The alternative title to this blog post is "How I almost went into the military, did not do so, and have dealt with that decision ever since." Given my post yesterday, filled with cynicism, I felt it might be welcome to give some context to why I'm so concerned about our internal reaction to the (justified) death of Bin Laden. This post is mostly autobiography, but I'll tease some threads out by the end.
Military School
Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Glasses kept that particular dream from happening, but I readjusted and instead thought of Military Intelligence or Military Police. I went through JROTC all four years of high school and did well in the unit. I then planned on entering college and ROTC in order to be commissioned as an officer in the Army. I was a senior in high school when 9/11 happened; I had planned on joining the service before, and continued to believe so after...even after a series of letters back and forth between me and DODMERB about whether I would be allowed to serve (I got the exception I needed).
The next year, I matriculated into North Georgia College and State University, a senior military college. I stayed there for 2.5 years.
A few formative events stand out for me while I was there.
Hazing happened. It was part of the territory. But it was there that I developed a sense of knowing when something crosses from being fun, or "team-building", into sadism. The line exists, and while not all hazing is categorically bad, there is a line at which it became a gross misuse of power on the part of the person doing the hazing. The use of humiliation is a good sign that hazing had gone too far. I witnessed this and on perhaps two occasions participated in the sadistic side of it. On another occasion, I ended another squad leader's hazing session when it had obviously become sadistic.
The vast majority of military personnel are NOT sadistic. The important thing is that the power given to people in militaries lends itself to abuse. That is why the military so heavily emphasized values (such as the Army's acronym
LDRSHIP), discipline, and attention to the Geneva Conventions. These hopefully keep us human, and remind us that we are fighting other humans. These restraints are worthwhile, even if our civility puts us at a disadvantage when we fight those who follow no such rules and see us as less than human.
The U.S. invaded Iraq while we cadets were on Spring Break. Upon returning, all of the first year cadets were asked in class who thought the invasion of Iraq and defeat of Saddam would be easy. We all raised our hand. We were then asked who thought the following police action and rebuilding process would be easy. We all dropped our hands. We proved to be right. The U.S. can win a conventional war easily, it's keeping order after you've destroyed infrastructure that is hard (as evidenced by the looting that followed). Oddly enough, General Shinseki, the chief of staff of the army at the time, suggested that the invasion of Iraq needed several thousands more troops for just that sort of peacekeeping work. His suggestion was ignored for political reasons. The point is, all of us first year cadets just about predicted the mess Iraq was going to end up being.
Over my time there, it became clear that things were not going well in Iraq, but I attributed it to post-war fluctuations. I wrote off anti-war protesters as not being able to understand what the nature of war was and as being simplistic in their worldview. It was easy to see them as simply hating the military when the image of a man screaming "baby-killer!" was shown.
By my third year (and 2004 in general), things were coming out and being leaked (and in no particular order here). Generals, after retiring, were criticizing the administration. I could not attribute them to my image of a protester. They deserved a hearing. Haliburton, Cheney's company, was swindling the military for meals. Then I learned about General Shinseki, who gave a larger number than was politically acceptable when he was asked how many troops were needed to stabilize Iraq post-invasion, and was ignored before the war. I attributed that to the naysayers in Congress until I learned that it was Bush's advisers that said that more troops weren't necessary. Then, as I was listening to the radio one day, Rumsfeld was asked by a soldier why troops had to go through to landfills to armor their vehicles. His response?
"You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had."
I remember having a physical reaction to that, thinking "Wait, this war was a preemptive strike. You shouldn't start a war unless you are ready." How is it that a room full of cadets knew this war would be protracted, but you [Rumsfeld], supposedly an expert, did not?
The Bush Administration, which had gone to great lengths to brand naysayers as, well, traitors, had members swindling the military on something as basic as food and had also been very nonchalant and downright dismissive about providing other supplies to troops. (How about this, families and citizens buy body armor for troops because they can't get it supplied). I was on track to enter the service, but the most disdain for the military and the brush-offs seemed to be coming from those who were putting them into battle in the first place.
As such, I started to doubt whether I could serve in the military. True, the military, its ideals, and that which the military protects transcends the administrations that it reports to, but I was finding it difficult to imagine commissioning.
