show a contemptuous disregard for other peoples and for women, others will experience a distorted sense of self-importance. Many will think loyalty more important than integrity, others will be quick to argue that ends justify means. With few exceptions, those that make a career of service in an imperial army will come to believe that nothing-not the claims of sovereign nations, not the rights of their citizens, not even the truth-should stand in the way of the expansion of the empire and the theories, ideas, and abstractions it purports to embody.
"Preserving the Union" was the sacrosanct idea that justified General William Sherman's taking "the war to the people" during America's War Between the States. For the citizens of Columbia, South Carolina, according to historian Charles Royster, taking the war to the people went like this:
Some men grew more and more frenzied with the destruction; it became their sole purpose. They seized possessions only to throw them into the flames. While one group gave finery and valuables to passing black people, another pillaged slave quarters and destroyed black belongings. While one set of men looted banks systematically and extracted buried silver with an experienced touch, others smashed mirrors, slashed paintings, and broke furniture that women had hauled into the streets. A soldier played a piano in the street as another soldier chopped the instrument with an axe. A group of soldiers set fire to a piano, then one played it while the others danced around it until the flames forced the pianist to step back. Men who were too drunk and too intent on spreading the fire passed out in burning buildings, and the flames closed over them. A few men murdered. They caught black women whom they stripped, raped, and killed.
Union soldiers may or may not have entertained high-minded ideas like preserving the Union while raping and burning Columbia, but enough of them made ideas like these their reasons for waging war on their Southern brethren. Historian James McPherson's useful survey of the correspondence of both Union and Confederate soldiers, What They Fought For, 1861-1865, contrasts the Southern motivation to fight for "the defense of hearth and home against an invading enemy" with the more abstract Northern cause of preserving the Union. McPherson writes, "[m]ost Yankees did not have the same consciousness of fighting to defend home and family that Confederates had." "We are fighting for the Union . . . a high and noble sentiment, but after all a sentiment," wrote one Illinois officer to his wife. An Indiana sergeant's opinion was that the Union was nothing less than "the beacon light of liberty and freedom to the human race."
For Southern soldiers the cause was far more real, and although the record shows ample Confederate atrocities, in particular during their invasion of Pennsylvania, Confederate behavior did not rival, especially in terms of scale, General Sherman's war on the civilian population of the South. Why not? Some would argue that the Confederates lacked the opportunity. But a better answer lies in the reasons Confederate soldiers fought: "[W]e are fighting for the women," wrote one Texas private. Wrote another, "We are fighting for matters real and tangible . . our property and our homes."
Fighting to defend their homes and families has not been something American soldiers have been called on to do since the War Between the States, though often when they are shipped abroad they are told it is to defend something called the "American Way of Life." Or they go abroad to "keep the world safe for democracy." These abstractions have replaced "preserving the Union" as the end that justifies the means, but the behavior of American servicemen, and those who lead them, has not improved. Consider one incident that occurred on the watch of General Mundy's successor, General Charles Krulak.
Two Marines and a corpsman, bored on the island of Okinawa, rented a car, abducted a native adolescent girl, and raped her. Their crime, committed as it was on an island where billeting an entire Marine Division has grown all but impossible to justify, rapidly became-in the antiseptic parlance of senior officers and other military bureaucrats-an "international incident." (Also in this vocabulary: "collateral damage," meaning mass vandalism and mass murder.) A fleet-grade naval officer's public opinion of the gang rape was that the whole unfortunate affair could have been avoided if only these restless young men had pooled their resources and rented a whore.
An event that, in part, led to this admiral resigning his commission sparked little debate among America's jingoes over the question of whether or not a man who would make so scandalous a comment possessed the necessary virtues to make him fit for high command in the United States Naval Service. On the contrary, a good bit of hue and cry arose from those insisting that the admiral had fallen victim to "political correctness."
