But my deeper argument is that our gradated military educational system - from our formation as cadets up to our higher education at the National Defense University – does not prepare officers for such long-range and culturally sensitive missions, much less clarify the deeper legal and political and Constitutional issues. These issues are illustrated by the case of the recently established “homeland command” (formally known as U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM) with its domestic as well as Canadian missions, and an altogether ambiguous area of responsibility within the U.S. - and consequent, but very sensitive, intelligence requirements!
If our military education and deeper-rooted military culture properly prepared our officers to think in these larger, grand-strategic terms, they would now also be much more acutely sensitive to, and discerning of, the moral factors of modern war (and “terrorism”), including the cultural and religious factors of strategy, which are always involved when we are intimately working with other (and often quite alien) civilizations.
In this context we should be reminded of the far-sightedness of Lieutenant General Sam V. Wilson. In 1969 and '70, when he was still a colonel and a formative leader as well, he saw (and said) what was needed in the strategic and cultural formation of U.S. military officers. He was, however (I regret to say), insufficiently appreciated or understood at the time.
Having had many diverse experiences abroad, Col. Wilson long ago realized that the U.S. military needed a cadre of officers who could take the larger (and nuanced) measure of foreign military cultures as well as the strategic factors and cultural events of moment in the world. He wanted U.S. military officers to be able to understand foreign strategic and military cultures on their own terms and in the longer light of their own histories and geographies. He knew, as in the case of Turkey and the Turkish General Staff, that some foreign militaries had their own uniquely differentiated and distributed roles within their own societies, and which were in sharp contrast to the roles of a military officer within our own society and traditions. He knew that – for the common good of the United States – we needed to understand these often radically different and even incommensurable military traditions.
He also saw that we needed officers who were truly competent in strategic foreign languages (e.g., Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, etc.) and who were desirous and capable of savoring foreign cultures and their histories as a whole – and not just their military institutions and their conduct in war: that is to say, to understand their literature and philosophy and world-view, and their resonant cultural symbols and aspirations. Yet Col. Wilson realized that such officers should also be more than well-educated and deep-thinking “foreign area officers,” which were then being formed in our Foreign Area Special Training (FAST) Program. He foresaw that we also needed officers who could intelligently connect different regions of the world and take a longer view of the whole – to understand, for example, “Soviet revolutionary warfare” as a form of “total war,” whereby even peace was strategically considered and employed as “an instrument of revolution” (as Major General J.F.C. Fuller also very well understood), and to understand the long-range strategic and religious operations of historic and modern Islamic civilization, in contrast to the strategic cultures of Great Britain, China, and Israel, and their uniquely long-range aspirations.
Col. Wilson's personally designed and implemented strategic-cultural program was called the Military Assistance Overseas Program (MAOP). The initial formation of officers in this program was a six-month course for colonels and lieutenant colonels – and their Navy equivalents – at the Special Warfare Center. (Col. Wilson had assigned me to be an instructor in this new program, and head of the East-Asian Seminar. He also permitted me, because of my experience with several foreign militaries, to attend the course and receive the diploma by way of special exception, because I was then only a captain in our Army Special Forces.)
Originally, Col. Wilson wanted to have the whole program, with its strategic courses, in Washington, D.C., and to be part of the National Interdepartmental Seminar for long-range strategic and cultural education, which then included the State Department and the Intelligence Community. However, in 1969 – during the Vietnam War – Sam Wilson's important ideas were suspect and frowned upon. They were, indeed, too politically sensitive, even before the development of “the emerging American imperium.”
Despite support from thoughtful political leaders, Col. Wilson's plan to have the school in Washington was finally rejected because too many people saw that he was – or could easily be perceived to be – forming “men on white horseback,” i.e., ambitious military officers who would potentially encroach upon, if not actually usurp, the super-ordinate role of their “civilian political masters.”
Had Sam V. Wilson been more influential, we would not now, as a nation, have such a passive and unthinking military, or such an invertebrate military culture, or such a shortsighted strategic culture. And our military would be much more intelligently resistant to our neoconserva-tive and pro-imperial civilian masters.
By way of contrast, the American military culture was to be, I regret to say, much more formatively influenced by John Dewey's “pragmatic education,” in combination with the Frankfurt School's “critical theory” and subtle anti-authoritarian “re-education.” Our traditional military culture was to be more and more uprooted and cut off from its Christian roots, and thereby more and more secularized, re-paganized, and neo-Machiavellianized. This gradually transformed military culture is now conspicuously acquiescent to its neo-Machiavellian, civilian masters and mentors (like Michael Ledeen), in unthinking support of the growing American imperium and of the grand-strategy of the “greater Israel” (Eretz Israel) not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. Our military officers, in my experience, no longer know, nor reflect upon, nor respectfully consider the criteria and standards of just war, as revealed in the long, articulate tradition of Western Christian civilization. It is now their usual orientation and preference to think and speak in terms of a vague and unspecified “preventive war” or a war of “anticipatory self-defense,” both of which concepts are, too often, Orwellian “Newspeak” for the reality of a war of aggression – the only specific offense for which the German officers were brought to trial at Nuremberg in 1945.
