Responsibility in War

Saturday on About Face, a caller said that he considers individual soldiers responsible for their own dehumanization, that they chose their career and that they perform the necessary tasks of waging war. The caller did not absolve the country of ordering that dehumanization either, but he noted that individuals make choices. As a result, the caller said he would not allow a person wearing a military uniform into his house.

That’s pretty harsh but I can’t dispute what he says since I made those same choices years ago and have lived with the consequences ever since. Until the past few years, though, I gave service members a pass on their choice of profession. I assumed that most joined the military for a variety of personal, economic and patriotic reasons at a time when they sincerely believed that it offered legitimate options for national service and a career. Some probably joined specifically for the psychotic challenge of combat but I prefer to think they are a small minority. The rest acknowledge that killing and violence may be a consequence of their service but consider that consequence to be for the nation’s necessary protection, so then it’s okay. Many individuals making these choices are still in high school or very young adults. For them, only the actual experience of war will slam its reality into the rest of their lives.

Where I can’t give a pass is to those who should know better, including the majority of Americans who have already rejected this war and its disastrous occupation but do not insist that the president and Congress end this ruinous policy. The public is unwilling to challenge a rogue administration that has demonstrated a stunning level of mendacity and incompetence in the past six years. The public won’t challenge a war that it does not think worth the cost. After all this time, Americans should know better and I believe they actually do know better. But their acquiescence enables CheneyBush to continue a brutal military occupation that produces the deadly mayhem described by the Winter Soldiers.

For those who perform the tasks of occupation, their duty and experience often conflicts with and erodes their conscience. War becomes a series of violent memories and images burned into the soldiers’ lives forever. Perhaps, the cost to these soldiers, to their families, to the military community would be justified if the mission actually helped America. Maybe in some fantasy CheneyBush world it does, but in the real world the cost is all the more obscene because the Iraq occupation actually harms our interests and threatens our security. America is supposedly a nation of practical, common sense people yet we tolerate this waste of blood and treasure. If the American public chose to resist this war policy, our service members would not face a conflict between duty and conscience.

That said, at the end of the day war is only possible when individuals decide to pull the trigger. As soldiers, we convince ourselves that it’s for the good or that we have no choice or we’re doing it for our buddies but those are the rationalizations that allow war to proceed. That is why I can never give myself a pass on Vietnam. I made the choice and followed orders. I knew the score then and I’ve not forgotten it. That’s why I have spoken against war ever since.

After six years of CheneyBush wars anyone contemplating military service should fully recognize its brutal reality and realize that the United States has violated international law in its actions. Prospective recruits should know that beyond the physical risks, they will lose an important part of their humanity, so much so that they risk committing war crimes. I know military service comes all wrapped in gauzy patriotism and enlistment bonuses and they’re practically kids. That’s why the Winter Soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are so important; they are perhaps the only ones who can drive home the truth about the lack of honor in a foreign military occupation.

Unlike Saturday’s caller, I don’t hold service members responsible for their choices. It’s not my place to judge their responsibility. That’s up to the individual. Anyone who serves in war will never forget the experience and each veteran will come to terms with it one way or the other, for better or worse.

I take responsibility for my own actions. Almost 40 years ago, I chose to kill in a war I did not believe in. This time around, I did not face the same choice—no one’s asking me to pull the trigger—but I do have the choice of saying “No” to an egregious illegal foreign occupation. And I have the choice of reminding my fellow Americans until they finally realize that we cannot sustain a government against its own people. A nation attempts to do so at great peril to its treasury and its soul.

This is all a long way around to and from the soldier’s responsibility. The central point being that ALL Americans are responsible for the calamity our nation has caused in Iraq. Soldiers may bear some different responsibility but that is simply a difference in form, not substance. The soldier does not make war on his or her own nor can a nation go to war without soldiers’ willingness to project America’s lethal force on other people. CheneyBush’s wars are is a shared responsibility that no American can escape.

Many of us tried to stop this catastrophe and were wholly ineffective and impotent in the face of the incessant lies, distortions, manipulation and fearmongering from this administration and its running dog lackeys in the media. All we can do now is stop the damage and support the soldiers and other Americans who refuse to participate in an illegal war.

Then comes to mind a verse from Danny Schmidt’s elegy for 9-11, Already Done:

If there was hope down in the rubble I’d hope that it was this
That in our vulnerability we’d open up our fists
And lay hand upon the ruined and lay wrench on the come unfixed
And though we cannot heal them we shall see no more get sick.
It's already done

No more, indeed.