"Our" war
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soldiergrrrl
Their War
It's simplistic, and shallow, but it raises some interesting points.
War is one of those things that, if you haven't been, you can't understand.
You can read about it. The Red Badge of Courage, Generals Die in Bed, The Old Breed, Dog Tags, The Soldier Prize will all give you a taste of what it was like.
You can add Birdy, and Catch-22, and Rumors of War, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Odd Shot in Anger, The Good Soldier and any number of history books.
It's a pale shadow of what it's like. Even someone like me who had a "quiet" personal war sees things, feels things knows things that are seen, at best, as through a glass darkly to those who have never been there. "Seeing the elephant" changes you.
I'll offer up this excerpt, from the article.
Col. David Close watches over the training of Marines such as Tuyishimire.
"When I think of patriotism," the colonel says, "I think of selfless service. I think of the people that are dying." Suddenly, his eyes redden. His mouth quivers. "I have a hard time with the families left behind." The words stop coming.
He's a tall, rangy man, hair bristling gray. He looks like a man who should be carrying a sword, not fighting tears. When he speaks again, his voice shakes. "The word patriotism rings hollow with that. There are no words for it. It can't be explained."
His voice steadies as he describes a scene that movies have made familiar: a recent death notification on the base, the official car driving through a neighborhood of enlisted family housing on a Saturday morning, the young women who were outside setting up a yard sale all going still, waiting to see where the car would stop.
"That's patriotism,"
soldiergrrrl Their War
It's simplistic, and shallow, but it raises some interesting points.
War is one of those things that, if you haven't been, you can't understand.
You can read about it. The Red Badge of Courage, Generals Die in Bed, The Old Breed, Dog Tags, The Soldier Prize will all give you a taste of what it was like.
You can add Birdy, and Catch-22, and Rumors of War, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Odd Shot in Anger, The Good Soldier and any number of history books.
It's a pale shadow of what it's like. Even someone like me who had a "quiet" personal war sees things, feels things knows things that are seen, at best, as through a glass darkly to those who have never been there. "Seeing the elephant" changes you.
I'll offer up this excerpt, from the article.
Col. David Close watches over the training of Marines such as Tuyishimire.
"When I think of patriotism," the colonel says, "I think of selfless service. I think of the people that are dying." Suddenly, his eyes redden. His mouth quivers. "I have a hard time with the families left behind." The words stop coming.
He's a tall, rangy man, hair bristling gray. He looks like a man who should be carrying a sword, not fighting tears. When he speaks again, his voice shakes. "The word patriotism rings hollow with that. There are no words for it. It can't be explained."
His voice steadies as he describes a scene that movies have made familiar: a recent death notification on the base, the official car driving through a neighborhood of enlisted family housing on a Saturday morning, the young women who were outside setting up a yard sale all going still, waiting to see where the car would stop.
"That's patriotism,"
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I tend to be an anti-war hippie type. I don't think of myself as a "pacifist"--I've got no problems with killing in self-defense, nor with the idea of a group (i.e. nation) being a bit pro-active about self-defense.
But I do wish it were a last resort. Something done when other methods have failed. And that's not what I've seen in my lifetime. (My thoughts on the original Iraq war attacks were something like "take that several-billion-dollar budget, and bombard them with free food and medical supplies; make sure they know every package comes from the U.S. whose decadence allows us to be generous. Win the respect, or at least the greedy attention, of the general populace, and the admin/gov't will cave to mild pressure." I don't know how practical that would've been... but I'm still thinking it would've been a lot less expensive, in dollars and lives, than what we did instead.)
I have no real comprehension of "patriotism." My concept of war is tied into the Hobbit concept of adventure... nasty cold wet things full of sharp edges that make you late for supper; why would anyone want one of those?
And yet we have them, we have a lot of them, and we spend an awful lot of money and energy and young people's lives on them. So some of us must like them an awful lot, or they'd've gone the way of feudalism and city-states ruled by priests and other social structures that technology's mostly eliminated.
Most of my thoughts on war (and to some extent, patriotism) are explained by the Sermon on Ethics and Love in the Principia.
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Most outstanding explanation of war, ever!
mojo sends
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At so many others, no.
Neil Gaiman said that this post of mine explained things better than any other he'd read. His more telling (and apt) comment (fond as I am to have had his praise) was this one, My father, who was in the British Army, doing National Service as a young man, once described war to me as "long periods of waiting around, punctuated by an occasional brief confusion of violence, which was what the waiting was for. Then it all goes back to waiting again". And I thought that probably that was probably how it was for the Roman troops marching through Britain two thousand years ago...
Wilfred Owens, Apologia pro poemate meo catches some of it.
War is big. Really big. Big like the universe is big.
I wish to God I'd never gone.
