THEY WORK FOR US

Over on Counterpunch there’s a multi-author article about the military and its relationship to civilians (“The Can-Do Troops and the New Anti-politics”, www.counterpunch.org/chowdhury05262007.html.)

It asserts, and not inaccurately, that “since the draft was abolished, the military has re-branded itself as a collection of experts”. Yes. “The model of the citizen-soldier no longer applies, because citizenship is no longer linked to military service.” Also yes.

And worse: the Reagan-era gambit was to enshrine ‘the military’ not only as an embodiment of the American spirit, but as the best embodiment of the American spirit.

‘Citizen’ became a title of second-class status. ‘Citizen’ became ‘civilian’, the latter term delivered with a deprecating or self-deprecating lowered voice.

But this is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Surely at Gettysburg – of all places – Lincoln could have enshrined the ‘soldier’ as the acme and epitome of the American spirit. Surely, the fact that he didn't was not due to absence of mind. Instead, he was profoundly grateful for their service and their sacrifice, but he placed that splendid and genuinely glorious gift of their toil and their blood and their lives in proper context: as a service to and a gift to The People, upon Whom the Union and the Republic ultimately rest.

And indeed, he saw those soldiers as citizens who would, one day, doff their uniforms and once again take their place fully among the citizenry. He would then no longer be their commander-in-chief but would revert to being their employee, the employee of The People. He would be answerable to them. That was the natural order of things in the American ethos. It was to preserve that ethos that they and he found themselves at Gettysburg. Lincoln saw that. And accepted it. And acknowledged it.

The military of the immediate post-draft era took its cue from the powerful example set in the New Deal, in the massive organizational mobilization of the Second World War, and was even then in the ‘70s exploding into the civilian sphere through the administration of the Great Society and the revolutionistic implementation of the agendas of the several Advocacies: the ‘experts’ are the only ones who really ‘get it’ and are the only ones who really ‘can do’ it. The People must simply accept their status as distracted if not also backward ignoramuses in need of leading. Indeed, it became a classic trope of every Advocacy’s founding ‘emergency’ that The People or a sizable chunk of The People were pretty much the problem … the oppressor, the perpetrator, the (fill in the blank).

And so the ‘experts’ (and thus the government that employed them) flowed in and swelled up, and – it appeared at the time – with huge success and the unstoppable momentum previously ascribed to ‘historical inevitability’ or ‘God’s will’. It would have been, one might say, negligent of the military not to adopt such a winning gameplan. Anyway, the vast (by American standards) citizen armies that waged the sustained, up-close and personal combat of the Second World War would no longer be required. We sure as hell weren’t going to engage the full panoply of Soviet or Chinese hordes on the Eurasian landmass. Hi-tech armor and air strikes and atomic cannon (yes, we had them) and a lot of other countries’ ground troops would do the trick, if the Commies were ever crazy enough to try it. The chances of Elvis ever actually having to ship his guitar to the rear and get right with a rifle and a bayonet were slim to none. He and the rest of the ‘kids’ over there could get some exposure to Europe on the government’s dime; the grown-ups would do the heavy diplomatic and economic lifting.

But then ‘expertism’ and ‘government expertism’ got a second and more insidious wind in the massive domestic intrusions occasioned in the ‘60s and the ‘70s back here. And in a hugely ill-advised effort to find William James’ “moral equivalent to war” the Advocacies and the police on all levels reported the need for ‘war’ … on this or on that.

And that lead to what the article quotes from a Texas (!) State Senator: that “we (We!) are all soldiers in the War on Terror”. Apparently the so-named War on Terror does not require The People, but rather that all people be ‘soldiers’. Surely, that firm conviction explains the Administration’s assaultive pruning of the no-longer necessary constitutional and democratic processes and its hurt feelings at any dissent from the programme. ‘Soldiers’, after all, don’t get a say in what happens to them; their generals and leaders do not work for them – rather, ‘soldiers’ take their orders and do what they’re told and die when it’s their turn. And thus the Administration’s insistence – echoing every drill-sergeant in every army in every age of history – that ‘this isn’t a debating society’.

And thus this country is a society that no longer debates. The People aren’t supposed to debate since The People have been reduced to a soldiery. And thus The People – long bethumped by the Political Correctness of the Advocacies – are no longer used to debating. And thus the younger generations – hugely distracted from birth even as they are increasingly protected – are increasingly incapable of debating or even of noticing that debating – even more than ‘manners’ – no longer exists. One finds oneself reduced to the plaint of Chester A. Riley: “What a revoltin’ development this turned out ta be!”

Except that few now even seem ‘revolted’ by it. We are ‘offended’ – oh yeah! – by every damned thing under the sun, but We are not revolted by the corrosion and corruption of the Republic that was entrusted to Us. The children of light are getting a little dim.

We are coming to resemble – it can now be said – not ‘The Union’ but the old Confederacy, that military-besotted elitist hierarchical society where there was no middle-class, but only a pretend-aristocracy (morally debased) lording it over a harlequin serfery of ‘crackers’, slaves, and a smattering of mestizos, octoroons, and Indians, and everybody harassed by bible-thumping preachers to accept what-is as God’s will so shut-up and get on with it. No middle-class and no citizenry. And surely, no People.

Have I lived to see the South finally defeated a century later than the history books said, only to then see it ‘win’ almost a half-century after that? As Pogo would say: “Gack!”


The soldier works for the citizen. The soldier is of the People, is raised up by the People, to fight for the People. And will return to the People.

As Washington refused to wear his Revolutionary War uniform when he was President, and as it was insisted that the President be addressed by no honorific title but only as “Mister President” (like even the torture-whores do on ‘24’), so the Citizen’s is far more of an authoritative responsibility than the Soldier’s. In fact, it has probably been one of the toxic results of the militarization of Our society and culture that so many rights of the Citizen and the rights of so many citizens have been curtailed without public alarm: what’s a citizen anyway, or a citizen’s rights? Let’s be patriotic and go shoppin’! The experts know what they’re doing; ‘civilians’ would only get in the way.

We are Citizens, not civilians.

And if We had been doing Our job, then perhaps so many of our soldiers wouldn’t be dead now, or losing their lives, or their minds, or their spirits, or their souls, over there on the eastern front now.

Nor is it sufficient to say: ‘the troops want to stay over there, so who are We to say no?’ It’s Our call, not – bless them – theirs. We are not their commander-in-chief, but then again they are not ‘Presidential’ troops; they are American troops and We are The People. Nor are they ‘Congressional’ troops (and that seems increasingly obvious). And it is a consummation devoutly to be wished that the Supreme Court will not seek to reprise its Election-2000 clusterflok by assuming command of the troops in the field and making them ‘Judicial’ troops.

The People are responsible for the Soldier. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or for worse … And do We wonder why that responsibility has been neglected?

WHAT‘S A WEHRMACHT TO DO?

Bernd von Loringhoven died last week. He was a Baron and he served in the Cold-War Wehrmacht (the good one, our side, etc.) and in that resurrected Wehrmacht he rose to the rank of Lieutenant General. He lived in interesting times.

His most interesting historical experiences might have been those that took place in the Spring of 1945, in Berlin, in a certain bunker. Assigned to the staff of General Guderian, he stayed on when that immensely capable, no-nonsense officer was replaced at the Fuhrer’s order by the less-competent, more ‘loyal’ General Krebs. Thus, as a staff major Loringhoven was in the bunker almost to the end. He left because he told the demented Unitary Leader that he wanted to go and fight at the front (which by then was not much more than a couple-three blocks away), and the Ur/Uber/Haupt-Deciderer was overcome with patriotic and soldierly bonhomie, dismissing him with – may we say? – a blessing. With Russians everywhere, the major was able to surrender to Anglo-British forces by following the undying American adage to Go West. Where would they be without us, those Europeans?

It was how he got into the Army that is of relevance to Us today. In 1933, having studied law, he was confronted with the new Reich requirement that all lawyers be members of the Nazi Party. “I had studied law, but the profession was being taken over by the Nazis. The Wehrmacht seemed an honorable career.”

One’s first impulses upon reading this are sympathy and respect: here’s a man who at the outset of adulthood found himself in a nation that was rapidly sliding into organized barbarity and rather than cooperate by participating, he sought a more rigorous but honorable path: he joined the Army. Where, after all, can the good and upright citizen find a refuge from the ‘filth’ of sleaze and corruption and self-debasement if not in the military? We Americans of all peoples should understand that: who can forget the Reagan-era anointing of the military as not only representing the best that was in the American ethos and character, but actually embodying that ‘best’ in a way that no mere American ‘civilian’ can? Nobody did it like the military: efficient, upright, clear of eye and soul and skin. Midwest farmboys and even the average Mormon teen made great poster-children for the military in those years: crew-cut, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, respectful, obedient, patriotic.

But the ‘Army’ that the decent and estimable Loringhoven joined was a particular one in a particular time and place: the German Wehrmacht of 1933. No matter how well its capable officers and non-coms executed their duties, that army was morally doomed, and doubly so. It served the purposes of a violent, aggressive government debauched by an antihuman ideology and an intransigent moral pride of purpose and utterly removed from the essential Truth of humanity as the West had only recently managed to formulate and achieve that Truth. And on top of that it followed orders that not only made it refrain from ‘defending the defenseless’ (Douglas MacArthur’s clarion phrase to describe the purpose of a Western military) but actually made it assist in the destruction of the defenseless.

It is a truism that after the war that army claimed it ‘was only following orders’, which is what armies do. It is also a truism that in a state run by civilians the army must accede to the orders of the civilians. Of course Germany of that era was not governed by ‘civilians’, nor by its People: it was run by the Party of the Twelve Years, under the rule of its absolute Leader. But that was then and that was there. Here and now there are indeed ‘civilians’ in charge, although the degree of their integrity and maturity is open to question.

But whether or not an army follows its orders, whether or not it is ‘loyal’ to its governmental masters, is not the core reality that We must consider. Rather, We must contemplate the profound consequences flowing from a military that continues to contort itself ‘by any means necessary’ so as to continue following orders. If waging lengthy war, and a not particularly successful war, places stress on a military and its individual members, what further awefullness rushes in when the war is immoral? When the activities required to prosecute the war are immoral? When they create a profound revulsion within the individual soldier? When they don’t?

