Lets look at what you're really saying.
Dec. 24th, 2008 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumLTC Robert Bateman appears to be a semi-regular commenter at Altercation. He’s in the military, in some wise and thinks “liberals” don’t do enough to understand, and bridge, the “disconnect” between themselves and “the military”.
Let’s just say I have some problems with his positions. First, he seems to think pissing everyone off means he occupies some happy medium.
Of course, for my troubles I am periodically called a "neo-con warmonger Bush/Cheney apologist" by some, and a "liberal mouthpiece in the pay of George Soros" from others.
We see this a lot, the myth of the “justified middle”; the MSM likes to claim this is, “objectivity”. It fails to consider the possibility that one of the sides is actually right, and being in the middle is not only wrong, but pushing for it is damaging.
But that’s not what rises to the level of blithering nonsense. Part of it is tone. He puts all the burden for understanding the other side on, “the liberals”. The question is, what are all of you doing from the outside to remove that theoretical gap? Are you encouraging your liberal sons and daughters to pursue national service in the Armed Forces...or do you try to dissuade them?.
What an amazing piece of hubris. He says he complains about his service. He fails to address the problem of service. The military is an arm of policy. If the policy is justifiable then the honorable person has no problems. If the policy is horrible immoral, the honorable person has problems, but the problems are more of repercussion than decision. The edge cases are the real problem. What does one do when a policy leads to orders which are lawful in the pursuit of ends which seem iffy (I had this problem with Iraq... I still don’t know that I made the right call, but I can’t see how I could have made any other. As a pilot said of his experience in WW2, “It was a million dollar experience you wouldn’t pay a nickel to do again”)?
If one is an employee that’s not a big deal. Quitting may be hard, but it’s doable. Walking away from the Army isn’t quite so simple as leaving a civilian employer. The officer has it a little easier than an enlisted member. An officer has the privilege to resign his commission if he likes. Such resignation isn't automatic (as Lt. Watada found out), but it's an option. The enlisted member can't do that.(just look at the guys who decided they conscientious objections. They were told they were wrong, and either had to go, or desert. Some of them are still dealing with the aftermath of that. Some of them are fugitive in Canada, because they couldn’t walk away. They are living in Limbo, appealing for refugee status, and looking prison in the face if they don’t get it).
Deciding to roll the dice that one’s gov’t won’t start to pursue terrible policies is hard to do. It’s a lot harder now. When I joined the Army the idea that my job was going to be front and center in the national discussion wasn’t completely beyond the pale. The core subject of that discussion turned out not to be what I’d have figured it would be.
That torture is the topic doesn’t surprise me, per se. That the “debate” is about how much we should engaging in. Just which tortures we wanted to institutionalise... that croggles me. I never imagined that would be the case. We didn’t do that.
But that’s a minor blind spot. Lots of people who are happy with their service (or, perhaps haven’t had to bump against that problem) don’t see that this is a thing which might be a deal breaker for people who otherwise think some sort of giving back to the nation is important.
No, the real failure in his arguments is how he attempts to justify the use of force.
Thus, when dealing with a hard-core anti-war protestor who is against all use of force, I use the Socratic method and ask, "You oppose Iraq, right?" (yes) "You also support women's rights?" (also usually a massive yes) "But you support cultural independence in all cases?" (usually a yes) "So you oppose going in to Afghanistan and would prefer that all women there must live as they did under the Taliban?" (sometimes, not often, but sometimes that gets a "yes") ... we will progress along these lines until the person has renounced fighting against the Holocaust, or re-uniting the Union and ending slavery ... at which point I'll usually give up, but hope that the person I engaged has second thoughts now. Sometimes they do. In the process I also hope that they have come to a better understanding about the military in general, the uses of force by our democracy, and have in some small way closed the divide on that side.
That is just stupid. Boiled down his argument is, “Might Makes Right.” conjoined with the idea that somehow the American Way of Life™ is so special that exercising that Might is something we can do anytime we think some other country isn’t acting properly.
It’s dressed up with being against Hitler, and ending slavery, but if you look in the middle part you find the meat of it. "You also support women's rights?" (also usually a massive yes) "But you support cultural independence in all cases?" (usually a yes) "So you oppose going in to Afghanistan and would prefer that all women there must live as they did under the Taliban?".
Got that... how a minority group is treated is justification for aggressive war. Now, this means one of two things. There is an absolute value for how to treat people, and we have to spend our treasure, blood and reputation to do that, it’s “Bear any burden” territory.
Or it means that the Taliban is justified in using force to spread its beliefs.
The first is a problem in that following it pretty much requires we put our own house in order. We are far from that, and more to the point I don’t see his appeals to the rights of women in Afghanistan being extended to blacks, hispanics, immigrants and women here. If our blood and treasure are so worth spending abroad, we can’t really expect much of a reputation if we don’t pursue it here.
The second... well that’s a real problem. In the simplest of reasoning it fails. No one ever has casus belli. The only complaint about al Qaeda attacking us would be they weren’t a state; and that defeats the attack on Afghanistan to respond to it.
I am not a pure pacifist. I think renaming the War Dept. the Department of Defense is the right way to go. Response to aggressive war is the only truly legitimate use of national power. All others have some level of quandary. World War 2 is the touchstone people like to use because the things Hitler did, and the atrocities Japan committed are so easy to look back on and say, “They should have been stopped.”
Which is true. It doesn’t, however, mean, that we have right to use our might, which is the core of his argument. There are far better ways to make things better for oppressed groups... making the people who are in charge hate you... making them want to kill you isn’t likely to get the improved conditions for women (which, as I recall wasn’t the point to invading Afghanistan, and [as I recall] I don’t recall a whole lot of “liberals” opposed to the invasion. What they complained about was the piss-poor level of resolution, topped off with the idiocy of invading Iraq without a good case for it).
