- "Great Divorce" stemming from the abolition of the draft by Nixon. This served to separate citizenship and military service.
- "Great Reconstitution" with Reagan's funding of the military. We became spectators to our military's efforts and were like football fans cheering on our team from afar.
- "Great Expectations", the phase we are now in and have been in since Bush I, where we think we can save the world.
With regard to civil-military relations, the next president will face an especially daunting challenge. What we need appears quite clear: for American citizens to acknowledge their own accountability for what American soldiers are sent to do and for all that occurs as a consequence. To classify Iraq as “Bush’s war” is to perpetrate a fraud. Whether that conflict is moral or immoral, essential or unnecessary, winnable or beyond salvaging, it is very much the nation’s war. Vacuously “supporting the troops” while carrying on for all practical purposes as if the war did not exist amounts to an abdication of basic civic responsibility.
As long as Americans persist in seeing national security as a function that others are contracted to perform, they will persist in this unaccountability. In this regard, the restoration of civic responsibility will require first restoring some connection between citizenship and military service. We need to reinvent the concept of the citizen-soldier. Yet we need to do so in a way that precludes conscription, for which next to no support exists in the Pentagon or in the public at large.
This is a tall order. Yet until we repair our democracy, repairing the defects in our military policy will remain a distant prospect.
1 comment:
I've only read your selection, so may be doing the man a disservice, but it appears he's suggesting that Americans should support every war waged by it politicians, however immoral or unjust that war may be, solely because US soldiers are involved.
And to suggest the reinvention of "citizen-soldiers" without a draft is, in my opinion, virtually impossible. I note he makes no recommendation how to achieve this in practical terms, only suggesting it is "a tall order".
On the first point, blind patriotism with no regard to the rights or wrongs, is hardly democratic. In fact, it vaguely smacks of fascism. Freedom to choose was one of the great dreams of the founding fathers, and not just for religion.
As for the second idea, it cannot be achieved without a draft, unless one forcibly brainwashes the populace into blind nationalism. Reinstatement of the draft is one of the very few topics on which I know you and I disagree profoundly. In my opinion, it could be argued that a draft is unconstitutional in this country for the 'freedom of choice' reason given above. Even if not, it is barbaric to demand a young person give up their lives on a politician's whim.
This world is slowly moving beyond the concept of war. Economic considerations alone are enough to make most nations think twice before militarily attacking another. Only America, it seems, still insists on this militaristic approach, and by doing so holds back the rest of the world from any hope of disarmament.
I'm afraid I find Mister Bacevich's ideas repugnant, though I may well rue the day I wrote this comment without reading him fully first.
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