1. My emphasis added, along with my suggestive insertions in brackets.
1. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
1. Tempe, Ariz.: Dandelion Books, 2004.
THE EDITORS' GLOSS: Sometimes when the “usual suspects” protest a war or all wars their demeanor leaves something to be desired. But there's something eminently persuasive about former, or serving, military members doing so – men and women ostensibly willing to give their lives in support and defense of the Constitution. So when they raise concerns about war, their objections should be considered all the more carefully, given that mere “pacifism” is not a likely motive.
It is a shame and an injustice that these service personnel are sometimes dubbed “unpatriotic.” Absent clear, treasonable intent, it's not credible to assert that someone who tries to keep his country from waging an unjust or disastrous war is unpatriotic. The contrary makes more sense. Many, too, are suspicious of soldiers' and sailors' judgments about war, on the assumption that joining the service equates to an oath of absolute obedience. The fact is, service men and women remain citizens at all times with a stake in their country's ultimate direction and health, and, even while serving, their obligation to law and morality (which trumps orders that conflict with them) is non-negotiable.
In addition to the four veterans we spoke with, there can be added the voices of a thousand some veterans from all eras who have signed on to a “Veterans Call to Conscience” declaration (www.calltoconscience.net). It reads: “When, in an unjust war, an errant bomb dropped kills a mother and her child it is not 'collateral damage,' it is murder. When, in an unjust war, a child dies of dysentery because a bomb damaged a sewage treatment plant
, it is not 'destroying enemy infrastructure,' it is murder. When, in an unjust war, a father dies of a heart attack because a bomb disrupted the phone lines so he could not call an ambulance, it is not 'neutralizing command and control facilities,' it is murder. When, in an unjust war, a thousand poor farmer conscripts die in a trench defending a town they have lived in their whole lives, it is not victory, it is murder.” Those who question the premise of the veterans' position should read our companion volume, Neo-CONNED!, where the injustice of the Iraq war is argued persuasively and, it seems to us, irrefutably.
CHAPTER
14
introduction
To War or Not to War, That Is the Question
………
Jack Dalton
IF THERE IS one thing I understand it is simply this: people who once “see” war up close and personal, and look into the abyss, that “Heart of Darkness” of war, they are forever changed – period. Some become very self-defensive and become strong supporters of war. What else can they do? If they do not support war, then they would be compelled to revisit war and come to terms with it. That in itself shakes the very foundations of people's beliefs, and is something a lot of them just do not want, or are unwilling to do; it hurts like hell!
Then there are those like Jim Massey, Mike Hoffman, Kevin Benderman, Dave Bischel, Tim Goodrich, Camilo Mejia, just to name a very few, who have confronted the issue of war's immorality and inhumanity from the perspective of those who have participated in war; and through participation have found war sorely lacking; and due to that have come out in opposition to that participation; and in opposition to war in general as a methodology of solving our problems.
These men are not alone in their outspoken opposition to war, or in their refusals to be further participants in the destruction of their fellow human beings. They are just a few in the growing numbers of people in uniform who are currently taking the very same position.
In fact, over the past year there have been upwards of 300 individuals who have written me saying they will do whatever they have to not to go back to Iraq. And I'm just one person; so how many others have been sent similar letters is anyone's guess, but I would venture to say the numbers are rather large. We know over 5,500 military people have left the country to avoid participation in the war in Iraq. How many more are there we have not heard about? No war escapes this. There were 25,000 that had split by the time Vietnam was over, a few thousand of them declared deserters. Even WWII had 22,000 tried and convicted of desertion. It's just that now, with Iraq, this kind of thing is taking place a lot sooner than with previous wars. And not all of them are going to Canada.
One very important thing we must keep in the forefront of our minds is that these people, the men and women that are starting to refuse deployment or re-deployment to Iraq, are not “nut jobs.” Far from it! Not only are they sane, but they have the absolute moral right to choose what they will or will not participate in when their lives are being put on the line and in jeopardy.
In fact, Monica Benderman, Sgt. Kevin Benderman's wife, puts it much better than I in the questions she has posited:
What is wrong with a country when a man can walk into a military recruiting office, sign on the dotted line, and find himself in a war zone two months later? No one questions his sanity then.
What is wrong with the direction of the world when a man and his wife receive phone calls and emails from all over their country asking them to explain themselves, calling them cowards, wondering if they have ever read the Bible or studied the Scripture, all because that man has chosen to speak out against war and violence, and his wife has chosen to stand with him?
Have we gone so far away from truth that people actually believe war and killing is right, and that a man must be crazy to want to walk away?