Worse, when many of the younger troops have been raised in a Flattened ethos where ‘judging’ immorality – except for the ever-handy ‘sex offender’ – is considered inappropriate and even meaningless? The past decades’ of not being ‘judgmental’ and of ‘making room’ for this, that, and the other thing have somehow effectively removed the basis for any boundaries upon the government’s acting evilly. But because there is a ‘soul’ in the human being – regardless of what ‘elite’ and ‘correct’ American thought might otherwise hold nowadays; and because there is a moral frontier on the far side of which no amount of good intention can redeem an evil act - regardless of what many fundamentalistic preachers might think; and because there is a fundamental human-ness within each and all humans – regardless of uniform or ‘orders’ – that cannot be escaped … because of those unspinnable realities (‘Realities- - capital ‘R’, might not be out of place now) our soldiery now bear monstrous burdens.

We look back on a young von Loringhoven, and on hundreds of thousands like him, who in that era and that place, seeking to invest their life in some decent and successful enterprise, turned to the Wehrmacht not only for employment but also for fulfillment. And yet – no matter how faithful and rigorous their efforts, in life or in death – the sum total of their achievement is tainted for the rest of human history by the Cause to whose ‘orders’ they remained obedient.

Could they do otherwise? Not realistically so. But so what? That fact hardly dents the monstrous moral futility of their lives, the moral derangement that could not have simply ‘gone away’ on May 9, 1945 when Germany surrendered. The individuals, and the Wehrmacht as an organization, were not only individually and organizationally maimed, but morally infected and corrupted. Monstrously so.

It was Germany’s blessing – the old French ‘blessure’ might better express it – that she was so thoroughly defeated. Those who sought to acknowledge the massive monstrousness of the Twelve Years in order to repair and redeem the damage could do so with the guarded approval of a common, popular opinion that could not deny what had happened to Germany and – to some extent anyway – what Germany had done.

It is not probable that America will experience such a ‘blessure’ (although it cannot be ruled out). We did not receive such an unmistakable revelation in Vietnam, and as a result the back&forth as to that war’s ‘meaning’ has continued, its only ‘redemption’ being the shallow but brassy Reaganite restoration of public esteem for things military and a spate of cheap action flicks where ‘we win’ (and those ubiquitous black flags). But there can be no doubt that this society will eventually have to re-embrace dozens of thousands of individual soldiers who were caught in the hot, soul-deforming toils of this invasion and its consequences, and that this nation will for a long generation to come be protected by a military officered and led by those who traversed the dark, hot paths of a moral hell. Those are journeys that not even angels make without loss and wound.

The JAGs have come in for more than a drubbing on this site, since their entire operation was fundamentally deformed long before it was then placed in the service of The Twelve Years and the Unitarium. History will hold Us all responsible for the recent comments of one Mr. Dell’Orto, Pentagon spokesman, about the military commissions/tribunals: the rules (inter alia: defense lawyers cannot reveal classified information in their client’s defense until the government/prosecutor approves; suspects will only get summaries of evidence against them – in effect, the government controls the evidence if not also the defense counsel) will “afford all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples” (www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011807R.shtml).

This pious blather, wrapping these monstrous wolfish ‘trials’ in the angelic garb of the best that Western Justice and jurisprudence has laboriously managed to achieve, cannot simply be indulged as public-relations boilerplate. It constitutes treachery – purposeful, conscious treachery against Truth, against Justice, against the very best of the Western and the American traditions. It is also pretty standard military ‘justice’ procedure, and has been for quite a long time. And it’s being done on Our dime and in Our name. Can a people be ‘civilized’ without a soul? What sort of hollow ‘civilization’ might that be?

Doesn’t History even now hold them at arm’s length: all those eager and not-bestial German youth who once marched off to war? All those German citizens who minded their business and just tried to get by? What will history say of Us? The Deciderer, with the self-protecting shrewdness usually seen in profoundly criminal or addictive personalities, has already asserted that only ‘history’ can judge him, that only ‘God’ can judge him, thereby effectively removing his actions from any more immediate consequences (those large and loud beliefs notwithstanding, he nonetheless bent nearer to earth and insured his own legal safety by having many of his actions declared retroactively ‘legal’ in the same Act that established the military commissions).

With ominous accuracy, Col. Dan Smith publishes an article entitled “The Tillman Affair and the Moral Decay of the Army: ‘Have You No Sense of Decency?’” (www.counterpunch.com/smith04042007.html). We can only thank him for it. There appear to be far more virulent, vicious, and destructive ‘indecencies’ going on in this country than the kind that lead on local TV news. He limns in awful detail, with crisp and clear military precision, just what is starting to happen – is indeed well-advanced. We have to hear it, We have to know it. We cannot hide from it. We must help our military recover from the consequences and We must help the world recover from our military. And there is no time to go shopping.

Stephen Greenblatt has a superb article (“Shakespeare and the Uses of Power”, www.nybooks.com/articles/20073) in ‘The New York Review of Books’ (Vol. 54, No. 6, April 12, 2007). Greenblatt deals with the Shakespearian conundrum: all the characters who actively grasp for power are too morally unfit to wield it and all those with a clear ethical vision seek to avoid or unburden themselves of power. It is this awareness, I think, that also informs the Founders almost two centuries later: wielding power is inherently a morally damaging enterprise, and nobody can be trusted to do it and remain ‘pure’; and everybody who wields it has to be checked-and-balanced, and watched carefully. And they were OK with that; the Constitutional government they devised put up enough speed-bumps and its machinery was clanky enough so that no ethically-deformed power-grabber could run away with the whole thing. And that was their practical response to the problem Shakespeare had perceived so acutely.

In a mass democracy this solution to this problem is itself problematical. Too many citizens will seek to shortcut or simplify their daily toils by investing their elected officials with a too-indulgent trust; and the Fundamentalistic soul actually conflates the government leadership with God’s Will itself.

In a technically-complex civilization, even the most alert of citizens cannot be expected to know enough to keep a successful eye on every matter of even major public import.

In a National Security State those government leaders will try to keep as much information as possible hidden; the active, alert, skeptical inquiring adult citizen will not be welcome – rather, the leaders prefer the easily-distracted, under-informed, uncertain, unripe citizen whose energies are squandered on matters not affecting the common weal but rather on matters affecting the textures of one’s comforts and private concerns.

And in a National Krime State, citizens are lulled into thinking that they are doing their bit by responding with approving outrage to any ‘criminal’ the government chooses to haul before them (the media eagerly providing lurid footage or innuendo), and thus the police power of the state, all ‘in a good cause’, is expanded until no private or interior space is safe from the power of the state. (As one Nazi governmental official, Robert Ley, put it in the 1937: When we are finished the only privacy the German citizen will have is when he is asleep.)

Lincoln spoke rightly and wisely when he reminded Congress and the citizens that “we cannot escape History”. I think he meant that in at least two senses: We cannot escape the judgment of History, and we cannot escape the consequences that inevitably flow from whatever actions we take to make or influence History, to respond to or to shape events. We cannot escape judgment and consequences.

What von Loringhoven felt when he realized that his treasured Wehrmacht was not only losing the war but also its soul, its integrity, its character, and that in consequence his entire life’s work was also losing its integrity and its character … what he and who knows how many other German military members felt when they realized THAT … is certainly a fit subject for Our contemplation today.

But unlike the Germans of The Twelve Years, We are still The People and this government – contrary to Cheney and Gonzales and Yoo and all the resurgent Confederate-worshippers and all the Fundamentalist gummint-worshippers and all the neocon empire-worshippers – is of Us and for Us and by Us, and through our faithful administration of our Constitutional principles a great good flows into History and into this world. Republican or Democrat, each of Us needs to shake off the Miasm of The Twelve Years (and in no small way the last thirty-five or so years) and People this Republic through an honest and mature public politics (not a contradiction in terms!).

There is far too much History ahead, and not very far ahead, for Us, to put off this process of public and political maturity any longer. In fact, since We have lost so much of our ‘common weal’ over the past decades, then this is a call to a resurrection of sorts, certainly of ‘a new birth of freedom’, but a ‘freedom’ that can only flow from a serious laying-ahold of Our own responsibilities.

WOMEN, PRIVATES, WARS

Over on Salon, Helen Benedict has a story about women soldiers fighting off men soldiers ("The Private War of Women Soldiers", (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/07/women_in_military/).

This has been discussed at length here in the Post "Facts on the Ground" http://chezodysseus.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html).

I'll just synopsize it this way: The situation this article describes is serious and merits much attention. However we must not yield to the dynamics of the original mistake: to permit a complex and huge change in a monstrously sensitive and crucial area of national functioning without serious deliberation.

The matter of women-in-the-military was pushed through in the past two decades with only the simplest of characterizations – bordering almost on the cartoonish, and it was cast as merely a subset of and ‘just the next logical step in’ the ongoing liberation of women.

It was hugely more than that. The actual vision was hardly simple, composed of three large and largely un-examined demands: that women be allowed into the active-duty military and not merely as ‘auxiliaries’; that women participate in combat; that women serve in mixed-gender units. Any one of the above would have generated significant and vital debate, discussion, and deliberation – as should happen in a deliberative democracy and among a democratic People. But such is not the modus operandi of revolutions, especially in our modern American reality where Identities and their professional advocacies cast each large demand as an undeniable redress for an ancient evil that must be righted today if not yesterday.

In an effort to create ‘facts on the ground’, regardless of the possible consequences, the demands were incorporated back in the days when the US was flush with cash and the USSR had just collapsed, making the prospect of further serious ground combat and military risk appear to be almost nil. All three demands were more or less met.

Let’s focus for a moment only on the third: mixed-gender units. Just why there had to be mixed-gender units was never satisfactorily established. Certainly the ineluctable consequence – sexual activity, unlovely in so many ways and hugely distracting in any case – should have given serious pause. It did not. The fiction imposed was that inter-troop sex is merely the result of a failure in ‘leadership’, and that unit commanders would be held responsible. The fatuousness of suggesting that sex between two human beings – voluntary or not – is primarily a function of the leadership of a third stuns.