Let’s just say I have some problems with his positions. First, he seems to think pissing everyone off means he occupies some happy medium.
Of course, for my troubles I am periodically called a "neo-con warmonger Bush/Cheney apologist" by some, and a "liberal mouthpiece in the pay of George Soros" from others.
We see this a lot, the myth of the “justified middle”; the MSM likes to claim this is, “objectivity”. It fails to consider the possibility that one of the sides is actually right, and being in the middle is not only wrong, but pushing for it is damaging.
But that’s not what rises to the level of blithering nonsense. Part of it is tone. He puts all the burden for understanding the other side on, “the liberals”. The question is, what are all of you doing from the outside to remove that theoretical gap? Are you encouraging your liberal sons and daughters to pursue national service in the Armed Forces...or do you try to dissuade them?.
What an amazing piece of hubris. He says he complains about his service. He fails to address the problem of service. The military is an arm of policy. If the policy is justifiable then the honorable person has no problems. If the policy is horrible immoral, the honorable person has problems, but the problems are more of repercussion than decision. The edge cases are the real problem. What does one do when a policy leads to orders which are lawful in the pursuit of ends which seem iffy (I had this problem with Iraq... I still don’t know that I made the right call, but I can’t see how I could have made any other. As a pilot said of his experience in WW2, “It was a million dollar experience you wouldn’t pay a nickel to do again”)?
If one is an employee that’s not a big deal. Quitting may be hard, but it’s doable. Walking away from the Army isn’t quite so simple as leaving a civilian employer. The officer has it a little easier than an enlisted member. An officer has the privilege to resign his commission if he likes. Such resignation isn't automatic (as Lt. Watada found out), but it's an option. The enlisted member can't do that.(just look at the guys who decided they conscientious objections. They were told they were wrong, and either had to go, or desert. Some of them are still dealing with the aftermath of that. Some of them are fugitive in Canada, because they couldn’t walk away. They are living in Limbo, appealing for refugee status, and looking prison in the face if they don’t get it).
Deciding to roll the dice that one’s gov’t won’t start to pursue terrible policies is hard to do. It’s a lot harder now. When I joined the Army the idea that my job was going to be front and center in the national discussion wasn’t completely beyond the pale. The core subject of that discussion turned out not to be what I’d have figured it would be.
That torture is the topic doesn’t surprise me, per se. That the “debate” is about how much we should engaging in. Just which tortures we wanted to institutionalise... that croggles me. I never imagined that would be the case. We didn’t do that.
But that’s a minor blind spot. Lots of people who are happy with their service (or, perhaps haven’t had to bump against that problem) don’t see that this is a thing which might be a deal breaker for people who otherwise think some sort of giving back to the nation is important.
No, the real failure in his arguments is how he attempts to justify the use of force.
Thus, when dealing with a hard-core anti-war protestor who is against all use of force, I use the Socratic method and ask, "You oppose Iraq, right?" (yes) "You also support women's rights?" (also usually a massive yes) "But you support cultural independence in all cases?" (usually a yes) "So you oppose going in to Afghanistan and would prefer that all women there must live as they did under the Taliban?" (sometimes, not often, but sometimes that gets a "yes") ... we will progress along these lines until the person has renounced fighting against the Holocaust, or re-uniting the Union and ending slavery ... at which point I'll usually give up, but hope that the person I engaged has second thoughts now. Sometimes they do. In the process I also hope that they have come to a better understanding about the military in general, the uses of force by our democracy, and have in some small way closed the divide on that side.
That is just stupid. Boiled down his argument is, “Might Makes Right.” conjoined with the idea that somehow the American Way of Life™ is so special that exercising that Might is something we can do anytime we think some other country isn’t acting properly.
It’s dressed up with being against Hitler, and ending slavery, but if you look in the middle part you find the meat of it. "You also support women's rights?" (also usually a massive yes) "But you support cultural independence in all cases?" (usually a yes) "So you oppose going in to Afghanistan and would prefer that all women there must live as they did under the Taliban?".
Got that... how a minority group is treated is justification for aggressive war. Now, this means one of two things. There is an absolute value for how to treat people, and we have to spend our treasure, blood and reputation to do that, it’s “Bear any burden” territory.
Or it means that the Taliban is justified in using force to spread its beliefs.
The first is a problem in that following it pretty much requires we put our own house in order. We are far from that, and more to the point I don’t see his appeals to the rights of women in Afghanistan being extended to blacks, hispanics, immigrants and women here. If our blood and treasure are so worth spending abroad, we can’t really expect much of a reputation if we don’t pursue it here.
The second... well that’s a real problem. In the simplest of reasoning it fails. No one ever has casus belli. The only complaint about al Qaeda attacking us would be they weren’t a state; and that defeats the attack on Afghanistan to respond to it.
I am not a pure pacifist. I think renaming the War Dept. the Department of Defense is the right way to go. Response to aggressive war is the only truly legitimate use of national power. All others have some level of quandary. World War 2 is the touchstone people like to use because the things Hitler did, and the atrocities Japan committed are so easy to look back on and say, “They should have been stopped.”
Which is true. It doesn’t, however, mean, that we have right to use our might, which is the core of his argument. There are far better ways to make things better for oppressed groups... making the people who are in charge hate you... making them want to kill you isn’t likely to get the improved conditions for women (which, as I recall wasn’t the point to invading Afghanistan, and [as I recall] I don’t recall a whole lot of “liberals” opposed to the invasion. What they complained about was the piss-poor level of resolution, topped off with the idiocy of invading Iraq without a good case for it).
