More than once during last week’s stinging rhetorical exchanges about Iraq and Afghanistan in both the House and Senate were these three words hurled – one could almost say “fired” – like weapons across the proverbial partisan aisle.
Considering the frequency and almost reverential tone in which it is invoked, “support the troops” is a curiously ill-defined phrase. What does it mean?
Like the phoenix taking flight from the self-immolating fire, it is invoked as an integral element of war policy that, despite having already “crashed and burned,” continues unchanged. But “support our troops” lends the failed war policy a shallow, expedient “patriotism” which becomes the newly dominant theme behind which the failed war policy can hide. And U.S. policy in Iraq clearly has failed, for the shooting and the dying have lasted longer than expected by the politicians who committed U.S. lives, treasure, and prestige.
The underlying psychology of those who insist that others “support the troops” is the hope that the country “will win” if the public would only give the administration in power a little more time, a little more money, and a little more unity. The implication –falsely drawn – is that anyone who breaks ranks by raising objections to the funding, the fighting, or even suggests forward planning to end involvement of armed forces is “providing aid and comfort to the enemy.” And under President Bush’s division of the world into those “with us or against us,” anyone who objects to the conduct of events falls under suspicion of being in the “against” camp where legitimate and responsible dissent is made out to be “comfort to the enemy.”
Concealed under the shrill pleas for more time, more resources, and unquestioning unity is a fourth, largely unvoiced condition that the public is asked to accept or – more minimally – to quietly condone. This is to acquiesce in more lives lost, more blood spilled, more pain and suffering endured by those who are sent to do the fighting.
One wonders: were the public ever to have explicitly detailed all the elements that are subsumed by “support the troops,” would it make any difference?
Again, Aeschylus comes to mind: “What unthinkable peril might we have cast them [the empire’s young men] into, pursuing our old men’s dreams?” But today, it is no longer only the old men but many of the younger politicians who have never been in battle who are anxious to send others to fight, who belittle those who have fought the nation’s past wars, who decry as unpatriotic even the calls for detailed non-partisan policy reviews.
The death on Wednesday, June 15, of the 2,500th U.S. service member elicited only “routine” media attention – possibly because the White House and congressional Republicans managed high-visibility distractions. The day before saw the 5-hour presidential sneak visit to Baghdad while the day after brought the stage-managed 11-hour House discordant discourse and the Senate wrangling over amendments to the Defense authorization bill.
“Fate” in the form of one soldier killed and two captured by foreign fighters abruptly refocused attention on the “troops.” In a real sense, the three day search for the missing soldiers by 8,000 U.S. military and Iraqi troops and police was a clear example of “supporting the troops.” But for the captured soldiers, as for their dead compatriot, it was not enough. On June 20, both were found dead.
And what did the U.S. Senate do? It passed overwhelmingly (79-19) a non-binding “sense of the Senate” resolution that demanded that the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reject any consideration of amnesty for “persons known to have attacked, killed, or wounded members of the Armed Forces of the United States.” Such a sweeping demand – including those who even “attack” U.S. forces – places al-Maliki in an impossible position when he finally determines how he will try to re-unify Iraq. At a minimum, to demonstrate to Iraqis of all sectarian, ethnic, and tribal affiliation that he is not a puppet of the U.S., he must reject any such sweeping interference in Iraq’s internal affairs. (Interestingly, the amendment the Senate passed made no reference to the 226 coalition fatalities suffered in the war.)
Another measure of the human sacrifice of this war, one that will be a part of the price the U.S. will pay for decades to come – is the increase in the veterans’ population. The number of completely disabled veterans (unemployable) stood at 71,000 a decade ago. It now is more than 220,000 and is set to grow exponentially from the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Department of Veterans Affairs statistics show that over the last ten years, aggregate monthly payments to totally disabled veterans rose from $857 million to $3.1 billion.
Other statistics that call for “supporting the troops – but with a twist from the usual militaristic tenor – are: 8,000 soldiers have gone AWOL (absent without official leave) in the 39 months of the Iraq war; and a January-February 2006 poll of soldiers stationed in Iraq found 72 percent of those interviewed said the U.S. should leave Iraq by the end of 2006.
These are the “troops” talking but not saying what the administration wants to hear. So how are they to be “supported” as the Pentagon wants the public to do? Perhaps by the simple expedient of the public reclaiming a role in the conduct of the nation’s foreign policy.
Unlike perceptions following World War II, few today believe that any country can afford to draw a sharp distinction between foreign and domestic policy. The major concerns expressed by the public – immigration, drugs, Iraq war, and foreign energy dependency – deal with foreign activities that have domestic ramifications and domestic needs with foreign remedies. Yet the decisions the administration makes and the legislation Congress passes too often look at only one dimension (foreign or domestic) or at only U.S. interests, thus creating unanticipated and unbalanced consequences that serve only to fuel the spiral into further international isolation with its tendency toward offensive paranoia.
Moreover, official Washington since September 11, 2001 has become progressively more isolated from the general public. The bonds of trust between the people and government have weakened, transparency has diminished, accountability has all but disappeared, and secrecy has grown as the circle of close presidential advisors has contracted.
This is not democracy in action; it is exactly the opposite of what the U.S. ought to be doing as a democracy that encourages others to become democracies. The unintended U.S. message to the rest of the world is, “Take my advice on democracy; I’m not using it.” The current administration has sent the nation down a path whose destination is not a country that “supports the troops” shielding it from aggression but a country whose raison d’etre is a thorough-going, domestic militarism that “supports” a policy of international dominance.
Like it or not, how well the U.S. translates and projects its interior institutions of governance to the rest of the world as “international policy” is becoming more important in eliciting cooperative – as opposed to coercing – action from developing nations for managing trans-national problems before they metastasize into armed conflicts. Should the rule of law be abrogated, rights continue to erode, and accountability of government to the people be overturned and replaced by a policy of national “order,” our democratic ideals will be replaced by a system of national “order” in which dissent from policy can be seen as disruptive of “necessary” consensus for – in military terminology – “the maintenance of good order and discipline in society.”
In which case, “supporting the troops” becomes society’s end – and the end of U.S. society as we know it.