Predictably now we are bethumped with horror stories and horrific reports of women being molested. But such a casting of the problem – as essentially a Lifetime woman-in-trouble script – cannot be accepted as the defining parameters of the problem. The option of single-gender units would have hugely reduced this ancient and ageless probability of ‘sex’ and can still do so now. Surely the alternative – to imagine that sexual relations are amenable to the imprecations of advocacies and the harrumphings of Congress – is as feckless as King Canute trying to command the tides.

This is not a plea for a return to macho rapine nor a dismissive insensitivity to women. All of the troops over there now – and it surely is old-fashioned combat – have their hands full being boots-on-the-ground without the distractions of being ‘facts on the ground’ for this or that ill-considered and poorly thought-out experiment.

MERCENARY THOUGHTS

Over on Alternet Lorelei Kelly, former Hill staffer, has a piece entitled “Mercenaries are in the military to stay: Get Used To It!” (http://www.alternet.org/story/48241/). Lord, X-wave feminist style hasn’t helped matters at all, even when they’re serious.

The article has a serious chunk to offer. The military – apparently – has been presiding over its own privatization for “years”. This IS interesting. We had sorta gotten used to the idea that they now had civilan cooks and bottlewashers over there in Bosnia, and even that ‘some’ private-security folks were tromping around Baghdad, presumably privately engaged by this or that Iraqi bigwig to man his motorcades and take the kids to school. But now it appears that there are “100,000 contractors … including 25,000 private security contractors”. That’s a lot of motorcades and the school parking lots must look like marshaling yards for an entire Panzer division. And if it’s like that in Baghdad, where our glorious forces are establishing the world’s strongest embassy … ach. As the BBC series “The World At War” pithily put it: “In 1943 in Berlin it was better listening to music than to news.” Cue the Beethoven; hold Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”.

She calls it “a virtual army of largely unregulated individuals working on behalf of U.S. national interests”. I’m not about to grant that. As employees, they are wherever they are in behalf of the interests of whatever entity hired them and pays them. If the interests of the US government happen to coincide, fine and dandy; if not … what then? And if we are talking about the companies providing bad water and bad food to the troops, well then we’re looking at the type of business that was last done on this scale in the Civil War when the early corporations provided rotten tinned meat to the boys in blue at Gettysburg and there was so much paper in the uniforms that they literally dissolved off a soldier’s body in the first rain. Lack of Humvee armor and ineffective body-armor wouldn’t be any surprise to Grant’s and Sherman’s boys. But many of them died, and the corporations that sold the junk to the Union Army went on to long, cash-fat, respectable lives, as did the desk-riding colonels and generals who approved the contracts.

“They are all legitimate businesses” she points out. Welllll … slavery was legitimate for quite a while, of course; it only takes a law to make something ‘legitimate’ and now they’ve got one that has legitimized torture and even one for making legitimate what was feloniously illegitimate when it was committed. The wonders of modern legislation! More recently we have seen more than enough to induce us to consider any private contractor with its jaws clamped tightly into the cash-fat corpus of the Pentagon as ‘suspicious’.

“The military”, she asserts, “has been colonized by corporations.” Willy Tango Foxtrot? The Pentagon isn’t like some remote, fortified Pacific island where the corporations could land like Marines and take the place over after some serious gunplay. If the corporations are in the fort, somebody had to open the gate – from the inside. And if it’s been going on for so long and it’s an established fact, then a lot of generals and admirals must have known about it. So why no alarm? Were they bought off by the corporations? Were they willing to have all these corporations and their mercenaries come in?
Those are unhappy roads, either of them. Save money on troops that you can then quietly divert to buy weapons-systems that can outclass the latest Soviet stuff? Give out contracts so that you can get hired as a consultant after you retire with a DSM? Hold your tongue so you don’t endanger your next promotion or your next assignment? To read Ms. Kelly you get the idea the Pentagon was invaded and taken over. You don’t just go over an “colonize” the Pentagon. Except in the movies. And there is a difference. Still. Isn’t there?

And yet she wants us to just accept this ‘colonization’ as a fact, regardless of how it happened (and she has nothing to say about how it happened). Even if “the billions of dollars disappeared by contractors in Iraq make Abramoff look like Little Bo Peep”. Now that has to be a lot of money; Washington City for the period of the Twelve Years has resembled nothing so much as Rome at its decadent worst. To do worse than the best of the K-Street scummies is to do very bad indeed. And yet we are to accept as a given that these players are somehow now at the table and that’s that? In the matter of national defense, in the matter of turning civilian nationals loose with powerful weapons in a foreign country and in a war zone … we are supposed to just ‘Get used to it’ …? Or to ‘Get over it’ … ? Like this was just some campus dust-up over a woman president or gays on the football squad? And if we keep asking questions, are we simply to be dismissed because we “just don’t get it” … ?

The turkeys of symbolic politics played to the pretensions of a peanut gallery are coming home to roost with a vengeance. The same gummy pudding that passed for ‘serious’ in the dorm cafeteria is supposed to determine how we conduct the matter of lethal violence waged against other peoples on the responsibility of the American government and the American People.

And the bloody tip of this problem is precisely that: lethal force and the responsibility for authorizing it. We can’t even control our uniformed troops as well as we’d like to think (Abu Graib, some of these incidents out in the field) and we are going to let a bunch of mercenaries loose with even bigger and better guns? And they will certainly be taken by the locals as acting with the authority of the United States. With Our authority as The People. Is this what we want? Can a nation even do that? Should it? Is it at all wise?

We apparently have not only mercenary cooks and bottlewashers and vehicle-gassers and barracks-cleaners (and guys to work porta-potty trucks … imagine if one of those takes a direct hit). We also have mercenary combat personnel (and not just guys sitting in limos next to the Client). Is this true? And the Pentagoons are good with this?

So Ms. Kelly reports that a lot of these mercenaries are well-trained (ex-military, many of them, no doubt) and well-intentioned and patriotic. But … they got out. But now they’re back. Pay’s better – no doubt. Still, she’s glad that they’ve been brought under the authority of military justice now (apparently neither she nor they are very familiar with the sausage machine within whose kill zone they have now been chained).

And she urges that this whole thing should really be discussed. Well, no – actually she wants Congress to exercise better oversight. But ‘oversight’ assumes that the mercenaries are there and that their being there is a done deal, may be even a good thing. Maybe.

So the mercenaries are now ‘facts on the ground’ and we just have to ‘deal with it’. Well, we do have to deal with this thing. Whether we have to accept it is another question. We most certainly have to think the thing through from the get-go and take nothing for granted. Maybe we will decide that private security companies are indeed n-o-t “here to stay”. We can do that. It would be ‘legitimate’. We are, after all, The People, and that still counts for something.

MOYERS TWO

The second Moyers article is an address he gave to the National Conference for Media in Memphis, entitled “Life on the Plantation” (www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011807B.shtml).

He quotes something long ascribed to Ben Franklin, that pithy public observer: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner: Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting that vote”.

In that image we can see the motivations of the Founders, eager to protect the nascent United States from the shrewdly ravenous appetites of kings and empires, and the necessarily lamb-like People from the inborn darker proclivities of the government power. And we can see the motivations of Abraham Lincoln, resolutely determined to deploy the government power to protect the United States from the inborn proclivity of all federations to spin themselves apart over time. And we can see the motivations of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt who realized that the government power when properly wielded is a powerful weapon with which to defend the People from the darker inborn proclivities of entrenched Property and corporate power and wealth.

But – typically American – the ‘well-armed’ has been seen as something material, something tangible, whether an actual firearm or a statutorily-erected ‘right’ enforced by the government power on behalf – ideally – of The People. And since we are a nation of laws, then laws and their vigilant enforcement constitute an indispensable weapon in Our defense against Power, which most surely and ceaselessly does go about, seeking whom it may devour.

But law is not Our first line-of-defense, not Our fundamental weapon. For Us to be well-armed we each must be well-matured – in spirit and in the ‘higher skills’ that constitute the human birth-right, the human nature, the human gift to the vast Life of which humanity is so marvelous a part. Without being so armed, We will be incapable of ‘guarding our guards themselves’, incapable of Peopling the intricate and monstrously powerful engines that our civilization has erected and switched-on.

One of those ‘engines’ so surely designed to work almost directly for Us is the media, once known as ‘the press’. If We are not adequately and accurately informed of what is being done in the myriad nooks and crannies of our intricate and vast civilization, then We will not know what actions need to be taken. We collectively are the captain of the vessel (Yes, I’ve said it – the President is Commander-in-Chief of the military, not of the country and not of The People). The captain needs to know everything so as to be able to devise and decide the best course. We are collectively ‘the captain’. We must guard Our vital prerogative to be kept informed, and preferably as early on as possible.

Thus the vital role of the media – truly Our media. And in that regard, Moyers very rightly pinpoints the disastrous Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a fateful turning-point in the history of this Republic.

We have to stop and really give some thought to this. It’s understandable – but hardly justifiable – that We cannot be fully alive to doings that took place long decades and centuries ago in the history of the Republic. But 1996 was a mere 11 years ago; the ‘90s themselves were the decade immediately preceding the present decade. So much was done then. The pandering to corporations, so stereotypically the preferred prostitution of the Right, was matched by a hugely ill-considered (perhaps more accurately unconsidered) pandering to the Left. To mollify the demands of this or that Advocacy, to surf the waves of this or that ‘panic’ or ‘mania’ huge gaps were hacked out of Constitutional protections.

The media, which had already compromised themselves in the decades-old relinquishment of the search for Truth and even accuracy and truth, in order to ‘help’ and to ‘advocate’ (not their task in the vital engineering scheme of the Republic), were so compromised by the mid-90s that it is no surprise that they were seen no longer as a vital ‘institution’ of the Republic but simply as a commercial, cash-flow producing opportunity, much akin to entertainment, but enjoying the huge advantage of not being considered ‘fiction’ the way Hollywood movies and TV shows were.

If the robustly talented manipulations of a Rupert Murdoch could essentially create ‘shows’ that were endowed with the status of ‘news’, the media had done almost as much to themselves in the preceding decades, helping to enforce the ‘political correctness’ that stifled Our deliberations as to the assorted gambits – many not clearly desirable or workable – of the assorted Revolutions.