Plenty on the political right today call for a draft not for reasons of strong defense but simply for what they regard as the military's reputation as a character builder. Few of them, however, wish to be bothered with trying to square that reputation with the behavior of the admiral (to say nothing of with that of the Marines) in this story. Before long, Americans who value virtue will have to wonder if the Armed Forces is the place where it is fostered. They also may come to understand that the admiral fell victim to (aside from his own astounding imprudence) something at once more profound and more sinister than political correctness. Bit by bit, in exchange for years of service to the American Empire, the admiral had lost his soul, until the most his withered conscience could discern about the gang rape of a terrified young girl was that if it had only been a free-market economic transaction then perhaps the more important business of "keeping the world safe for democracy" or "preserving the American way of life" could have proceeded uninterrupted.
The past decade's steady string of military "social" scandals indicates that the admiral's priorities-as well as those of the Marines in the story-were not much different from those of their peers. But today's American military character is marked not only by this tendency to regard women as human objects of sexual gratification or cannon fodder-anything but human beings; but it is also stained by other moral errors. Preparing for war has taken a back seat to political fashions, management fads have replaced martial traditions, affirmative action trumps merit, and at the core of it all, loyalty is given priority over integrity.
Two of these afflictions in particular-misunderstanding the purpose of women and confusing loyalty and integrity-serve well to illustrate the malformed character of today's soldier in the service of the American Empire.
If the admiral in our story erred, in the eyes of the empire-builders whose purposes he served, it was only in pulling back too far the curtain from the portrait of Dorian Gray. Another soldier helped expose this moral rot when his habit of bedding his female recruits at the Aberdeen Proving Ground made the headlines.
His tragedy did not become an international incident, only one of a long and depressing list of military sex scandals that included: an Annapolis midshipgirl watching future gentlemen of the Naval Service expose themselves to her as she stood handcuffed to a urinal; cadettes at West Point getting fondled by a gauntlet of football players; the Sergeant Major of the Army answering charges of sexual harassment; an Air Force general abandoning his bid for the nation's top military post when a tryst from his past hit the headlines; a much-publicized group grope at the Las Vegas Hilton; a general officer seducing his subordinates' wives in Turkey; and an adultery saga involving an Air Force bomber pilot on the fast track to becoming the next poster person for the National Organization for Women.
Reaction from pundits on the left and on the right to this culture of sexual adventurism has been consistent with the popular wisdom of postmodern-post-Christian-America. The only sexual sins are those to which we do not consent. (Guilt-ridden coeds must cry rape the morning after an intemperate night at the frat house in order for anyone to think something bad has happened.) When the Army drill sergeant was finally called to answer for his unorthodox method of training warriorettes, the New Republic rose to his defense, pointing out that court-martial testimony revealed little more than a scheme of low-rent rendezvous, complete with beepers and trips to Baltimore. One private excused herself from the "rape" long enough to take a shower, after which the bond between drill sergeant and recruit was consummated. By now it is well known that the Tailhook whistleblower had twice offered her legs for public shaving. And the young lady at Annapolis had participated in a day of pranks that ended with her being handcuffed to a urinal.
Even a direct solicitation for this bizarre form of male attention would not have exonerated her fellow mids. Even if the Tailhook celebrity had announced to her whole squadron that she thrilled to the hands of a fighter pilot on her legs, the men who later groped her in the hallway would be no less to blame. The showering private's easy virtue did not excuse her Drill Sergeant from availing himself of it. At one time in his life he may have known that, but since joining the army, no one has reminded him. During my six years as a Field Artillery officer in the Marine Corps, I encountered everything from married field-grade officers whoring in Korea to commanding officers who would not let their Marines off the ship without a condom. "What goes on on deployment stays on deployment" is the modus operandi for Marines headed to Westpac.
To be sure, sexual misbehavior has been part of the American military experience since long before Bob Hope was exporting cheesecake to titillate the boys over there. Joe Hooker (thus the expression) oversaw a sophisticated system of camp followers, and his previously mentioned colleague, General Sherman (America's first war criminal), oversaw an army that taught theories like democracy, equality, and the universal brotherhood of man to recalcitrant Southerners by raping their women. (Black as well as white; Sherman's men weren't prejudiced.) But as long as America's interventionist zeal continues unabated, Americans can expect the problem to get worse.
