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America should
realize war mistakes
By MIKE KOTLARCZYK
Photos courtesy of George W. Bush
A recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh revealed that American
commandos have been in Iran (yes, with an 'n') for several months.
Vague and unconvincing White House denials have essentially
verified the heart of the story, leaving many Americans afraid
that the president – who was perhaps a tad overeager in
involving us in a war in the past – will rush us off to
another war. Hersh has said that his article was meant to shed
light on the event not to endanger any American lives, but to
raise this issue to everyone's consciousness so that we can
avoid the mistakes of the past that have led us into war.
It is doubtful that this will work. I don't mean to say that
I think the Bush administration is planning a new war in the
Middle East. I believe the protestations of Secretary Rice when
she says that no military plan exists for invading Iran in the
near future. What I doubt is the endeavor of hoping to have
Americans learn from the mistakes of the past. It seems to be
a uniquely tragic flaw in the American character that we only
remember the glory of war and never the horror.
As a result, our political culture remains very martial. Perhaps
one of the most emblematic images of the American president
is that of him descending Marine One, flashing a salute to the
marine at the base of the stairs. Few remember, however, that
Ronald Reagan, the father of neoconservatism, was the first
president to do this – including the presidents that we
have had who have been generals! But can you imagine if a president
today, especially a Democratic president, did not salute? He,
or she, would instantly be soft on defense and too big of a
sissy to be commander in chief.
Similarly, isn't it odd the way we still refer to presidents
who were also generals as "General ____?" "General
Washington," "General Grant," and "General
Eisenhower" are as commonly uttered as "President
Washington," "President Grant," and "President
Eisenhower." But does this really make sense? A president,
as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, outranks even a five-star
general. I suspect that the reason we continue to do this is
because of the reverence in which we hold our military leaders,
even higher than our national leaders.
President Washington, in his tremendous wisdom, recognized the
tendency of a people's mind to drift to romanticizing war. After
we won the Revolutionary War, there was a large clamoring that
Washington crown himself king, a scenario that the history of
the rest of our hemisphere demonstrates as being wholly plausible.
When Washington rejected the personal spoils of victory, England's
King George III presciently remarked, "Washington has ruined
it for us all." Even after his nation called him into service
as its first president, Washington emphasized the importance
of civilian control of the military. He did not, like so many
Latin American leaders, wear his military uniform as his daily
duds, but instead dressed in civilian clothes to further emphasize
that we are a nation that seeks peace and accepts war, instead
of the other way around.
Perhaps the reason we continue to romanticize war is that our
country has never been ravaged by modern war. French farmers
still turn up literally tons of unexploded artillery shells
from the front lines of World War I. Today in Berlin, one can
take a walk through old East Berlin and see the bullet marks
in buildings that remain from the street fighting between the
Germans and Russians in the spring of 1945, or the remains of
a bombed out steeple that the Germans have refused to repair,
choosing to let it stand in the skyline as a constant reminder
of the devastation that accompanies war.
We are undoubtedly blessed to have never experienced prolonged
suffering on our soil like this, but at the same time this good
fortune may have prevented us from learning an important lesson
about the horrors of war. It is no coincidence that some of
our most peaceful leaders have been those who knew war most
intimately: Washington kept us out of the raging conflicts in
Europe in the late 18th century, and Eisenhower ended the Korean
War and guided us through the tense early stages of the Cold
War without a major incident. Yet the American people as a whole
remain rather hawkish, as the approval ratings of the Iraq War
at its outset demonstrate. The great Confederate General Robert
E. Lee once remarked, "It is well that war is so terrible,
lest we should grow too fond of it." As a nation, we are
perilously close to forgetting the terribleness and growing
fond of war as a tool of diplomacy rather than an unavoidable
last resort. |
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