Wanted: Leadership

I’m a pacifist. Let’s start with that, in the interests, as they say, of full disclosure. I believe, yes I do, that war is an admission of failure, a pathetic response when our reason and our science and our logic and our negotiating skills and our very intelligence is insufficient to find another way, and we are left to apply brute force like the three-year-old who can’t refute all of the older siblings’ arguments and finally just hits because it’s the only thing left to do. Tragic-sad, when it operates on the scale of nations that supposedly have adults in charge.

I believe that if we can keep ourselves from annihilating life on earth in the interests of convenience and consumerism and a healthy stock market, someday we’ll create societies that don’t require war to maintain the equilibrium amongst themselves. They’ll even have other ways to apply power and assign influence and status, reapportion (even steal) resources, etc. I won’t be around to see it. My DNA dies with me, so there will be nothing of me in that future, if it exists.

I’m also a realist. And the daughter of a US Marine. My contempt for war has nothing to do with my views on military policy. I’m actually a bit on the hawkish side in many respects, that way. A strong military is an essential tool for avoiding war in a world as batshit looney as this world.

Of course, my definition of a “strong” military differs wildly from the Pentagon’s and the military/industrial complex. My definition of a “strong” military is grounded in the quality of human assets. Smart, committed troops, exquisitely trained to a high degree of readiness and supplied with the tools needed to keep them alive while they are engaged in combat. Soldiers, sailors, airmen/women and marines (oh, naturally jarheads, Dad…) who are professional above all, intelligent, skilled, and highly motivated because they have absolute confidence in their leadership. Confident that leadership will never deploy them unless it is as the ultimate Last Resort and then only with strongly united civilian support and a broad consensus that sending them in harm’s way is worth the price: Putting the lives of some of our best and brightest on the line, and losing them, maybe lots of them. That’s a strong military.

The technology is good, too, but technology don’t mean shit when you’re next to a bleeding comrade with fire incoming. What matters then is, who’s got your back, and how good are they at their jobs? A strong military is a military in which every active and reserve member has confidence in their own ability, the abilities of their teammates, the abilities of their leadership, and the support of the people they’re fighting for: me and you. The technology is the icing.

Here’s the deal. There is NO war that a military like that can’t win. They could go into a bitterly divided nation riddled with internal conflict and stuffed with well-armed, ruthless guerilla factions operating out of hellishly difficult terrain and take it, pacify it, and hold it while the politicians imposed a new destiny on it. They could do that, because THAT military, that really STRONG military, would have two advantages going in: First, they’d know that their nation would do whatever it took to give them the resources they needed to do the job, up to and including conscripting the children of the wealthy and influential, up to and including making war profiteering a federal crime punishable by life imprisonment, up to and including gritting our collective teeth and taking hellish casualty levels. Because they’d never, EVER, be sent to war unless the reason was that compelling.

Second, they’d have a record of such success that they’d have an enormous weight of psychological advantage. That, bolstered by their professionalism (they’d be known for respecting the rules of war, abiding by the Geneva Conventions, and eschewing terror tactics and other tools of dubious utility,) would help them establish a powerful base of support among at least some of the civilian population.

A nation with a military like that could — almost certainly would — be an awesomely powerful force among its neighbors. If that nation also had a strong economy that concentrated its wealth among a large majority middle class, that nation would be unbeatable by anything except a WMD-armed league of every other nation in the world.

We’ve never had THAT military. Not even right after World War II, when we had overwhelming technological advantages. We got as close, then, as any nation’s ever gotten, I think. We were within grabbing distance of having it, until the politicians started hallucinating about dominoes and the Great Red Menace. Korea was a bad sign, for sure. Not an irrecoverable fuckup, but definitely the beginning of the end. In a way, it was the worst possible outcome because the non-resolution achieved in Korea looked better than all the alternatives, so we could call it “success” with a straight face.