A certain breed is drawn to the life of a soldier. Fortitude may figure prominently in his moral calculus, but chastity does not. Since chastity has limited battlefield application it goes decidedly uncultivated in military life. Yet the gentler virtues do not develop by themselves. Chastity and self-restraint are fostered within the context of a family and a real community; whatever else it may be, a massive standing army is not a family. Your drill instructor, contrary to what he may have told you, is neither your father nor your mother, and when our current Commandant realizes that the organization he runs is, at least in part, at odds with the family, he will understand why his Corps Values program (the boot-camp curriculum to get Marines to behave like Christians) is doomed to failure.
Conservatives who see the solution in the sexual segregation of boot camp miss the point. So do those who call for an all-male military for the massive standing army the American Empire requires can only be "manned" by recruiting women. In a nation that will not replace its native population (in a classic symptom of an empire in decline we have unrestrained sexual liberty yet no one is reproducing), there are simply not enough eligible young men. In fact, to the imperial army, just as to captains of industry, women are a better deal than young men. They are more likely to be content with low wages, and they are relatively obedient.
The feminist solution to the misuse of women by the imperial army is "gender-sensitivity training." While true that young men do need to learn to honor the fairer sex but they do not learn this at the drill field or at the rifle range. Nor do they learn it from picking up hookers in Paris or Seoul. They learn it from their mothers at the hearth, and the more time they spend abroad slaying foreign dragons the less time they spend in the civilizing environment of hearth and home.
When American servicemen must be away from home, it falls to their officer class to set the standard for high moral conduct, for even the best of soldiers, fighting for the noblest of causes, can have their consciences deadened by the horror of war. British historian Michael Davies' account of the Catholic uprising in the Vandée, For Altar and Throne, explains that even these courageous and pious French peasants fighting to preserve the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Catholic Faith were not immune to the dehumanizing effects of war when left unchecked by their officers.
[T]he small number of atrocities carried out by the Vandean forces in the initial stages of the war were perpetrated by enraged peasants beyond the control of their officers, and not upon the command of their officers, as was the case with the systematic policy of terrorism waged by the republicans.
Led by men of virtue, however, the Vandéan soldiers exhibited behavior marked by remarkable mercy and restraint. Davies tells the story of the wounded Vandéan general, Artus, Marquis de Bonchamps, giving his final order from his deathbed that mercy be shown republican prisoners the Vandéan soldiers were preparing for the firing squad. "There can hardly have been a Vandéan who had not lost friends, relations, or family at the hands of the brutal invaders," yet inspired by the heroic charity of their leader, they spared, and set free, the republican soldiers.
Two hundred years later, one must look hard among American senior military officers to find the blend of courage and charity found in officers like Bonchamps. On the contrary, there are admirals who endorse prostitution, ships' captains who distribute condoms, and field grade officers who lead the way into whorehouses.
Even among officers who keep their flies zipped there are very few who are models to emulate. Many are obsessed with fads such as "Total Quality Management," others with affirmative action. Most are bureaucrats who see career-enhancing opportunities in anything and everything-whether or not it has to do with preparing for war. The best bureaucrats are the ones pursuing high safety records and 100 percent dental readiness. More contemptible are the officers who drive their units to 100 percent participation in the savings bond plan or the Combined Federal Campaign. Even worse are the general officers spending millions of dollars building daycare centers for military dependents. Speaking at a 1997 White House conference on daycare, at which the Armed Forces daycare system was held up as a model for national emulation, Major General John Meyer proclaimed, "Childcare is critical to DOD's bottom line . . . the care and development of children is a responsibility the military readily assumes in exchange for the loyalty of our servicemembers."