I don't know that I'd trade having gone, for much of anything. Yeah, some of what I got out of it sucks (I still don't sleep so well, and I'm moodier, and more snappish that I was), but there are ways in which I a better person too.
If no one ever had to do it again, I'd be happy.
I can't explain it.
They've seen the elephant.
TK
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Military people say, "If you haven't been there then you can't understand." Civilians hear, "You are incapable of understanding me. You're stupid."
This is a problem that is only going to get bigger as more veterans come home lacking the ability to convey the situation. Can a civilian who has lived in a gang area and seen blood, death and destruction in their own backyard understand? Probably. Can the civilian whose biggest problem in life has been a broken arm at 7 yrs old and a flat tire on the way to a critical job interview understand the horror of war? Can they feel the constant gnawing fear of unknown but potential destruction.
I don't know if a majority of them would really want to. I also think that is part of why we who serve, serve. we really don't want them to have to understand. I think the reality is that they need to understand. The old soldier who doesn't want to declare war isn't just being a wimp. They just understand humanity and its lack in war for all parties.
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This problem isn't new. We had a lot more people go to Vietnam than are ever going to Iraq.
We had a whole lot more than that in WW2. As a percentage the Civil War probably tops WW2.
I don't know about the "You're stupid," part. That's probably a context thing. I don't know quite how to describe the subtext. I do know that there have been times stupid wasn't in it; when it comes to what I thought of the person who was trying to tell me what it was like in Iraq, when he'd never been anywhere but suburban Los Angeles.
Can we as civilians, understand war?
No.
It is like myself. I am a male, and no matter how a woman might try to explain the love, the bonding, the stretching of the uterus, the pain of childbirth, the unconditional love she feels for her offspring, I will never understand what to be a mother feels like.
I might try to rationalize the experience, put it into perspective, try to empathize, but after all that effort, I will come up very, very short of the actual knowledge and/or experience of motherhood.
And for me, patriotism means going to the fray again and again and again, not thinking about what could happen to my material being.
Patriotism for me, means being thankful for being born in this country of ours, and putting up the time and effort to say thanks to who and what we are, with our problems, our faults, our mistakes and our stupidity.
Patriotism means I have food on my plate, a non-leaking roof over my head, and the freedom to drive the 25 miles it takes me to go visit my mother whenever I please. It means I can look at an ignorant teenager wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, not knowing what he really stood for, and tolerate.
Patriotism means, living in that gang infested neighborhood, and going back to it because you know you can make a difference, even if it is just to make the son of a gang member smile and learn that the world is not that pathetic ghetto, but a wonderful place that can be improved, if we all give half an effort.
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I brought this up on
Personally, I don't really see this where I am - what I see is mainly a group of people trying to get their job done, worrying about their families.
DV
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The author was in Somalia with the Marines. He wondered how the 19-20 year old squad leaders he saw came to be so different from civilians of the same age.
He notes that the nature of the all volunteer force is to create a system of isolational drift; a positive feedback, where those who aren't willing to adopt the culture, don't stay, and the culture risks becoming more extreme.
It's the only good argument I've ever seen for the re-instatment of a draft.
The thinking that we are somehow, "better" than civilians comes from a lot of places, but probably is summed up best from internalizing the nonsense that all rights come from the soldiers' sacrifices.
The sort of sentiment expressed, more crudely, in a the bumper sticker I linked to a rant about, "If you can read this thank a teacher, if you can read this in English, thank a SOLDIER"
Fatuous, and false, it expresses the same, basic, sentiment of George Orwell, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
When one adpots the mindset that one is the only reason the good things in society survive, then those who don't belong to the club, aren't doing anything to keep society going.
As time goes on, I see more of that. Taken to an extreme, it leads to things like Pinochet.
TK
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He notes that the nature of the all volunteer force is to create a system of isolational drift; a positive feedback, where those who aren't willing to adopt the culture, don't stay, and the culture risks becoming more extreme.
It's the only good argument I've ever seen for the re-instatment of a draft.
Part of me says reinstate the draft.
Then several other parts of me get into the argument.
My inner NCO thinks it's either a recipe for disaster or the greatest opportunity to change things for the better.
The political part of me says that it'll never fly, because of issues involving women and the draft (remember the ERA and unisex bathrooms OMGZ can't have THAT!!!1!! ?), and how do we keep the people who had "other priorities" from having those priorities again?
I'll look for the book and add it to the pile.
DV
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You have to pay doctors to do real examinations of people who bring doctors notes (which means isolating the guy for a couple of days to let drugs out of his system).
If your number comes up, you go. If you are in college, you go. College has to wait, your seat is held for you, scholarships remain.
The only other option is that you get a deferment; only bachelor's degree, no master's, etc.. At that point; if you did ROTC, you can ask for a commission.
Otherwise you compete for an OCS slot, or you get to be an enlisted puke like everyone else.