See, the thing is, a military like that is an awesomely scary thing. Put a foot wrong in using it and there you go, busting the cover on a bottomless geyser of shit. But, Darwin aside, there are members of the species stupid enough to try and make toast with an acetylene torch, or crack nuts with a sledgehammer. And a larger number of fools to vote for these idiots. Elect enough of them, and sure enough, some semi-evolved primate is gonna have the brilliant “idea” of ‘using’ that military force to do something stupid like, say, protect the economic interests of some dubious ally trying to vainly hang on to decaying colonial assets in an emphatically post-colonial world. And rationalize this folly with sententious scaremongering about the good ol’ Great Red Menace.

Then the fecal matter hits the rotary air mover with a vengeance, as we know.

And we end up throwing the lives of what should be the world’s greatest military force away on suicidal adventures, degrading their effectiveness and reducing them, ultimately, to a status somewhere between creepy but second-rate storm troopers and dressed-up tin soldiers. As individuals, they’re still striving for the excellence they know they can and should be exemplifying. Their commitment is heartbreaking, all the more so for its horrifying, tragic, twisted futility. They are paying blood for political dross, and with every death their collective effectiveness is further eroded until they are the modern military equivalent of Ahab or the Flying Dutchman, doomed in pursuit of chimeras that will ultimately cost them everything they hold dear.

We need leadership, REAL leadership that has a clear and realistic vision of what it will take to secure America’s future: a strong military. Leadership committed to give us that strong military, and to unify us in appreciating it and supporting it. Not in mindless flag-waving jingoism, but in the willingness to make personal sacrifices, to change Business As Usual, to take risks and make changes to build an economy that can support that military AND keep our civilian population strong, healthy, educated, and involved in self-governance. Support that military in the willingness to commit our individual freedoms and the well-being of our families to a vision of social and economic justice that will make freedom and well-being a norm for virtually all, rather than a distant pie-in-the-sky ‘opportunity’ for far too many. That kind of leadership is rare.

Are there any Democrats out there with that kind of leadership?

wearily,
Bright

Sounds like your ticket..

~~

For sure, both of them are better than the childish dickheads in charge now.

But I'm too disillusioned not to be skeptical. Clark will have to convince me that he doesn't think the end justifies the means, a common fallacy among military strategists.

And Warner... well, I used to live in Maryland, Warner was our neighbor and not a bad guy. But again, he'll have to convince me that he doesn't buy into the myth that "expediency" equates with "effectiveness." Short-term thinker? I hope not. Hard to tell.

I'll keep an open mind, regardless.

attentively,
Bright

Please do....all the way through. In particular, listen to Clark's answer to the question, "why don't Democrats brag more about military victories that they have led, like Kosovo?"...

mms://youngturks.wmod.llnwd.net/a591/o1/6-9WesClarkSr.wmv
(copy and paste url)

or go here.....
http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2006/6/9/144548/6073

Personally, so much emphasis on the military is ruinous to peace. Better that the military be seen and not heard.

Just imagine a $50 billion budget for war. We'd have never even thought about invading Iraq.

...but once you cut out the obscene profits to the military/industrial complex owners, and eliminated all the specious high tech boondoggle projects, and the pork-barrel apportionment of resources in high-dispersion, low-efficiency patterns to get Congresscritters re-elected, I think you'd be surprised how far $50 billion would go to buy a top-quality military.

bean-countingly,
Bright

But we can't live much longer with what's going on now.

...hawk or dove, the current batch of incompetent, greedy fools isn't doing you ANY favors. The only ones getting "more secure" out of this debacle are the assholes with offshore bank accounts and private security. And eventually that will fail them, in a world descending into mindless atavistic savagery.

In fact, I'd suggest the pigeon as the bird to symbolize the current cabal, given that pigeons have filthy habits, carry disgusting diseases, and shit in their own nests as well as everywhere else, but there the analogy breaks down. Pigeons are way smarter than * et al.

disgustedly,
Bright