So, I was in military school in 2004, planning to commission in either MP or MI when the news of Abu Ghraib broke. While it was billed as an exceptional case of bad soldiers given clearance to "soften up detainees" without direction as to how to do it, and even as President Bush expressed horror at what was happening there, it seemed clear that there were orders to get rougher with detainees. Not knowing if the Army had received something from up the chain of command that countermanded the Army's field manual of interrogation, I had to ask myself what I could do, or order someone else to do, to another human being. (That the U.S. tortured is a strong claim, but we called waterboarding torture when the Japanese did it to our pilots in WW2, and when the Khmer Rouge used it in their revolution. We executed the Japanese prison officials for what they did. For the U.S. to turn around, use the same tactic, and call it "enhanced interrogation" is a farce.) My faith, as nominal as it was in 2004, would not allow me to torture, order others to do it, or be in a position to witness it (even if military personnel are not involved, the CIA has been doing it in military detention centers).
What weighed as more important than my faith was my knee-jerk reaction that torture was not something that America should resort to using; we were better than that. I decided that I could not go into the military and serve with honor if I were put into a position to act against my faith, the American tradition, and international law. More troubling still was the general attitude of apathy or “it serves them right” that was very common.
I decided to teach instead.
Since Military School
So I returned home to Mobile, AL and went to school to become a teacher. Along the way, I decided to pursue interests I had that grew out of my experiences at NCGSU. How do you get people to agree to torture others? What does power do to people? How does religion turn violent? Why do Christians support torture at higher rates than non-Christians? What are the ethics of war? Who sets these ethics? How does religion legitimate wars between nation-states?
I don't think it is too strong to say that my anger at the way the United States decided to fight the war on terror kept me out of the military, and I spent my time at Arizona State University trying to understand why the United States decided to pursue the war the way they did, and why I reacted the way I did.
But I treated the study and the questions as a simply academic exercise. At some point, it became less academic and more about life to me. I stopped simply studying arguments and began making arguments. Along the way, God became real to me that was not apparent to me earlier, and I now understand and evaluate a lot of the ethical traditions I studied through a Christian lens. I studied pacifism, the just war tradition, and the idea of holy war.
Where I am now
In the end, my study has not left me with answers. It probably should not have either. I’m not a pacifist, or rather, I hope I’m a pacifist when it comes to (not)defending myself. But my decision directly conflicts with my responsibly to protect people under my care: my wife, my future children, those weaker and poorer than me. One wonders how Jesus would have told the parable of the Good Samaritan if the Samaritan walked upon the actual robbery and beating. In the end, I can try to turn the other cheek; I can’t hold out someone else’s cheek to be struck. Pacifism can only be a personal decision, not a national policy.
While I hold pacifism as an ideal, I find myself reluctantly in the camp of the just war tradition. Reluctantly, because there has never been a purely “just war.” There have been less-morally-plagued wars, but no just wars. Still, given the fallen nature of humankind, I recognize that the equality of sin does not mean an equality of guilt. The United States is not perfect, and has not always used its power responsibly, but I still think we all have the ability to call out that which is evil in the world. Bin Laden killed or arranged the murder of thousands over his career; he wasn’t finished in his work. He died fighting instead of surrendering when given the option. His death was the last option available given that he thought killing unarmed civilians was justified and that he was willing to murder again. That may be the sad reality of life on this side of perfection. I am thankful and relieved that Bin Laden is dead, and the military has reason to be proud of the work they do, but for the reasons I state
here, I find no joy in it.
The danger is that our virtues can blind us to our vices (I’m sounding positively Niebuhrian here). When we forget our own capacity for evil, because of the exercise of power, we risk losing our soul. That is why I am bothered by triumphalistic language and nationalistic fervor in the wake of Bin Laden’s death. When we forget that justice in an imperfect world is a somber task, and we instead start to believe we can do no wrong in the pursuit of justice, our power can give way to sadism. We get used to our exercise of power under those circumstances. Celebrating the death of the Enemy becomes easier. Torture becomes easier and thinkable. We forget that we can become like Them when we forget what makes Us different: that we committed ourselves to higher standards. I saw glimpses of the slipping of those standards in military school, and I saw fully and studied what ignoring them does in places like Abu Ghraib, Baghram, and Guantanamo Bay.
That leaves me cynical. Pacifism is an ideal that can’t be imposed, and the just war tradition comes up short because it is an idealized ethical framework that relies on imperfect human beings to implement (provided that they even want to). But the necessity of trying to keep us human remains, and that goal is best served when we remember that even the people we fight are human as well. Pacifism and the just war tradition address that point more readily than the ethical systems of nationalism and political realism.
Instead I hope for a better world where peace, love, and reconciliation reign, and orient myself toward that goal. I write about it, I preach about it, I pray about it. In the meantime, human nature guarantees that utopia to be a long way off, and so I make a distinction between the military taking pride in its work and skill and taking pleasure in the death of a person, even if it is the result of one's skill. I'm indebted to military and police personnel (many of both in my family) for their work—work that is unfortunately required in this world. And I pray that God has mercy on us all, even our enemies.