Moyers sees this 1996 Act as contributing to a “plantation mentality”, surely toxic to any Republic. In the scheme of the plantation, The People were reduced to status of the field-hands (May I respectfully not adhere strictly to the analogy by calling them ‘slaves’? It is too freighted a term to use here.) The ‘masters’ would be the corporate biggies, faithfully abetted by a national political class that had given up on the idea of ‘uniting’ the now-Balkanized citizenry and instead settled for pandering to and distracting the various sub-sets of citizens while accepting ‘contributions’ from the ever-reliable corporate deep-pockets; a time-honored form of non-sexual prostitution that the Framers had done everything they could think of to prevent.

And the media, impartial servants of Truth’s flame, already weakened in spirit for decades as aforesaid, were formally put on the auction-block, marketed to the highest bidder (the afore-mentioned corporate deep-pockets). Historians will one day point to this as a gravely dangerous milestone on the road that led down and away from 1776.

Moyers asserts that there are “two basic pillars of American society – shared economic prosperity and a public sector capable of serving the common good”. He’s right. And to see that the sustained economic prosperity of the post-1945 period is no longer ‘operational’ is the beginning of American wisdom. And to consider that Supreme Court Justices and the White House are cheer-leading the torture-happy, boyo-swaggering blood-blasting of a show such as “24” is to sense the tremors triggered by a profound rot.
But if those are two pillars, then the foundation is The People. It is The People who – through the working of the Constitution – ground the three Branches. An educated and an informed People is the indispensable foundation of the whole thing. No longer informed by the media, insufficiently educated so as to be able to process what information might be received, The People cannot anchor the whole apparatus. Its still-tremendous power begins to fly off in increasingly wild gyrations, domestically and in foreign-adventures. To Our great detriment. And to the detriment of all the world’s peoples, whose hope in the American ideal is bitterly dashed even as weapons rain upon them.

And if, beyond being un-informed by the media, The People are mis-informed, if The People are doused not simply with misinformation but with untruths so complexly interwoven as to constitute a sort of anti-information, then the rot is greatly advanced.

I wrestle with Moyers’ characterization of the media as being “sitting ducks”, set up by the plantation mentality. As indicated above, I think that the turn from ‘accuracy journalism’ to ‘advocacy journalism’ was a lethal self-inflicted wound, decades old by the mid-90s. The Fundamentalistic-neocon Ascendancy is not simply a disease but an opportunistic disease; it made use of what it found, of the weakened no-longer-robust condition of the media’s character and dedication to its original and first principles as they were presumed in the schematic of the Republic.

But he knows – without a doubt – still many journalists who are seeking to fulfill their calling and to discharge their large and ancient (in American terms) responsibilities. It is on that remnant that Our hopes must be pinned.

And perhaps that the infamous Act might, among so many other more recent infamous Acts, be repealed or at least greatly repaired.

We must indeed be an inquiring People. We need to know. We must want to know. Not only does the buck stop with Us, but it is our buck (trillions of them) to begin with. Virgins or not – and We are now too deeply enmeshed in the recent doings of our government power to claim that status – We must be wise, robustly and vigorously and authoritatively and unsleepingly wise.

“Soldiers”, famously, “are citizens of death’s grey land; they draw no dividends from Time’s tomorrows”. If We have sent many of our young on that vividly somber journey, and We have, then We must do all that We can to arrange matters so that they might still have cause to hope in ‘tomorrow’, that they and all of our young may live lives forelit by the possibility of just dividends that will enable them to bear the dark battles that must be borne today. It is Our responsibility to ensure that they do not return to a plantation life, facing the life of field-hands then even as they now bear the burdens common to all soldiers sent on missions such as this errand into the wilderness to which We have presently committed them.

MORE GREAT WATADA

Over on Atlantic Free Press Jayne Lyn Stahl has a Watada article (“Conduct Unbecoming”, (http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/908/81/#jc_allComments).

Following the article there are Comments, and many of them – all civil and reasonable – quote assorted military documents.The assorted Commenters who quote chapter and verse of this or that military Manual or even Oath strike me as well-intentioned. But in military ops well-intentioned isn’t enough. Not hardly.

They are seeking to establish certainty on a field which is, at its deepest core, uncertain. In the area of military enterprise, American and Western tradition resembles the planet itself: on the surface hard and solid and conforming to physical laws, but at its core it is hot and molten and semi-fluid and responding to pressures we cannot fully predict and ‘laws’ we cannot fully comprehend.

This is the result of the American and Western tradition, especially as formulated after World War 2. This tradition relies – as any Democracy must – upon the moral character and the moral agency of the individual Citizen-soldier (notice which comes first). And with that authority of the moral agent comes the responsibility of the moral agent to use his skills to live up to his authority and exercise it properly. This has always – whether we took the trouble to remember it or not – distinguished the soldiery of a Democracy from the soldiery of Empire.

This is the reason why the embrace of military service in a Democracy is such a freighted public act: the individual Citizen commits to this fundamental task. And is bound to it not only by responsibility as a Citizen and as an individual moral agent, but also by American and military law. Nuremberg executed German officers who claimed they were only fulfilling their oath when they gave orders and carried out orders that were clearly in violation not only of international practice and justice and humanity, but also were – in Douglas MacArthur’s thinking – a violation of the very essence of a soldier in a Democracy: “to defend the defenseless”. And thus too did we execute General Yamashita for his command role in the Bataan Death March.

Watada confronts precisely this ‘core’ ground: if he is required by law and regulation to disobey any illegal or unlawful order, then he must exercise his moral agency by judging the order. While he has no right to disobey a ‘stupid’ or a ‘dumb’ order (Yet how many heroic and vaunted soldiers have, and have been decorated for it? How many have given such orders, gotten troops killed, and still prospered in their military career?) yet he must take his stand against an illegal or unlawful order. Whether the order to report to an unlawful war is itself illegal, or whether only the war itself is unlawful strikes me as a distinction without a difference. And who among us doubts that the current Iraq War is unlawful and illegal according to national and international law (Watada was willing to go to Afghanistan instead)?

In this type of ‘core’ engagement, quoting chapter and verse of a Manual is the equivalent of Braddock marching his redcoats in column through the Pennsylvania woods, hoping that their intense faithfulness to the Manual would see them through to success. Not hardly. In the uncertain and fluid operating environment of the ‘core’ Battlespace, skills are required which are hell-and-gone from the usual soldierly skills of obedience and conformity.

This is hugely uncertain Ground, and it is not at all in the best interest of militaries to allow its junior members – certainly – to be confronted with a ‘core’ engagement. The solution is to prevent things from coming to this pass by the brass not letting unlawful and illegal wars develop in the first place. Had fewer brass been unwilling to endanger their careers and their promatability in the run-up to this war, then this stampede might never have started. But with all their oaths and Manuals and medals, the brass did not take a stand, not even to Congress (such as it was).

And as for Watada being disloyal or unfaithful to his comrades by failing his unit … many noncoms and J.O.’s stayed faithful to their units on the Eastern Front and in the ghettos of Poland and the villages of the Ukraine, on the Bataan Death March, and in so many other places. Having failed to engage the ‘core’ when the situation required it, they and the troops to whom they remained loyal all died in a bad cause – for all their loyalty and heroism.

Militaries serving governments of the Dark Side – Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia – have always sought to get rid of those soldiers who ‘wavered’ or ‘doubted’. Such could be shot or sent to Siberia. The best the Pentagoons could come up with to perform this role was the military-justice system, which does its best under the demanding limitations of a Democracy that respects the individual moral agency of the Citizen-soldier. But this is also why there is such a press on by assorted groups to imperialize our military. Make no mistake: to imperialize the troops is to de-Citizenize the troops. Just as sure as an Empire does not require a Constitution and thus does not require The People. (We as a People are facing a ‘core’ political and cultural confrontation nowadays, just as our soldiers – exemplified by 1st Lt. Watada – are facing a ‘core’ military confrontation.)

The standard military ‘world’ of certainty and obedience and loyalty, so simple in a fundamental way, is not surprisingly an object of nostalgia and a model for making one’s way through the jungles of life. But what faces us all here is a Vertical drop to the ‘core’, which urgently requires a Vertical ascent to the heights of one’s character and virtue and authority as a Citizen-solider and as an individual human being and moral agent.

We owe 1st Lt. Watada a deep debt of gratitude. A moment for that – and then each of us must get on with the great unfinished work lying urgently before us which he has thus far so nobly advanced.

FACTS ON THE GROUND

There’s an article on Truthout by Sarah Rich called “Good Order and Discipline” (www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020607L.shtml). Ms. Rich is a social worker; her daughter is Suzanne Swift, a female soldier (an MP) who is presently pursuing some type of sexual harassment charges against the Army while also receiving some form of in-patient mental health care while also awaiting court martial. The alleged harassment (Ms. Rich slides into “molestation” here and there) has led to Ms. Swift’s desire for a discharge, while the commanding officer (a female colonel) of this MP unit seems to be going – as aforenoted - for a court-martial. Ms. Rich is not at all pleased.

Contemplating this scenario one is reminded of the tactical and strategic gambit called “creating facts on the ground”. To the best of my knowledge, the actual phrase was created – and the gambit deployed – by the Zionists in the post-World War 2 era.

The gist of its modus operandi was that this matter (giving “the land of Israel” as a self-governing haven in atonement and compensation for the Holocaust) was far too important to be left up to discussion, hemming and hawing and chin-stroking. Rather, the Zionist strategy should be to move Jews (again, I don’t like this fore-shortened term) onto the land immediately, regardless of the state of discussions; thereby, one creates “facts on the ground” that have to be taken into account no matter what one’s more abstract thoughts and ideas might be (or, more precisely, ‘have been’ before the aforesaid “facts” were suddenly created and injected into the equation).

The matter was actually not one of pure and utter urgency: there was little chance of the Third Reich coming back in 1946 or subsequently. But it was certainly a matter that would allow, indeed would demand, serious reflection and deliberation. After all, to set up such a state in the midst of unfriendly peoples who had been occupying the property and did not recognize the Judeo-Christian scriptures as a basis for this-worldly land-taking … this was a step fraught with long-term consequences.

With shrewdness and chutzpah the Zionists decided to go for an end-run around deliberation, not illogically assuming that a matter this complicated would not be decided for a long time, and quite possibly not in their favor. Better to force the issue by creating those “facts on the ground”, after which point they would sit at the discussion table armed with more than abstractions such as ideas and ideals.