These are powerful words and questions, which have not only got to be pondered, but answered. As a disabled Vietnam veteran (I served from August 1965 to May 1967) and someone who has been an anti-war activist ever since coming back “home” – a term I use loosely – not only do I agree with the anti-war movement within the ranks, I fully support it; and I support those who take this stand.
The men and women in today's military are doing now what it took those who were sent to Vietnam over four years to start doing: opposing war and starting to refuse to participate. Sooner rather than later is a good thing.
As a war veteran, as an American citizen, and as a writer, I fully support those who publicly denounce and refuse to participate in the senselessness of this “legal murder.” For, to a large degree, that is what this war is – though it's “legal” only in the minds of those who propel the rest of us into their wars of “choice.”
We at the Project for the Old American Century (as opposed to the wing-nuts at the Project for a New American Century), where I am coeditor, have come out strongly against the war and will fully support any and all of the men and women in uniform who, as a matter of conviction, maintain their moral right to stand against it, and who refuse deployment to Iraq or anywhere else the Bush cabal may choose to start another war.
CHAPTER
14
Hindsight is 20–20:
Iraq and “War on Terror” Veterans on Gulf War II
………
A Roundtable with Chris Harrison, former Army 1st Lt.; Jimmy Massey, former Marine Corps Staff Sgt.; Tim Goodrich, former Air Force Sgt.; and Dave Bischel, former Air Force Sgt.
WHAT DO YOU think of Operation “IRAQI FREEDOM” (OIF)? Do you think it is essentially and morally “wrong”? Ill-advised and imprudent? Neither? Both?
HARRISON: It was an aggressive action conducted against a country that posed no threat to the U.S. nor to its immediate neighbors, conducted in full violation of international law. It fits the definition of “aggressive war” that was a result of the Nuremberg trials. Furthermore, the occupation has been in violation of international law because it has attempted to transform and privatize the economy of Iraq.
MASSEY: I agree – definitely both. I think that if we continue on the path that we are on now, it's going to continue to be on a downward spiral.
GOODRICH: Though I was fully supportive of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF), as a typical 21-year old in the military, I began thinking and talking about the coming war in Iraq around October of 2002. That was during my last deployment. I thought to myself that if I was going to have to fight in Iraq, I ought to know about the war. The only tool I had for research was the Internet, but that was enough. I concluded rather quickly that going to war with Iraq would be wrong. I didn't think Iraq was an imminent threat; I didn't think there was a terrorist connection; and frankly I didn't believe the administration's arguments. After 12 years worth of sanctions, it seemed obvious to me that we really had them boxed in.
MASSEY: Right. By the beginning of the war, the Iraqi military had almost completely fallen apart, and the country had become impoverished. Of course the lack of medicine coming into the country – ones to cure even simple diseases – didn't help either. With the country being suppressed by the sanctions, the Iraqi people had no will or means to fight.
GOODRICH: Anyway, in January of this year, I had an opportunity to visit Baghdad with Global Exchange. Seeing everything that I did while I was there certainly confirmed me in my point of view. The condition of the country – no medical supplies, no reconstruction (at least none that I could see in Baghdad), simply talking to people on the street. Though I didn't expect to see as much reconstruction as the administration claims on TV, I at least expected to see something. I was shocked to see nothing. It was obvious that my earlier feeling about the real reasons for the war was correct.
And even as early as January of this year the Iraqi people that I spoke to were against the American occupation. Surprisingly, a small majority supported us coming in initially, I'd say maybe 60%. But after months of nothing happening, they saw what our true intentions were and public opinion turned against us.
BISCHEL: L
et me put things into a little broader perspective, guys. We live in Orwellian times, and that is why we let a President, who I think was never even elected in 2000, get our country involved in the Iraqi quagmire. Our two party system is 100% under the control of our country's wealthiest 1%, and therein lies the problem. Our current administration can and will do as it pleases because they think themselves untouchables and above the law. As for the war? Let me be frank – the storyline that drove us into it is total garbage, and in all honesty Bush should be brought up on charges of war crimes, but, of course, it will never happen. As Voltaire once said, “Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
LID: Chris, how did your opinion about the war develop: over time, during service in Iraq, or were you convinced it was wrong from the get-go?
HARRISON: I imagined the war to be wrong from the beginning. I had already begun to question the true purpose and use of the U.S. military long before this, and it only crystallized my beliefs.
LID: What about you two, Jimmy and Dave?
MASSEY: Prior to going to war, I had read every classified and unclassified document that I could find about Iraq. I felt that in order to participate in conquering the country, I had to understand how the American hand has played an important part in the building of Iraq. I knew that the American government has had an impact on the Iraqi people from the very beginning, through covert CIA operations and supplying weapons and tanks for the war against Iran. So, I knew that the war was wrong from the beginning, but over time my experiences in Iraq confirmed my feeling. When I started witnessing first hand the lack of humanitarian support provided and the killing of innocent civilians, I knew for sure that what we were doing there was wrong.
Neo-Conned! Again Page 33