Supporting the Troops: A Critical Analysis

Rene L. Gonzalez Berrios

01/21/04: (ICH) I’m tired of this war. I’m tired of this Bush administration. I’m tired of the savage attacks against our liberties and elementary principles of international law and democracy. But most of all, I am tired of ingrained social fears that force individuals to take publicly-accepted (albeit erroneous, in my opinion) positions. One of these ingrained fears is the belief that we must support the troops, lest a whole host of other consequences occur.

The U.S. public today is comparable to the cowardly Germans of 1945, the only difference is that we will probably never have a General Eisenhower force us into our concentration camps (Guantanamo?) to witness and accept the horror that we unleashed on the world and on ourselves. After the war’s end, Eisenhower forced the civilian population of Germany to visit the concentration camps in which they had exterminated millions of Jews, homosexuals, communists, and other “undesirables”. It was, at the same moment, a horrifying emotional punishment and an emotional catharsis; a new beginning. From this turning point, the German nation would move to have Social-Democratic governments and a political culture that was overly sensitive to any and all measures that resembled the rise of fascism (although the fascist threat would continue to exist in the form of neo-nazi and anti-immigrant movements). 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the American Republic is putting the finishing touches on what could be arguably characterized as the foundation for fascism. The baby steps are there: a catastrophic event and a subsequent government usurpation of liberties (Germany: The Reichstag Fire and the “Enabling Act”, U.S: Sept. 11th terrorist attack and the “Patriot Act”), a national media firmly under control of corporations, spewing out pro-government propaganda completely at odds with journalism virtually everywhere else in the world, a population in fear, a strong military, and a government drunk with its own self-righteous lunacy. All the ingredients for fascism at home and abroad are there. The differences are in degree, not in principles. We have initiated two wars, one arguably illegitimate and illegal (Afghanistan and Iraq). We have rounded up particular sets of citizens, based on racial, religious, and political grounds (Arabs, Sikh Indians, and other political dissidents). We’ve subverted international law in the process, and promoted a national culture of fear and war-hungry patriotism. Bush is no Hitler, I assure you. At least Hitler could whip a fearful population into frenzy with his accomplished oratorical skills. Bush barely can say a few sentences before stumbling on his own words. What remains, really, is for the United States to commit a large-scale holocaust on its own people, through the form of massive detentions of its own citizens and abroad. Other than that, we are pretty close in all the other pre-requisites for emulating Nazi Germany, which is why we here in the United States need to wakeup out of our complacency. Yes, people…fascism can happen here, in the birthplace of the first modern democratic experiment.

There is evidence that this “wakeup” is occurring. “Established opinion” (the name which elite commentary goes by these days) has shed its jingoist pro-war, “embedded journalism” hysteria. With the exception of Fox News and MSNBC, all other major media outlets are, at the very least, dabbing into the possibility that the war was wrong and illegal. The major Democratic candidates, with the exception of Lieberman, are either strengthening their initial anti-war stances or changing them to support an anti-war message, and the domestic debates are lively, illuminating relatively uncharted areas of health care, education, civil service, and the true meaning of democracy and its expression in society. At the very least, people in the United States are beginning to say “maybe we were wrong”, if not being confident that they were. Like my father used to say, every right wing turn brings its reciprocal explosion to the left. One curious hold-out of the “established truths” of the Right continues to evade this shift to the Left and its accompanying tide of reason, rationality, and critical analysis. This hold-out is the belief that we must support the troops.

I am aware that the position I take in this article is thoroughly unpopular (here in the United States, not in the world). Even people I admire (such as some of the more visible Leftist activists in the United States, like Michael Moore and others) would not agree to my position, and many have made public pronouncements linking opposition to the war and support of the troops. The very argument of “Supporting the Troops” is too broad to define it to one position. What I will do is to deal with some of the more commonly stated reasons for “Supporting the Troops” and attempt to debunk them. I also admit to the reader that it is perhaps easier for me, as a Puerto Rican national who happens to be a U.S. citizen because of U.S. colonialism over my nation for 106 years, to take this position and to critically ask the questions that strengthens my positions. It is not easy for an American citizen, with genuine loyalty to his nation, to ask these questions, for the answers bring nothing but shame and guilt. I, however, argue that Americans MUST ask themselves these questions. Americans need their own “Germany 1945 Catharsis” in order to catapult themselves and the rest of the world toward a new age of global brotherhood and more sensible domestic and foreign policies. If you, the reader, are courageous, then welcome aboard. Read on.

Argument #1: The Troops are not to blame. It’s the politicians who are to blame.

I disagree. The troops and the politicians are both human beings with brains, consciences, and individual will to act in favor or against particular policies. Granted, I will not attempt to ignore the power dynamic that relatively shields politicians from the consequences of their actions and the precarious position of a dissenting soldier. To dissent as a soldier and to dissent as a politician are not equal things. But, ultimately, on the moral level, a soldier’s dissent is equal to a politician’s dissent (if it is genuine). Thus, all politicians who favor an unnecessary and illegal war and all soldiers who actively support it are equally culpable of surrendering themselves to morally incorrect policy. Troops are not children. They are not unthinking drones (and if they sometimes act like it, the greater the shame and culpability on them!) They are adults, with individual will, brains, and consciences. To argue that the politicians are solely to blame simply because they are in a position to decide policy is to morally absolve the soldiers from making the crucial decision of supporting or opposing the war. Ultimately, without soldiers’ support, there would be no war. 