It was a foxy maneuver, but in an eminently good cause, and in this world how much closer to perfection could you reasonably expect to get? In regard to its merits in the long-term nothing here is ventured.

But it cannot escape notice that in the same time-frame when the feminist Revolution (one of those Revolutions of the Identities discussed on this site) was being effected, this strategy of our newly-minted Israeli friends (we had tilted toward them after LBJ pretty much reversed JFK’s policy) was apparently adopted by the shapers of the Revolution.

The shapers themselves were urging numerous immediate and far-reaching changes whose claims to legitimacy were in many ways modest at best and might thus be debated and deliberated endlessly. So it apparently became the strategy – wherever possible – to create their own version of “facts on the ground”, the very existence of which would then give their wielders more leverage in the on-going revolutionary horse-trading to come.

It seems to me that one area where such ‘facts’ were created before the whole thing was carefully thought through was in this matter of placing women in the military. Not that there is no case to be made for it, certainly. Rather, that it was insisted from the very beginning that women were not simply to be given a place in the military, but had to serve in mixed-gender units with males. Which was a whole ‘nother issue altogether, but which was somehow bundled with the general ‘women in the military’ matter; somewhat like the old WW2 war-film gambit of a submarine getting into the enemy’s protected anchorage by hiding under a freighter authorized to pass through the opening in the anti-sub net.

It has been discussed elsewhere on this site (“Sex Offends Military Justice”), but Ms. Rich offers a couple of fresh opportunities for reflection.

The espousal of the facts-on-the-ground strategy is understandable. As said above, the proposed changes were large and deep and their claim to the status of justice and ‘reality’ was hardly adamantine or irrefutable; the discussions and deliberations involved in formal adoption (or quite possibly rejection) of the proposals could have gone on ‘forever’, or reasonably close to it.

But then bundled with the demands that women serve in the military and that they serve in combat, was a third demand that women serve only in mixed gender units, or on mixed-gender ships. There was not only very modest conceptual justification for this third demand, but it was gravid with almost insoluble problems. If supplying ‘feminine products’ – however widely or narrowly defined – was going to be a challenge to the military, then having to supply them to mixed-gender units would pose far more problems than to single-gender units. More importantly, and almost ‘classical’, was the matter of sex.

In the early-‘90s, this problem posed massive enough questions. Sex being almost hard-wired into the male of the species in order to ensure propagation, there were few ‘disciplines’ ever historically imposed upon (male) troops or accepted by troops that fully neutralized the distractions that accompanied even the most tenuous sexual opportunity. Indeed, absent any actual opportunities, imagined and fantasized ‘opportunities’ were substituted, and not infrequently to the point of obsession.

Such distractions always posed a problem for field commanders. You wanted your troops to be as ‘stoked’ as they could be, yet you didn’t want them distracted from the military mission and the ‘stoked’ energies thus wasted. And once troops under pressure encountered females – especially foreign and civilian – in the course of their operations, then all sorts of unlovely situations could arise.

It quickly becomes clear simply on the theoretical level that to mix genders among troops, especially in combat, was going to pose problems pretty much on the level of ‘making a jet fly in reverse’. But those were the salad days: the Soviet Union had just fallen, the U.S. had no peer-enemies and the whole world seemed happy, and the revolutionists might be forgiven for figuring that ‘now’ was as good a time as any to create “facts” which could be finessed later on, the whole thing not standing much chance of incurring its own worst possible consequences.

The brass saw that they were over a barrel. If they claimed the thing couldn’t be done, then ‘the women’ would mock their ‘can-do’ bravado and their assertions that in the U.S. military the impossible will take a few minutes and the difficult will be successfully accomplished immediately. And so, figuring uneasily that they should have some breathing space before ‘reality’ had to be faced out there in the actual world, the brass got on the bandwagon and allowed as how – shucks – this is a doable-do. Of course it is, glared ‘the women’: we would expect nothing less from our valiant generals. Congress was happy to avoid unpleasantness. Things moved along quickly.

Then came the sex-offense craze of the mid-‘90s. Date-rape, violence against women, sexual assault, sexual violence (a term Ms. Rich uses), molestation (ditto), sexual abuse (ditto). Attempting to surf these tricky and even dangerous new waves, the military – having yielded to all three of the major demands – now found itself trying to control sexual encounters in mixed gender units while simultaneously not utterly degrade the fighting spirit of the male troops, but in an environment now where any allegation had to be accepted at face value, and where such alleged encounters might even not-include actual sex.

If the matter has vexed and deformed civilian justice, it has created even more dangerous complications in the military. Not that military justice is any great shakes, but that the nation then entered a period where actual major and sustained ground combat became a reality. Suddenly, the revolutionary plan of exploiting its “facts” for maximum pervasive effect throughout the military while enjoying the leisure afforded by the post-Soviet world order was almost completely undercut.

And it can come as no surprise that there is now a rising chorus of complaint of ‘sex offenses’ in Iraq. It is anybody’s guess how much pressure troops are under in the failing and lethal maelstrom that has become Iraq and the life of the average solider in Iraq. To add that a sexual ‘incident’ can be made out of a look, a comment, or any number of non-material elements short of physical touching or violence … the consequences of this “facts on the ground” strategy, especially in its 3rd-level aspect of mixed-gender units or gender-mixed operating areas, are now home to roost.

If it seems hugely unwise to subject already-pressed troops (male or female) to the distractions of sexual possibility, it seems just about criminal to subject those troops (especially the males) to the classic tropes and slippery roads of the ‘sex offender’ script. They are in a battlezone with no ‘rear areas’, where everywhere is ‘the front’ and the enemy could be anybody out there beyond the wire. And to this we insist on adding the possibility that a look or a comment will subject them to charges? It can hardly be any wonder that combat-and-brass harassed unit commanders are setting the bar of formal action rather higher than the revolution would prefer; there is – as used to be said – a war on.

Ms. Rich exemplifies the problem clearly. In defense of her daughter’s cause she deploys just about every element of the classic civilian sex-offense script: “sexual violence” is not clearly described although variously appears to be untoward comments or a touch (but may be worse – it’s hard to tell); “rape” and “abuse” – vastly distinct on the spectrum are combined into a single phrase; “winks” and “nods” between “battle buddies” (so male) are involved; the damage to her daughter is “devastation”; the military is “an archaic institution” and has no honor and is hypocritical; the male troops are “sexual predators”; her daughter suffers “humiliation” and then in-patient acute psychiatric care; who will enforce the “civil rights” of those who voluntarily enlist; her daughter is only 19. A presentation as ‘classic’ and as familiar as any in Soviet Realism, and ably deployed.

If any of the foregoing recitation appears to tend toward the less-than-serious, I state right now that such is not my intention. I take this all very very seriously.

But I will not permit myself to slough off into the approved and conventional script patterns. It is gravely serious that this whole gambit of women and the military – in mixed gender units and at the front – was undertaken without adequate consideration as to what might happen in actual wartime conditions (as opposed to – say – ‘war’ as it was waged on the flying Marriott concierge-suite that was the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701D back in the day); it is gravely serious that feminists were willing to use young women – many of them needy in so many ways – as pawns to be made into the revolution’s “facts”; it is almost criminally serious that careerist generals and admirals allowed themselves to be stampeded into promising that they could suppress the male-urges of their often young and needy troops through the simple application of good old American military discipline; it is pathetically serious that politicians were happy just to be taken off the hook so that two seemingly irreconcilable ‘interests’ could be simultaneously mollified and pandered-unto without voters being alienated. Phooey.

And as always, who pays? It all flows downhill to the little people at the front, now male and female. They will be further empawned as ‘roles’ in this or that ‘script’ – the predatory rape-happy male, the helpless victimized female, the sleazy and insensitive and uncaring unit commander – while the hell that is a day in Iraq engulfs them all.

Like so much else in Iraq, and like so much that has happened within this country and this culture, that is now fraying under the pressure of Iraq, this sex-offense-Script-meets- War is an outmoded strategy that should have been reworked long before now.

The real travails of Ms. Rich and her daughter offer Us an opportunity how We might best arrange matters so that the lives of our staggering troops are not further burdened. To be a set of “boots on the ground” is task enough. The ploy of “facts on the ground” will have to wait.

MINISTRY OF FORCE

Among the many dark flowers that have blossomed during the Incumbency, a lesser-known but particularly noxious one is the proliferation of mercenary chaplaincy within the military.

The Fundamentalist Ascendancy within the organized chaplain corps of the Services has already been discussed (see “Bishops Bomb”) as has the increasingly whacky but influential spread of the virulent ‘Dominionist’ strain of Fundamentalistic religiosity (see “American Shin-toe” and “Crazy for God”).

But what we are seeing now is something not quite the same. At least within the Service structures there can be a reasonable hope that when the baleful influence of this Incumbency fades, the Ascendancy – being a creature of it – will fade with it. Some restoration toward balance will almost naturally take place, organizational dynamics being what they are.

But with the spread of so-called Force Ministries we see an extra-organizational, almost extracurricular ‘chaplaincy’. A visit to the website (http://www.forceministries.com/) for the controlling (whatever that might actually mean in practice) organization is instructive. Apparently its ‘ministers’ are drawn heavily from military ranks, especially “current Navy SEALS whose lives have been touched by Force Ministries”. These operatives are organized into “sky-diving teams”; they are qualified since they “have executed an average of 2000 jumps”; and further qualified because “they are experts in the different and diverse sky-diving disciplines”. If this might seem an impressive yet scant qualification for the provision of religious ministry, we are further informed that these messengers are also proficient in “public speaking”. A photograph purports to show a huddle of uniformed troops in a desert setting, and is set alongside “A letter from an American soldier in Iraq”.

Somewhat vaguely, the site also notes that “The US has a number of military colleges and training programs (ROTC, etc.), which train our young men and women to lead our nations [sic] military. We teach the values that make for strong leadership. Once saved, these values encourage and accelerate growth in Christ.” Whether or not Force Ministries is actually engaged in conducting its operations on young people and military students in such institutions here in the United States is not clearly established.

