All Soldiers Are Not Heroes

It's the lead up to Armistice Day (which got renamed "Remembrance Day" because...well, because as a species, we seem to suck at remembering).

"Aye, young Willie McBride, I can't help wonder why--
Did those that lie here know why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
the killing and dying was all done in vain!
For young Willie McBride, it all happened again
And again and again and again and again..."

("The Green Fields of France",  Eric Bogle, as sung by John McDermott)

That whole song is worth listening to, incidentally. Very much so.

Salon magazine obviously thought this would be a good time to drop a bomb of their own...and they're getting an incredible amount of blowback online for it. Yet I feel there's a great deal of truth in this linked article, and it should be read and digested not just by the doves who will gulp it down and beg for seconds, but also by the hawks who may choke on it.

The thesis is twofold. One: we--by which the author means Americans, but Canadians can be included--have not fought a 'heroic' war, a war for freedom, in seventy years. Two, donning your country's military uniform does not automatically convey heroic stature upon you.

These do not strike me as overly controversial statements, but that's because I'm wrong and a leftist-liberal commie terrorist-supporting fucktard who should be shot. Or at least that's the tone of the internet comments not just on this article but on every single article Salon has published today, no matter the topic. You can cut the hatred with a knife.

I guess I can forgive people for doubting the first statement, that we haven't fought a real war since World War II. The media, especially the American media, takes very much the opposite view, that every war is a war for freedom and democracy and the American Way, and so to oppose a war on any grounds at all makes you un-American.

But no matter what the media might say, it's true. No American's personal interests are at stake in any "war" the American military is currently embroiled in. Plenty of American corporate interests are at stake, as always--that's what war is for nowadays, after all, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the last great Republican president, saw this coming when he coined the term "military-industrial complex".

World War II was a civilizational conflict: a pivot point in world history. Had Hitler and his allies won that war, it is entirely possible the entire First World would be under German control right now, and there's little doubt in my mind Hitler's Final Solution would have indeed been final. That was a war of freedom versus tyranny, a war that pretty much demanded you choose a side and fight.

No war since has even come close.

The current war against ISIS has potential to evolve into something civilizational, I will concede that much. They are no doubt barbaric and they have global aspirations even more grand that Hitler's--their Jews are everyone who does not practice their fanatical perversion of Islam.  But ISIS' diffusion throughout the world--which is currently seen as a strength of theirs--will in the end prove to be their weakness. Individual terrorist attacks can be tracked and thwarted, especially in the surveillance state we're a-building. We need to guard against the coalescing of an actual state with an army and weapons to carry out major atrocities--and make no mistake, they're working on that.

We do need to stop them, and airstrikes alone aren't going to do it--which is why, in this very peacenik essay, I'll suggest military action has a place, even a pressing place, even in today's world.

But can we maybe stop the rah-rah-boosterism and examine what we're fighting for?

I was a supporter of the war in Afghanistan for quite some time. It felt, to me, like a war worth fighting: surely we'd stop little girls from being burned alive in schools, by whatever means necessary?

Except we didn't.

The war in Afghanistan has been ongoing for THIRTEEN YEARS now, and if you ask the people we've tried to "save", most of them support the Taliban--or their local warlords, which amounts to the same thing. We've tried to impose our way of life on them and they don't want it. Moreover, our efforts--both in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East--have done little but ensure things like the attack on our Parliament would happen.  I'm not sure what the answer is--better minds than mine have grappled with it--but war doesn't seem to beget anything but more war.

It's a growth industry.

That repulses me. It disgusts me as a human being that companies profit off the senseless killing of civilians and the rampant destruction of their cities. You think ISIS is barbaric? That's barbarism. Even worse, we consider our soldiers heroes because they're doing their part in keeping the industry going.

Which is not to say that individual soldiers can't be heroes--and the article takes great pains to make this point, which most readers seemed to have missed anyway.  Even in an immoral and illegal conflict, many heroic acts are performed and they deserve recognition.

But you can ask a soldier: not one of them who has actually seen war considers him or herself a hero. Not even the ones who are most decorated. It is, as Wilfred Owen observed referring to his--and Pt. Willie McBride's--war. a Great Lie: Sweet and proper it is to die for your country. It should be noted here that more Canadian soldiers who served in Afghanistan have since committed suicide than were actually killed in Afghanistan. How heroic did they feel, I wonder.

The definition of heroism needs to be both narrowed and broadened. To me, as to the writer of the Salon article, teachers, hospice workers, nurses and many other people are more likely to qualify as heroic (though again, not all of any of these groups of people should be considered heroes automatically).  Mascina's final paragraph is worth quoting verbatim:

The assignment of heroism, exactly like the literary construct, might have more to do with the assignment of villainy than the actual honouring of “heroes.” Every hero needs a villain. If the only heroes are armed men fighting the country’s wars on drugs and wars in the Middle East, America’s only villains are criminals and terrorists. If servants of the poor, sick and oppressed are the heroes, then the villains are those who oppress, profit from inequality and poverty, and neglect the sick. If that is the real battle of heroism versus villainy, everyone is implicated, and everyone has a far greater role than repeating slogans, tying ribbons and placing stickers on bumpers.