Meyer's comment is unsettling not only for what it says about DOD's spending priorities, but also for what it reveals about Meyer's, and undoubtedly his colleagues', understanding of loyalty. Rather than something earned by men of character, or something owed the nation of one's birth, loyalty in the postmodern military comes in response to a benefit, a pay raise, a choice assignment, a bribe. This is not loyalty but servitude, and it is a refuge for cowards faced with the duty to disobey orders they know are wrong.
Which brings us back to General Mundy and his Message to All Marines. When President Clinton announced his plan to assimilate sodomites into the military, my Marines and I expected some of the Joint Chiefs to capitulate, but we were certain that our Commandant would not. We were quickly disappointed. Packing his message with trendy phrases like "privately held preferences" and "respect for human dignity," the Commandant revealed that he was ready to welcome homosexuals into the Corps.
He went on to warn any of his warriors who might be inclined to resign at this alarming news that "It is not characteristic of Marines to quit their post, either under fire, or when things are not to their liking. Those of you whose personal moral values run so deep are exactly the ones needed to remain on watch to provide a steady hand."
The message was clear. What was important was not, in fact, the deeply held personal moral values of individual Marines, but their willingness to put them aside out of loyalty to the Corps, to the country, and to the American Empire, just as the Commandant had done. I wrote to the Commandant when I resigned: "since the Corps' position on homosexuals has now been made clear, which of my personal moral values could possibly still interest you?"
What is the responsibility of God-fearing Americans in light of what is sure to be continued expansion of the American Empire and consequent deterioration of the American military character?
First, American citizens should think very hard before packing their sons off to boot camp or Officer Candidate School. I have three boys who are all very much enchanted with the idea of being a Marine. They have held in their small hands their father's Mamaluke sword and know its story: a prize won in fierce combat with the Barbary Pirates. I would like very much for them to belong to that unique fraternity where manly virtues-fortitude, valor, integrity-are prized and cowardice and doublespeak are regarded with disdain. I do not want them, however, to learn that homosexuality is just another lifestyle choice or that women should face the horrors of war. I do not want their consciences so dulled that they believe that following an order is more important than the nature of the order itself, or that the death of a few innocents, or the rape of a few island girls, or the violation of some peasant farmer's property rights, are just the prices we pay so that the whole world can enjoy the fruits of democratic capitalism.
Americans with daughters must certainly not send them to boot camp, Officer Candidate School, or any of the service academies. At the Naval Academy, they will likely become WUBAs (this affectionate acronym means Women Used By All). Fathers, in fact, who willingly send their daughters to boot camp might ponder the extent to which they are culpable when the drill sergeant seduces their child. If life in the imperial army-that is, life away from hearth and home, family and soil-has the ill effect on the sexual morality of young men that it does, one can be sure the effect on women is even more disastrous. If America sends its daughters to war they will become feminists, lesbians, and perverse amazons.
Second, God-fearing Americans in uniform must at once refuse to obey destructive orders. Men of good conscience must not support the continued integration of women into the military; men of good conscience must refuse to recruit based on racial quotas; men of good conscience must reject all schemes to lend legitimacy to homosexuality; men of good conscience must refuse to make war on civilians, and must punish with great intensity those in their charge who do.
Just as many will see their careers profit by carrying out destructive and immoral orders, so also will those who refuse see their careers suffer. (Just ask Michael New.)
It is a common refuge of senior officers who know they should resign in the face of destructive orders to deceive themselves into thinking that they can work for change within the system. Either that or they will argue that their replacement will surely be someone worse. But who could be worse than a man who-confusing loyalty and integrity-meekly mumbles yes sir and signs on to an agenda he knows is wrong to protect his career, his pension, his status? We should wonder about the sincerity of a man's oath to lay down his life for his country and the principles cherished by its people when he is unwilling to sacrifice something that is by comparison so small. A man who abandons conscience in pursuit of career is no man at all; we can pray that before he meets his Maker he will have had the opportunity to restore his priorities. We must also pray that our nation abandons the relentless pursuit of empire that is destroying the souls of so many of its best men.