We see here many of the characteristics of the Fundamentalistic approach to religion and religious ministry. One can become a minister simply by having been “saved” – hard to distinguish from simply declaring oneself to be so “saved”. One is able to speak in public, which apparently is considered a synonym for actual and authentic preaching. One’s credibility is further enhanced not by having any depth or grounding in theology or matters of religious significance, nor necessarily from any wider or deeper acquaintance with the Deity than the afore-mentioned experience of being – or claiming to be – “saved”, but rather by having done something kinda catchy that will jumpstart your creds with your target audience (“flock” seems not at all what they’re aiming for here). So in the military setting this will translate into skydiving and the fact of one’s SEAL-hood, since even among the military these are two achievements vouchsafed only to a very very few. There’s a heavy flavor of calculated marketing in the whole thing, but then again the only serious ‘professional’ effort apparently made by Fundamentalistics is precisely to enhance the marketability of one’s services. And did we mention that there is a ‘Donate’ button right there?

And the content of this ministry? “Leadership” is what they call it. Salvation? Redemption? Forgiveness of sins? The increased capability to ascend the Ladder of Perfection? To understand the movements of the soul? None of the above. Rather, having been “saved”, the individual (we can hardly call these initiates ‘the faithful’ or ‘the believer’) is sent forth to “lead” the un-initiated, which – given the Fundy track record, appears indistinguishable from “lording it over them”.

Not unwisely, the actual content of the ministry is left unspoken. One can imagine exhortations to wage war for “Christ” and to take increased devotion to obeying one’s superiors in the daily round of fighting the war. It is a curiously passive form of “leadership”: one follows the orders of one’s leaders, one might consider onself to be following the orders of this “Christ”. But no clear doctrinal content is discussed; wisely again, so as to avoid creating any adverse-marketing reactions in the form of disagreement with the tenets of the doctrine or doubts as to its validity. Perhaps ‘wise’ is not the term; ‘shrewd’ might be more appropriate.

Of course, it is not the role of individual soldiers to speak Truth to Power; indeed the Army is just now in the process of court-martialing one 1st Lt. Watada for taking his stand. Deciding the legitimacy of a war and of actions ordered in war is not the province of individual soldiers. Thus the military ‘judge’ in the case. That this nation precisely claimed through the person of Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg that military personnel are indeed responsible for their obedience to what may be immoral or illegal orders, that our own service-members are required to refuse orders that are “illegal” … these facts – and they are not small – escape the ‘judge’s’ notice, or fail to engage his attention.

Jackson was speaking against the military-ism (if I may) of governments aspiring to a ‘Griff nach der Weltmacht’, a grasp at world-power, the concocting of which omelette will require that one’s military be prepared – whenever so ordered – to break a hell of a lot of eggs (preferably those belonging to other people). He was also speaking for the dignity and subsequent responsibility of the American citizen-soldier, Citizen and soldier. This noble and quintessential American conception is gall-and-wormwood to an Executive desiring an ever-ready force of legionaries for deployment anywhere, anytime, to do anything that the said Executive claims is required by ‘national security’.

There always exists the danger that clergy ministering to any military will over-identify with the plans of their national government. Not even the Kathliks with their overarching, transnational (and supranational) Church were able to avoid this in the many wars of Modern Europe, where the priests of that Universal Church willingly donned uniforms either of Kaiser or King to bring their ministry to those leaders’ troops. And absent the deep keel of a comprehensive theological and ecclesial underpinning, the Protestant faiths were always more at risk for heeling hard over when identifying with their particular nation’s cause as the winds of war began to blow. But among the ‘mainstream’ religions – Catholic and Protestant – there was at least some structure and structured thought which served as a check to the unbridled collapse of religion into the vision of the State such as occurred in Japanese Shinto.

But we face a different situation here, with these Fundamentalistic ‘force’ ministries. Not only are these ministries not quality-controlled by any sort of governing body (except, apparently, jump-school instructors) but they are ungoverned even by the military chaplaincy structures. Worse, they offer no consolation or illumination beyond the Saturday football coach’s gut-stoking half-time harangue. Such feelings of ‘happiness’ or ‘joy’, whatever ‘high’ is produced by this type of exercise, is purely the adolescent and primal surge consequent upon being encouraged to act out of your most primal instincts and do your worst to ‘the other side’.

And of course, in this type of harangue, there is no meaning at all unless there very much is some ‘other side’. You can’t stroke and stoke these feelings, achieve this kind of ‘high’, get into this kind of ‘zone’ unless you are atavistically ‘stoked’ against SOMEbody. This type of ‘high’ needs an ‘other’, an ‘enemy’, because it is incapable of, is uninterested in, mastering any of the upper ranges of the interior life: the only ‘mastery’ it seeks is the ability to drown out your fears and doubts by force of raw will, stoke up your violence, and project it outward at that oh-so-necessary ‘enemy’.

That so many people can blithely mistake this kinda primitive ‘high’ for a religious experience is one of the great failures of organized religious life in this country. And into the abyss thus created, the Fundamentalistic collapsing of the Beyond into the Present, of the Vertical into the Horizontal, of the Unknown into the Known, of the Self into its primal passions has poured with an unholy frenzy in our time. And into our times.

And under the intense deforming heat and pressures generated in the cauldron of war, especially a failing yet unend-able war, our young are now in un-clarified desperation vulnerable to the type of ‘ministry’ that will simply ease their descent into a spiritual flame-out that resembles nothing so much as the final ‘blossoming’ of the young Kamikaze.

This is not to presume that all these ‘force-ministers’ (so apt) are hucksters. There may well be – very probably are – well-intentioned individuals of no small military accomplishment, who eagerly and honestly want to bring some acceptable consolation to their fellows. And one can only wonder what state the organized chaplaincies are in after a decade and more of the rootin-tootin Ascendancy.

But the price for such stoke-force ministry is going to be high. The spiritual ‘casualties’ will be enormous, returning to civilian life with a hugely limited – not to say mis-shapen – spiritual capacity. This core deficiency might not be noticeable to Fundamentalists, and is certainly not a loss to ‘lefty’ Theorists whose world-view is as collapsed into the Horizontal as the Fundamentalists. But, as the neocon war-makers are finding out, the fact that you didn’t envision a phenomenon doesn’t at all mean that said phenomenon won’t come at you, and with a vengeance.

Our troops will be – most likely are – coming back to us with deep spiritual wounds. They went ‘over there’ obedient to our word, yet with no Word except the selectively-plucked bible-phrase encouraging war and blood. How able will they be to parent families? To conduct their responsibilities as Citizens? To lead a decent and reasonably fulfilled life? To handle the stresses of ‘civilian’ life, where the overt and immediate response of overwhelming physical force, fortified by a primal ‘high’ is the answer to almost nothing?

Hard rain is going to fall. Not the gentle life-nourishing rain of some of the great Scriptural visions but a life-pounding flood that sweeps away ‘humanity’, human-ness, humane-ness.

We owe them so much more. It is Our word that sent them there. Let Us not make it so that their obedience rises up, cries out from the earth, to reproach Us, and indict Us, and condemn Us.

So many of our ‘leaders’ – politicians, war-enthusiasts and slam-dunkers, even ranking military officers – are now considering how best to salvage their own careers. As The People, it devolves upon Us – given the moral failures of those ‘leaders’ – to ensure care for those who shall have borne the battle. We must not fail them … again.

WATADA NADA

Over on Truthout (www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013007J.shtml) there’s an 01/29 AP piece about the Watada trial. The government is dropping two counts of conduct unbecoming. Such a generous and benevolent sovereign, our military. As Ike would say: Yah.

The military justice system has been dealt with elsewhere on this site (“Bishops Bomb”, “Military Just-As”, “Military Justice is No Music” – Parts 1 & 2, “Warrior Professionals”). And the Watada case has been discussed (“Military-isms”).

As indicated in the latter Post, these General Article charges are filler, put in there to beef up the potential jail time and induce any soul foolhardy enough to want to stand up and defend himself to think again and just plead guilty. Siberia being a given, why piss Stalin off by taking up the court’s time? Say you’re sorry, get trucked back to the Lubyanka, and get ready for your long journey. Meals are provided. Be hapski. Your military defender may visit you, perhaps bring a chocolate bar for after your supper. They’ve been known to do that, you know. A glorious system, is it not? Now march.

The reporters are off the hook – they won’t have to show up and testify. But they will ‘stipulate to’ the testimony they would have provided if they had been made to come. Lt. Watada’s civilian defense counsel tries to put a brave face on it: the journalists are “shielded from the heavy hand of the government”. I don’t see how. Yes, the reporters are spared (and the media deprived of) the photogenic footage of reporters forced to testify in a military ‘court’ (yes – the quotes … they are not mean to ‘scare’ but to indicate irony, even sarcasm). Before a military ‘judge’ (ditto). (Then again, the way things are going in the country just now, maybe we should be ‘scared’, certainly more so than most of us right now.)

The reporters are off the hook. But we must hope and pray that they don’t consider themselves off the case. This war, this ‘justice’ system, the Pentagoon bosses who so cynically run it, the oily roadies who spin it … all need to have some serious tire kicked.

But the military is off the hook, too. It doesn’t have to face the prospect of that footage either. And just how much do you want to piss off the media? One of the great rings of defense around the fortress prison of military justice is precisely the media’s fawning or unthinking acceptance of this thing as a legitimate and credible system of administering honest justice. And if they go and piss off the press, then such telegenic flacks and roadies as the National Institute for Military Justice will lose the traction that their smarmy, avuncular lecture-commentary is meant to provide: Ah yes, the wonders of our system – here, let me show you just a bit – but, alas, so much is classified, or beyond the civilian mind – well, just trust us, it works fine, balancing the needs of the government and the rights of the accused to a nicety. Yah.

“They’ve already determined that he’s guilty”, reports the defense counsel. Well, of course. You don’t go and start a military operation if you haven’t yet identified and isolated the ‘enemy’ whose undoing is your tactical objective. (They tried that in the War on Terror, and look what’s happened.) These military justice ‘trials’ are nothing of the sort, and the word ‘trial’ shouldn’t be used because it confuses American and Western jurisprudence with the military operation that courtsmartial fundamentally are. A court-martial is the JAG equivalent of shock&awe, only unlike the actual field operations, the JAG version is guaranteed – think ‘shooting fish in a barrel’. But they get pay and resume notches and sometimes medals for this stuff. And so do the ‘judges’, who are also JAGs. It’s a marvelously constructed system. “What’s the Constitution among friends?” a Tammany-era pol once asked. Even more so, what’s the Constitution among officers and gentlemen?

