Tim Peterson, Associate Editor
Ideology: Left-Independent | Writing from: New York
Credit: The U.S. Army's photostream
Lately I’ve been wrapped up in David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers. Solid reading about the first year of the 2007 surge in Iraq. What I most appreciate is it’s as close as I’m likely to come to perceiving war.
Case in point: While the book was published in 2009, one of its most engaging anecdotes didn’t catch fire among the media until this past April when WikiLeaks released a video of a group of American soldiers killing a Reuters photographer and his assistant among others. The event has been exhaustingly dissected, so I’ll restrain redundancy. Suffice it to say, the isolated video paints the American soldiers involved in a harsh light. However, Finkel does not approach the incident until page 96 of his book. This is primarily because the book is written chronologically, but nonetheless the exposition contextualizes the incident, allowing the reader a window into the complexities of war.
Most of us will never be intimate with war. We may have friends or family members or acquaintances who have fought or will fight. We may visit TroopTube. We may keep up with new reports from the front lines or magazine articles about survivors’ struggles. We may stand really close to the screen while playing Call of Duty. But we won’t ever apprehend what it’s like to “embrace the suck,” as one soldier describes it in Finkel’s book.
I’ve been lucky. I haven’t had to embrace much suck in my life. One of my worst experiences came in 10th grade when my family had to put down our golden retriever, Max. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to losing a loved one. The only times I’ve ever really feared for my life have come while surfing. I’ve been lucky.
Some people would argue that this remove disqualifies me from commenting on the war. That’s cool. I get it. Finkel describes the soldiers’ perceptions of people like me who speak on the war without knowing it:
“They should come to Rustamiyah,” more than one soldier said, certain of only one thing: that none of them would. No one came to Rustamiyah. But if they did, they could get in the lead Humvee. They could go out on Route Predators. They could go out on Berm Road. They could experience the full pucker. They could experience it the next day, too, and the day after that—and then maybe they could go back on TV and scream about how bewildering all of this really was. At least then they would be screaming the truth.
Truth is, I’ll likely never get that opportunity; even if I did, I’d hesitate before accepting. But while I may never fully fathom life on the front lines, I’ll keep wrestling with war—and not only because it’s my constitutional duty insofar as the military is civilian-controlled. When it comes to war, a citizen’s complacency weakens the country’s efforts. I’m under no illusion that pitching my two cents on strategy can change the course of a campaign, but I also refuse to believe that it’s best for those out of uniform to keep quiet.
War is hard for a country, physically, financially, emotionally. It’s all-encompassing. The more that people engage with war, the more familiar they will be with its costs and benefits, the more they will be able to understand its necessity and to apprehend its excesses. When I argue that General David Petraeus should ally with Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities, am I also arguing that I know better than him? No. I’m attempting to grasp the war’s complexities by working out my thoughts publicly.
I agree with the war in Afghanistan, but that does not mean I’ll surrender to its leaders carte blanche. I may not be as personally invested as others, but I am involved by way of being a citizen. So I’ll dive into books like The Good Soldiers—and next Sebastian Junger’s War—to get a handle on the soldiers’ perspectives. I’ll keep up with the latest news on not just military action but also political discussions. I’ll check in on strategy arguments and analysis. And I’ll weigh in myself. Because if I don’t, then the next time someone posts a video condemning military action, I may be prone to get pulled into the current of public opinion.
I expect not everyone reading this to agree with where I’m coming from. No worries. Let’s work it out in the comments.
The politics of their domestic “wrestling match,” as you characterize it, is what keeps us from winning the war. Minimum troop deployments, calling the commander on the carpet before Congress and the White House to embarrass or redirect his efforts, and our commitment, –What’s that sound like? Sounds like Viet Nam to me. The war we could have and should have. and had indeed, won, until the gov’t/media complex declared it “unwinnable”(Walter Cronkite–some night in the late 60′s)and we left and Viet Nam’s torture and Pol Pot’s killing spree proceeded.
That’s the cost of our gutless “domestic wrestling match.”
So you would prefer to consign the conversation to those in uniform and effectively institute a military dictatorship, in which the armed forces operate freely while taxpayers foot the bill and idly watch ‘The Green Berets’?
As for your claim that the “domestic wrestling match” is to blame for minimum troop deployments, please recall that it was Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz who argued for fewer troops in the Iraq war plans. It was Army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki and Army secretary Thomas White–a civilian–who called for an increase in troop numbers and were consequently forced out.
Additionally, it was Vietnam who drove Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from power. Then the US refused to recognize the Vietnam-backed Cambodian government, which permitted the Khmer Rouge to remain in operation.
I know; I’ve heard one version or another of it my whole life, and alternative versions of history, too. It’s all our fault(America’s, or the domestic “right-wingers”).It gets tiresome. What wins wars is overwhelming force. If you’re gonna wage one, you should be ready to use it. If not, I guess you should either stay home, or put hope in the agency of diplomacy.
That’s not even the point I was making concerning Vietnam. My point was that Vietnam was able to take care of Pol Pot itself. As for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, it’s not some conspiratorial alternative version of history. It’s fact evidenced by Rumsfeld’s resignation and the success of the subsequent surge.
I agree that we needed a larger initial deployment. Overwhelming force certainly helps win wars, but the definition of winning has changed. Personally I don’t foresee a truce agreement concluding the war in Afghanistan. So as much as the US can be winning a war in terms of depleting enemy numbers, the opposition is a network not a single entity. Therefore the war can’t come to a hard stop; there will be no V-A Day.
On that point, how would you define winning in this context? This is something I’ve been wrestling with. I’ll work it up into a larger pot but would really like to get a thread going here to tackle it to some extent.
Seize their capitol, kill their leaders, convert them to Christianity. (Ann Coulter, Sept., 2001)
Works for me.
I guess that’s too simplistic.
And the actual quote was “Invade their countries, kill their leaders…” etc. But the meaning is still there.
BTW when D-day happened, was there a “struggle” back here about diplomacy, making friends with some Germans while we were killing others, and whether it was “called for” to push on to Berlin? I don’t think so.
Come to think of it, the ones’ who got their way during all of that were the Russians, who convinced us to not push on the Moscow(Patton’s passion and advice notwithstanding)probably because they had agents in the State Dept.
That was the last time we fought a war to win it under our own definition, rather than a definition of winning from the UN or another international cabal.
And another thought: Who’s the enemy? Radical Islam. What do they respect?: the ability to kill people, and the doing of same. Their symbol: a big metal sword, presumably being used. Notice that it’s not a peace treaty, a pen, or a wheelbarrow full of $$. It’s a big metal sword, out of the scabbard. So we’ve got stuff like that, too. Why don’t we use it? They won’t like us(they don’t now) but they’ll respect us. And there will be fewer of them.