That's the only way it can work.
Otherwise, it breaks the army.
TK
Are we better than them?
Interesting point, what that book said about "us being better than them", or thinking that we are.
I remember when I finished basic training in 1988. Came back home on leave after AIT (I think), and I remember walking down Brand Blvd. in Glendale, CA, thinking that I was better than anybody else. My back was straighter, my eyes did not look down on the ground like it used to in high school, and I was in better shape. I was proud. And you know how basic training can make you feel. Probably one of the only times in my life I felt proud of anything at all. I hate the word pride, but I digress.
Part of the problem I think (and please don't quote me), is that we as a culture or a society, do not really have a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. I know we have the prom, or the sweet 16 party for the girls (15 if you speak Spanish), but I think that the closest thing that civilians have as a rite of passage is getting your Bachelor's Degree (if you could afford one), or getting kicked out of the house when you are 18. How's that for dramatic (LOL).
For me, basic was difficult. Probably one of the most difficult things I had to face back then in 1988 when I was young and gave a crap. So for me, it was a very good rite, the one that reminded me how pampered I was, and how irresponsible I had become. To be a part of a culture that accepted me, with my accent, my short stature, my insecurities, I needed that. I need to join the clan of productive adults, those who give, not just take.
So I do not think that we as a whole (the 1 percenters) are better than the average American per say. But it takes a better American to put up with the daily crap we endure as a whole.
I know that the average American is able and willing to step up when the time and the reason is right. This is how we started our nation, and I can say that those back then suffered and gained the most. Even if you compare WWII with today, the average tour of duty back then was three years? And we bitch and whine about 1 year in Iraq. The WWII generation was composed of average Americans and they did suffer, but they won.
Sadly, the iPods, the Paris Hilton cult of personality, and the lack of vision and dreams is not helping our youth. How can we expect our youngsters to see the light, when the light is not properly focused or aimed. I mean, some people think that we have to give them "better perks" so that they may join. I am not against better living conditions, a better salary, anything that can make this life a livable experience, but our youth is not thinking with their hearts, they are thinking with whatever organ maneuvers and dictates their selfishness and their me me me attitudes. They see the military as a job, instead of a duty, or a calling. Money for college...
I guess this is their trial and tribulation. I am not going to sit here and say that the 80's were better. Maybe when I am sixty I will reminisce of the "good old days" and bitch and whine about the past. I have a feeling that like always, we will succeed as a nation and as a culture.
Or not. All empires come to an end.
I hope this finds you healthy and strong. I am proud of you two for being my brothers and sisters in our own little 1 percent club.
Love,
Jerry
Re: Are we better than them?
So I do not think that we as a whole (the 1 percenters) are better than the average American per say. But it takes a better American to put up with the daily crap we endure as a whole.
This is pretty much how I feel a lot of days.
Basic and the Army were the best thing that happened to me. They taught me that there was more to life than getting the right answer out of books. They taught me to run with my instincts, and reinforced my ability to stand up for myself and what I know is the right thing.
Oh yes, and I'm paying for my BS in History courtesy of TA.
I have gained more from the Army than I would ever have guessed, and it has asked things from me that I would never thought I could do.
And I've never even deployed. Weird, I know. It just never shakes out like that.
I am getting out, but not because I want to make more money. I am not willing to ask my daughter to sacrifice both her parents, and the WO makes more money than I do. :)
Not only is there not a rite of passage, but the border between childhood/adulthood seems like it keeps moving.
I'm proud of the 2 of you. Long live the club. :)
DV
Re: Are we better than them?
It takes a different type of person, sort of.
Ukraine has conscripts. I divides them into groups. The RA conscripts, tend to belong, in general, to the box o' rocks sort of soldier.
Is this because they are? Or because they get treated that way?
Some are (I recall one, his Lt was doing his best, but he wasn't suited to the life. Nice enough kid, but not a soldier; and he was taking a long time to master the handling of a BTR).
The ones who were in "elite" units, they had as much esprit as we did, and were just as competent. Trained harder.
Across the board I see that. Putting up with the crap, and the looks down the nose, and the other stuff... it marks one. That sense of apartness is common to soldiers, everywhere.
I feel better for it. I know that I have done things they haven't. Things that some of them can't.
I also know that I felt that way when I was a working journalist. I'd been to fires, murder scenes, inside the tape for bomb-scares. I could make a phone call, and get to see people most folks couldn't.
Honestly, that's the problem in the Washington press corps right now. They see themselves as apart from the people they serve.
But yeah, I'm proud of the rest of the Army, and my comrades, and the whole miserable lot of us, from here, to there, and all the way back to the first time some sorry recruit had a Drill Sergeant tell him he wasn't fit to clean worm shit out of stables, much less be a member of "his" army.
"Here's to us, and them's like us."
"Damn'd few left."
TK
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