And they are all honorable men. As the Army spokesman says: Watada’s failure to deploy “is something the military takes very seriously”. Yah. It’s dizzying to try to follow just what things the military bosses take seriously these days. Soon-to-retire generals and admirals buying weapons systems from corporate honchos who then hire them for big bucks as soon as they take off the medal-suit for the last time? Billions of budgeted dollars that cannot be accounted for by the same? Refusal to stand up, put your bemedalled career on the line and speak military truth to power when your troops’ lives are at stake? Nope. Not so serious. But a junior-officer who takes his stand against a war that was started with lies and has been continued with more lies and whose loss is being veiled by even more lies … well now THAT is serious. Harrrrrumph! Yah.

The Army also wants Watada to do at least 18 months in prison. Anything over 12 months would – the law being what it is just now – make him a ‘felon’. Imagine: serial killers, bank robbers, car-jackers, some – at least – of the ubiquitous sex offenders, murderers … and 1st Lt. Watada. The most honorable generals have decreed. Yah.

A damned shame that the ghosts of Arlington can’t speak. But then again, the Universe being what it is, just maybe they will, in their way. Listen for them. They know. And they speak Truth. And We need to hear that.

MILITARY JUST-AS

Just when you think it’s safe to go back and do something else … but when you’re dealing with the JAGs and the military justice system, there really isn’t such a time and you are making a huge mistake if you think that the thing ever sleeps.

Marjorie Cohn reports “Pentagon Attacks Lawyers of Guantanamo Detainees” (www.alternet.org.story/46755/).

Charles D. Stimson, Esq., deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, displayed for the media a list of firms whose lawyers were doing pro-bono work for Guantanamo detainees and then invited corporate bosses who employ law firms to take names (and kick ass, as the military has it) while simultaneously warning senior Partners of those law firms to re-think whether they want to “represent terrorists” rather than lose big retainers from the CEOs.

Charming. The last time a major Western government was this frank and candid about its willingness to browbeat attorneys was probably Germany in the mid-‘30s. At that time a bunch who considered themselves the saviors of their people and their nation, and thus authorized to follow no laws but that of their own enlightened gut, had taken over the government and were in the process of restoring and transforming their nation and their society. Whether this sounds to you more like the Fundamentalists or the Advocacies is, in the final analysis, a secondary question. In our modern American reality, the ethos of the Republic is currently bethumped by both. It is an interesting question just how much more of a beating the great ship of the Republic can take. Or how much more We The People will allow it to take.

Lawyer Stimson’s outbreak is one of those flashes of lightning in a dark stormy night that suddenly pierces the veil and shows you what the hell is really out there: a monstrous and lavishly equipped orc army bent upon the destruction of what has been so laboriously built, or – to continue the nautical metaphor – waves half-a-hundred feet tall extending to the horizon. He is no rogue; he may be a cocky blockhead who went and gave the game away, but he is no rogue, no wild individual bad-guy. After all, look how high he’s gotten already.

He’s also an ex-JAG. Well ain’t that a coincidence? After everything that’s been noted (see “Bishops Bomb”, “Warrior Professionals”, and both Parts of “Military Justice Is No Music”) on this site we see now a working example of just what this system produces – what corrupting effects it has even on those who administer it.

And he was a Navy JAG. Far more than the other Services, the Navy’s concept of command has always been more concentrated and intense, more ‘unitary’, than that of either the Army or the Air Force. This flows from the ancient necessities of command-at-sea far from any US courts: not only to ensure efficient performance in battle, but simply to keep the ship afloat (even in peacetime when there was no prospect of a battle). Consequently, while all the Services are bound – the term is purely metaphorical as hereto applied – by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Navy’s own ethos informs how it wields the awefull power granted to it. What the Boss wants, the Boss gets – is pretty much the Navy philosophy.

That modern sensibilities require a certain amount of dress-up and kabuki before the retributive festivities might actually begin is simply an indication of how unfit ‘civilian’ justice is to govern manly men. Far better is naval justice where “High Noon” can be staged without even the exertion of Gary Cooper having to face the ‘bad guys’ and out-draw or out-think them. In the Navy’s version of that scenario, Cooper outranks them and simply morphs into a slightly better-shaven version of Judge Roy Bean. This, to the JAG-ish mind, is American history and tradition in action. If no adult should feel completely comfortable giving young people very powerful guns, no citizen should feel comfortable giving JAGs the power of The People to administer Justice. But all of that has been done, and more.

It cannot be a surprise that both the Advocacies of the Left and the Fundamentalists of the Right want to get control of this military justice system. Both of them being revolutionary and neither of them tolerant of Democracy’s sustained and patient climb toward peace and maturity, the military system provides a far more ‘efficient’ weapon for the destruction of all of those obstacles that stand between America and the realization of the Final Outcome (said Outcome being a utopia of either the Left or the Right, but either way collapsed into the Horizontal dimension of life, into its surfaces, and bereft of the stability of any Vertical, let alone any Beyond, dimensions). O brave new prison! O monstrous Progress! O awesome Revelation! Yadda yadda.

Meanwhile, not far away, two very prestigious ex-JAGs are displaying for us two of the most favored ex-JAG poses. This is pornography that educates. There is a new law that is soon to go into effect: civilians working in areas of ‘contingency operations’ (such as Iraq) will be subject to military justice. Thus, the civilian mercenaries – heavily armed but with little adult supervision – and even Halliburton employees ferrying sand and other rare commodities to the embattled troops – will be subject to court-martial for breaking such law as is still in effect over there. In a style so compatible with the JAGist mentality, this law’s passage was effected by sneaking merely five words into the vast defense-spending bill at the last minute. When the bill passed, the words did, like plague rats hitching a ride on a ship heading to a fresh port of call. Plagues and rats are concepts not unknown to the West, or to Washington City. We do well to remember that.

The first position – if we may – is demonstrated by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – S.C.), who in the good providence of some god was a JAG, is an ex-Jag, is a high-ranking Reserve JAG, and is a judge in the military appeals court – which is that court where a defendant’s case goes for last possible rescue after the uniformed JAGs have eaten their fill; it is a wonderfully constructed system. Sen. Graham is concerned for the troops: they might become disheartened by seeing “two different standards for people doing the same job”. “This will bring uniformity to the commander’s ability to control the behavior of people representing our country” he stoutly brays. But of course, if the commander could control that behavior, he wouldn’t have to have court-martial authority, would he? And aren’t they all ‘heroes’ over there? Such is what we had been led to believe. And it’s a pity such control cannot be extended over the Commander-in-Chief, who – it must be pointed out to intelligent foreigners – most largely represents our country. And ourselves.

But the patriotic legislator burning with a righteous bosom for the good of the troops is only one pose. The second is the avuncular professional whose benign but comprehensive wisdom is surpassed only by his connections in the Washington power-player club. Thus one Eugene Fidell, Esq., head of the organization known as the National Institute for Military Justice. This organization is to the JAGs what – in the early decades of the 1900s – organizations such as “The Friends of the Italian Opera” were to certain, enterprising Italo-American businessmen.

In a superlative demonstration of knowledge and balance, both tastefully deployed in the service of vice, Lawyer Fidell notes that “The Supreme Court has been quite hostile to trying civilians in a court-martial.”, which is true enough, since the military has from time to time tried to court-martial – among others - wives of servicemen stationed overseas.

He then goes on, equally gravely, but less factually: “On the other hand, the military justice system is more robust and has more protections in it than it did in the 1950s …”. Now this is an odd statement. What does he mean here by ‘robust’? ‘Robust’ usually means strong or healthy, but if so here, than does he mean in terms of its ability to find you guilty or in terms of its integrity? The second part of the sentence is classic Soviet-era baloney because once you own all the players, you can guarantee all the ‘protections’ you want, because it’s your guys up and down the ladder who are going to be calling the shots (preferably in the tones of Lawyer Fidell’s smarmy benevolence). Lawyer Fidell neglects to mention that within a few years of that UCMJ being approved in 1950s, the JAGs were trying to get repealed some of the few ‘protections’ they had written in to guarantee passage. A charming bunch. As all experienced vampires are, whether sipping a Chablis or banging on the furniture to get your attention.

But Fidell, although more suavely than Stimson, also reveals the JAG mindset. Noting the differences of opinion that are bound to rise over Stimson's comments Fidell blurbs "it will be a law professor's dream". As in: law profs love to talk and this'll keep them gabbing away until the cows come home and that's just fine with us JAGs because a) it keeps the law types distracted and b) if they're talking about it [as opposed to - say - trying to get the thing put back in its cage ] then folks will think that military-justice is just a normal piece of the national furniture; law profs talk - JAGs convict! Ah, such manly men. Just as every Western town needed a gunslinger 'marshal' because in 'real life' the law can't be trusted to do the job, so every town nowadays should have a JAG. It has made for some great movie moments; it is hell and gone from American law and from the Constitution and from Democracy.

Meanwhile, his sidekick at the NIMJ, one Kathleen Duignan, who is the Executive Director of this front, is busy Op-Edding the new spin over on U/Pitt's law school site "Jurist" (http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/2006/12/military-commissions-act-of-2006-play.php). Her wing of the assault is to present the JAGs as bethumped professionals who are just caught in the middle: "The Military Commissions Act of 2006 again puts US JAG officers in the awkward position of a military legal process that none of us would like to see our own service members tried under ... ". As Ike would have said: Yah.

The MCA "again" puts ... so we are to imagine that this isn't the first time the poor decent JAGs have been forced to do things that professionally they would rather not do (but have done and have been doing and have been collecting paychecks and emoluments for for decades). We have prosecuted Nazis for this sort of thing.

"None of us" ... ? Who's us? Is she a JAG? Is she a JAG roadie - well, yes. Is she speaking for all citizens? "Our service members" ... ? Who is the us behind this 'our'? Is she one of the team? Or is she one of the citizens?

