Modern War and the American Public

[Guest]

The soon-to-retire Chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, gave a speech on 15 Oct, saying:

While public opinion polls show the Afghan people think we have accomplished much and are glad we came, polls in the United States show that Americans believe our involvement in Afghanistan has failed. Former Secretary Gates has made the pungent point that the Afghan war is the first he's experienced that looks better from close-up than at a distance. I believe that the American public's failure to understand what we have accomplished in Afghanistan is due, in large part, to the constant, almost totally negative portrayal of events in Afghanistan in the American press. The press understandably reports on negative events. A Taliban truck bomb in Kabul does make a more dramatic story than a million girls going to school. But it would be tragic if this negative focus deprived the American people, our men and women in uniform, and their families of the sense of accomplishment they deserve to feel about our effort in Afghanistan.

[...]

If the public continues to believe that Afghanistan is a lost cause, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Simply put, if we don't understand what we and our coalition partners have gained in Afghanistan, we risk losing it.

On 1 Oct, Stephen Colbert interviewed ADM Mullen (Ret), the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying:

Can I tell you why I think the American people might be tired of the Middle East? [...] [W]e're reminded to be afraid of it, but we no longer have much of a voice in it because our Congressional representatives won't vote on whether we're supposed to do anything about it, we're not asked to sacrifice that much for it, very few of us go fight, and we're also not told all that much about what's happening over there. So all we have is the fear and none of the action, and eventually we want to stop thinking about it.

And lastly, the Huffington Post had a rare moment of sanity and intelligence to publish an opinion piece a few years ago from one retired Lt Col Astore.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-j-astore/why-its-wrong-to-equate-m_b_655611.html

[T]he act of joining the military does not make you a hero, nor does the act of serving in combat. Whether in the military or in civilian life, heroes are rare -- indeed, all-too-rare. Heck, that's the reason we celebrate them. They're the very best of us, which means they can't be all of us. Still, even if elevating our troops to hero status has become something of a national mania, is there really any harm done?

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By making our military a league of heroes, we ensure that the brutalizing aspects and effects of war will be played down. In celebrating isolated heroic feats, we often forget that war is guaranteed to degrade humanity. "War," as writer and cultural historian Louis Menand noted, "is specially terrible not because it destroys human beings, who can be destroyed in plenty of other ways, but because it turns human beings into destroyers."

These three pieces have stuck with me and I believe they perfectly encapsulate a major part of the Zeitgeist for the last 5 years, and probably for the next 5 years. They correctly describe the subconscious state of most American people as fatigued from extended fear, patriotism, and sympathy. Their minds are saturated with negative media coverage while still claiming an impossible standard of courageous, selfless perfection in our military members. So here is my question to you: Do you believe later generations of Americans will fondly look on the "heroism" of our generation as having saved millions of people from vicious tyrants as we do for the "heroes" of WWII, the Revolutionary War, and the Korean "police action"? What should we be doing as military servicemembers and civilian employees to correct the public opinion to that of what these wars really are?

[xcraftllc]

I think what generally happens is this; over time the war-fighters come home and tell their stories, and slowly but surely, a large portion of the country begins to have some kind of idea of what really happened. These wars are a bit different in that there is constant communication between soldiers and their families, but even with this communication, the overbearing negative news and dramatized movies make for a generally mislead understanding of the wars. I think we'll have to wait until these wars end (if ever), and the negative news stream stops.

At least we don't have it as bad as the 'nam vets. Not only was it a more lethal war, but they had to deal with some serious negative treatment from the American public when they got home. It wasn't until long after they had a chance to tell their stories that people had any sympathy for them. I'm just glad I've never really had to deal with someone calling me a baby killer.

At least ISIS makes itself very easy to hate. I mean, I can't think of anyone who has sympathy for their cause. It's a pretty clear-cut problem that needs to be eliminated.

Edited October 16, 2014 by xcraftllc