The Seductive Allure of Wars We’re Not Winning by Andrew Bacevich, Washington Post
For better or worse, ours is today a warlike nation that depends on volunteers to fill the ranks of its armed forces. Young men and women have a variety of motives for signing up. No doubt some do so for high-minded, even idealistic reasons. For many, however, more pragmatic considerations figure: a job with salary and benefits, a chance to escape from a humdrum or dispiriting existence. In all likelihood, few volunteers know what they are getting into, particularly in wartime. Fully disclosing what service in a distant war zone might entail is not a high priority for recruiters trying to fill their monthly quota of warm and willing bodies.
Even so, the new Washington Post poll of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans shows that, looking back, most of today’s veterans find no cause to regret their decision to join. Nearly nine out of 10 would do so again. Indeed, a majority of those who participated in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars profess to “miss” something they experienced there.
What they miss is not the chance to kill jihadists, pursuant to spreading democracy and the American way of life, but comradeship experienced in the midst of trying circumstances. In that regard, of course, today’s veterans do not differ greatly from prior generations. However mystifying to those who have never spent any appreciable time in uniform, the bonds formed between soldiers in the course of wartime service — and even on occasion in service other than in wartime — have an immediacy and intimacy seldom found in other walks of life…
Comments
I realize the below are quotes, but they raise to me the obvious thought (at least to this former Navy Officer). Either, as many members of today's AVF military claim, they are patriotic and go to war to serve and protect the nation or “It doesn’t really matter what kind of war we fought, because ... we never fought for our country, anyway. Not once, ever. That’s recruiting poster jazz."
It is today's AVF military's oft repeated assertion and the public's buying into their being the few patriotic souls whom serve the nation and fight its wars to keep it safe that are the basis for the current era popularity of the armed forces. Publicly spread the word that its members never fought for this country, but instead (for a lack of a better phrase) fought solely for the honor and glory of their unit and its team members -- which can easily be conceived as meaning for the love of the game, and one will witness the popularity of today's Military plummet. That is, should the population in general begin to believe that wisdom.
Be careful, today's military can't have it both ways -- at least not in the eyes of the public.
This reinforces what soldiers through the ages who have shared the experience of close combat together know.
From: These Good Men: Friendship Forged from War by Michael Norman
"I now know why men who have been to war yearn to reunite. Not to tell stories or look at old pictures. Not to laugh or weep. Comrades gather because they long to be with the men who once acted at their best; men who suffered and sacrificed, who were stripped of their humanity. I did not pick these men. They were delivered by fate and the military. But I know them in a way I know no other men. I have never given anyone such trust. They were willing to guard something more precious than my life. They would have carried my reputation, the memory of me. It was part of the bargain we all made, the reason we were so willing to die for one another. As long as I have memory, I will think of them all, every day. I am sure that when I leave this world, my last thought will be of my family and my comrades... Such good men."
And from: The Bleed by John R Cronin
“It doesn’t really matter what kind of war we fought, because on combat operations out there in the deserts or the mountains or the jungles or the bush – out there in the bleed – we never fought for our country, anyway. Not once, ever. That’s recruiting poster jazz. It was always for the guy walking behind us on one of those fear some jungle trails; the guy we might not even know very well but for whom it would be unthinkable to let down. So we wave the flag and it’s a good thing we’re proud to do so, but in our hearts we all know that the men we served with will always be the first thing we think about when we see someone wearing the same uniform we once did. We couldn’t stop seeing those images if we tried.”