And then the monstrous burble: "that none of us would like to see our service members tried under". This is a fine example of the JAG strategy: by bewailing (on paper, by a non-JAG roadie, one of the humans who helps the vampires and is rewarded with insects) the new-ish MCA, they manage to a) give themswelves some creds and some deniability as this noxious Commissions-dreck surges forward while b) implying that their core racket - the military ustice system (currently bethumping Lt. Watada) - is a fine and outstanding system and they have no trouble whacking up a 96-plus percent 'conviction' rate of "our service members" and collecting pay, promotion and medals for same. They're banking on the fact that nobody has given their core racket a good tire-kick. See "Military Justice Is No Music", Parts 1 and 2 on this site.

A strategically impressive gambit. But vampires don't live a long time by being honest and open about themselves.

I'm sure that if they were conversant enough in history they might want to adopt for their motto that cute comment of Churchill's when he was fed up with meetings: "less jaw-jaw, and more war-war" (it rhymes in British pronunciation ... and up in Boston). Lawyers jaw, JAGs war ... on 'defendants'. They have to. If a court-martial is a 'team effort' - and it is - then anyone who obstructs its successful completion (such as - say - a defense counsel) is by definition 'not a team player' and that's a career-killer. But, if the defense counsel's job is to provide just enough 'constitutional' window dressing so as to lubricate the success of the court-martial, why then the defense counsel is a valuable member of the team. But if you go and get carried away with it, like the long-unpromoted and now booted Navy JAG, Lcdr. Swift, who successfully stood up for the Gitmo folks, then it's curtains.

The American Bar Association is shocked, shocked. Well, not at the system – that’s been going on for years and years and many of its dues-paying members still make a pretty good penny off it. But at this brassy twerp’s exposure of what the JAGs really think about ‘Justice’ and the folks who try to ensure it in this country. Not even the ABA can sit back and let this howler pass.
Nor the deans of the law schools around the country. They had recently fought and lost a court battle with the JAGs: the JAGs wanted to come onto law school campuses to recruit students (a recent advertisement for budding advocates was a stark, black-and-white grainy photo of a set of hand-cuffs … just so you get the idea of what sort of type they’re looking for and what sort of ethos the new lawyers will be breathing in). The several deans had tried to make the case that since the military didn’t allow gays, then the JAGs can’t be allowed on campus with their hateful anti-gay ethos. It was a classic example of what has happened to Liberals, to the Democrats, to the American university, and – it would seem – to the American Bar: rather than standing tall and inveighing against the system itself and speaking Truth to Power like an Old Testament Prophet, the Deans whined that it would be hateful to upset the gay students. Bless them all, but there are even greater issues at stake here than the feelings of the gay students. And if the Bar cannot or will not speak up, then who will be left?

And we have to ask ourselves how such a fellow as this Stimson got a law degree in the first place? Just what sort of education did he get in law school? The deans appear shocked - and we need that. But when this is all over, if there is a We left, some questions are going to have to be put to them. We know how he got to be a JAG: he really likes hand-cuffs. Most of them do. But how did he get to be a lawyer?

And in case we think this JAG-ish mentality isn't spreading like the plague, we have only to look at today's paper: A U.S. Attorney in Arkansas is being replaced for no clear reason; his replacement, one J. Timothy Griffin, Esq., was a research director for the Republican National Committee, but - the Justice Department assures us - he has "a strong background as a prosecutor in the military". An ex-JAG. And just how much talent, dedication, skill, and integrity does it take to be a successful "prosecutor" in the military system, d'ya think?

The military justice system is no longer some exotic thing kept on a preserve far away. Nor is it a well-tempered and domesticated beast of burden. It is an all-controlling, self-righteous and pitiless system, fundamentally dishonest because of the need to disguise its true operating dynamics, almost completely unaccountable to any authority not already friendly to it Sleeplessly opportunistic, it has shrewdly piggy-backed upon and then co-opted both the Advocacies of the Left and the Fundamentalists of the Right; thus fortified, it continues to seek expansion into the civil sphere – which sphere, the Framers expected, would be the primary defining sphere of this country’s identity and of the nature of its gift and revelation to the peoples of the world.

The dangers of an un-Peopled government are daily becoming more clear. And it is this clarity – not the juvenile ‘high’ that comes from having swept troublesome pieces off the board or the childish comfort of hiding one’s head in a pillow and blocking one’s eyes and ears – toward which We must make Our way.

It is a stern Liberty but a powerful Liberty, that We must seek, and quickly. Those who would destroy it with war, from within even more than from without, are legion. It must be our resolution not to wage ‘war’ upon others, but to master and command ourselves as individual Citizens, thence without delay to re-People this Republic and bring her back to her proper course and trim.

WARRIOR PROFESSIONALS

The February issue of “Harper’s” contains some interesting articles on things-military. Steve Featherstone’s article “The Coming Robot Army” (not yet online) prompts further thoughts on a subject raised before on this site. His interviews raised the interesting conundrum: if we are going to need a ‘warrior’ spirit for our military [especially if the troops are to be deployed in imperial-ish ventures] what will happen if we come to rely more and more heavily on robots technology not only for surveillance but for fighting and killing? If the troops’ tasks will increasingly become the manipulation of joysticks, what will become of our military’s vaunted (if not altogether well-grounded) warrior-spirit?

That got me to thinking: do the professionals in the military (lawyers, doctors, clergy) see themselves as ‘warriors’ too, in their particular activities? This has been discussed in “Bishops Bomb” on this site. But let’s put a finer point on it: if the professional people not only see themselves as ‘team players’ but also as ‘warriors’, then all sorts of darknesses arise.

The JAGs, of course, are one of the most threatening groups to ‘go warrior’. The process of administering justice as envisioned by the Framers most surely did not envision law enforcement as a ‘war’, nor the participants (especially police and prosecutors and judges, let alone jurors) as ‘warriors’ and the accused defendant as ‘the enemy’. Yet such warrior-ization, such militarization, of our legal personnel has already taken place, deformed by hot and sustained pressures both from the putative Left (the Advocacies) and the Right as it has morphed in the past decades (the War on Drugs, the War on sex-offenses, the ‘war’ of Fundamentalists vs. ‘evildoers’, as well as the actual wars in Iraq and the Middle East). And to this we add the numbers of former JAGs now in criminal justice as prosecutors, judges, and elsewhere in the court systems and on law schools faculties (and the number of former ‘warriors’ in law enforcement). The American Bar Association, while taking some position against this or that law, has studiously avoided addressing this overall situation.

Are the medical professionals also ‘warriorized’? The prescribing of psychoactive drugs to troops in combat (and the whole of Iraq is a battlefield, every alley and street and road) might simply be a result of the (very professionally dicey) adherence to the ‘team player’ concept of the military. But the role of psychiatrists and – far more worrying in its extent and nature – psychologists in the torture and ‘robust’ interrogation techniques is so blatantly contrary to the Western concept of the ‘healing professional’ and the American concept of soldiering that one has to imagine that they must embrace not simply a protective rationalization such as ‘team playing’ but a far stronger (and more toxic) mythos such as ‘being a warrior’. The American Medical and Psychiatric Associations have taken strong formal positions on this, but the American Psychological Association has been cagily trying to keep the skids greased for its membership to stay at the table in the prisons and interrogation facilities; Stephen Soldz has been following their twisty doings over on The Atlantic Free Press (www.atlanticfreepress.com)

And what of the clergy in the chaplaincies? As we become more aware of the Fundamentalist Ascendancy in the Service-chaplaincies, we have to conclude that the Fundamentalist religious stance – especially in its Christian Dominionist uniform – is far more amenable to cheer-leading warrior-hood and war than any mainline Protestant approach. And to the cheer-leading of imperialish warring the genuine Roman Catholic ethos is nowadays almost antithetical.

Yes, in the days of a citizen-army muchly composed of Roman Catholic urban, immigrant descendees, there would be great encouragement and the solace and support of the massive Catholic sacramental system, and also the omnipresent visitations made by Catholic clergy as they went about their sacramental rounds at all levels of the organization, all fields of activity from headquarters to foxholes. But even in those heady days, the presence of the ‘priest’ was not so much to cheerlead the war or the government but rather to offer spiritual solace and encouragement to the troops. There was no facile and total identification of the government or war with God Himself. If anything, the Catholic ethos reminded troops that beyond wars and governments there was a wider Church and a God Who oversaw and judged such things. And kept an all-seeing eye on the troops themselves.

This is hell and gone from the Fundamentalist collapsing of the Divine Beyond into the flat surface of the present and into the entity of the government and, in an almost Berserker religious gambit, into the very waging of Battle and War itself. The worship of Ares Ferox and of the State are compatible and synergistic idolatries. And constitute the gravest folly. And constitute Sin.

Since the Catholic ‘vision’ and ethos is so inhospitable to the functional – might we be allowed ‘de facto’? – idolatry of the State and of War, can it be any wonder that the Fundamentalist Ascendancy has made such swift and pervasive progress in the military chaplaincies as well as among the officer corps? And the fact that the young troops of this generation have been raised with far less overt and comprehensive religious influence than previous generations of troops (the evangelical and fundamentalistic young to some notable extent excepted) then the Catholic ethos – represented by its chaplains – became far more expendable. And perhaps at least partly because of this the Catholic Archbishop in charge of military ministry recently allowed himself to mouth Pentagon talking-points on how well Iraq is going, really.

The role of the chaplains in such dark-side programs as interrogation and the imprisonment of so-called enemy combatants has not received much attention, and perhaps the chaplaincies prefer it that way. I am not thinking so much of Christian chaplains trying to provide ministry to the mostly non-Christian prisoners – which would be complex in any case – but rather the content of the ‘ministry’ they provide to the imprisoning troops, to the little folk who staff the ‘facilities’. What do the chaplains say to the troops in regard to their daily tasks and activities and actions? We can presume that almost without exception no chaplain – even one of some rank – is ‘speaking truth to power’ in front of generals, admirals, and commanding officers.

There are many Consequences now a-brooding in these matters, and they will come home to us in the fullness of time. History, especially if it is influenced by Justice and the capital-letter entities of the Beyond, will see to that. We The People must take the trouble to ‘see’ now, lest our unseeing continue, and we – as well as the troops deployed on Our authority – become blind and all hearts be hardened … to Our and the world’s great detriment and loss.

I have a copy of Chris Hedges’ “American Fascism”, just published. More on that shortly.