Historically, soldiers’ refusals to serve have changed erroneous military policies. A case in point is the Refusenik movement in Israel. In recent weeks, various high-profile pilots, soldiers, and generals have signed their names to the growing Refusenik movement (those that refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces beyond the 1967 borders, including the Palestinian occupied territories). If individual Israeli soldiers, in an arguably more totalitarian and politically-charged society, can take the courageous step of opposing the majority view of their people and risk the consequences that entails, why is it that American soldiers are absolved of moral responsibility for their cowardice to refuse serving in an illegal, colonial, and unnecessary war? That Israelis soldiers can refuse (and Vietnam-era U.S. soldiers DID refuse) proves that current soldiers can refuse to serve and follow their conscience. They have the power to choose their destiny, and with that power of choice comes responsibility for the decision. 

Arguments that aim to “support the troops” by absolving them of all moral and conscious responsibility for analyzing the conflict in which they are sent are erroneous, in my view. We may hold the view (which I do) that most soldiers lack the intellectual capacity (not biological, but acquired through education) to truly analyze the merits of a particular conflict or particular military policy; indeed I believe most soldiers are recruited from backgrounds in which it is highly unlikely that they’ve received any education about the history of their nation, its military policies, and the merits of current policies, except those bombarded at them by the corporate-media, social culture, or military academies. But, as with a violation of the law, are people absolved from participating in crimes if they didn’t know that what they were supporting was not legitimate or legal (as this war was not)? Soldiers may be intellectually absolved from knowing the true motives of U.S. wars (which are usually arguments about democracy, freedom, and humanitarian concerns, most if not historical lies), but they are not morally-absolved from having collaborated with the entire illegal venture. Their lack of knowledge (and in some cases, their conscious decision to be apathetic to the history of their country’s past and current military policies) allows for the kinds of brutal conflicts (like Vietnam and Iraq), in which the U.S. puts itself clearly in an oppressive situation. We in the United States may not like seeing ourselves in this way, but the rest of the world sure sees us that way. And, as I stated before, I’m not writing as an American, I’m writing as a foreigner, a person born from another part of the world. I write the truth, not what is palatable to the American public.

That being my position, I cannot, in good conscience, ignore the plight of those that suffer the consequences of a willfully or accidentally ignorant American public. I cannot ignore the millions of dead as a result of past and current U.S. military and foreign policies. I, therefore, cannot support the troops. It is they, by their own ignorance and by the supportive ignorance of their relatives back home that allow for the implementation of opportunistic U.S. foreign policies, directed by opportunistic and morally bankrupt U.S. “leaders”.

Argument #2: The troops don’t know what they do. They are simple soldiers, who follow orders.

They may not know, but they should have. Would we, as easily, dismiss the guilt of the German Gestapo soldiers, many who believed the propaganda of their own system, of the superiority of their national group, of the righteousness of their cause, despite the pleas of their victims and the dissenting opinions of various other Germans? Or would we, as we do now, prosecute every single last one of the Nazis, wherever we find them in the world, and condemn every single vestige of their discredited ideology to the history books? If this is our position, then we are obliged, by intellectual consistency requirements, to hold troops accountable to their actions, no matter where they occur.

Following orders is not an excuse for participating in illegal wars and their accompanying illegal war crimes and humiliation of the victims. The famous Nuremberg Trials introduced this concept into international law. True, Nuremberg was victor’s justice. The British and Americans got away with massive firebombings of German cities (although the British could claim self-defense, given their suffering as a result of the German Blitz), the Russians got away with massive human rights atrocities in German-controlled areas of Europe, and the Americans got away with the single-most individual biggest civilian calamity in history: the detonation of the U.S. atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both recorded terrorist events, by our current standards. And, contrary to established thought, it was not justified by the war with the Japanese. There’s plentiful evidence to prove that the Japanese were attempting surrender negotiations prior to the detonation of the bombs. A more plausible theory is that the Americans used the atomic bombs (and sacrificed Japanese civilians on this political altar) to send a message to the Russians, who were already viewed as the “next” threat. That the U.S. so readily extinguished the lives of Japanese innocents for a political purpose places U.S. morality on the same level as the Germans and Japanese, who had both pursued equally brutal and uncaring expansionist policies.

The importance of Nuremberg is that it established for international law the principle that “following orders” did not absolve the accused of his guilt. Therefore, I claim Nuremberg’s principles (and the principles of Robert H. Jackson, the U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg) to argue that the U.S. soldiers who participated in the slaughters and colonial humiliation of this second Iraqi war should not be absolved of their responsibility for carrying out their illegal and unnecessary war orders. If it was good enough a standard to apply to the Nazi fascists and to the Japanese militarists, it is good enough to apply to our American neoconservative ideologues and their troops on the global chessboard. This charge is particularly strong considering the unprecedented nature and extent of the anti-war movement PRIOR to the war. U.S. troops should have known that their actions were illegal and unnecessary. There was ample public demonstrations and information against the war. This privilege of fore-knowledge of a future policy’s illegalities was never granted the German Nazi soldiers, and they were still not absolved from responsibility in the Third Reich’s crimes. Therefore, U.S. soldiers are equally, if not more culpable for following illegal and unnecessary orders. For this reason, I cannot support the troops for conducting what is justifiably regarded in the rest of the world as an illegal war, acts of illegal international state terrorism and war crimes.

Conclusion

I have argued that supporting the troops is tantamount to the willful or accidental support of those troops’ actions. It is impossible to remain consistent and non-hypocritical by attempting to “support the troops” and separate that support from their willful or cowardly/non-active participation in the illegal and unnecessary Iraq War. To attempt to do so, is to argue that, on certain occasions (particularly when it involves OUR troops) it is acceptable to discount the consequences of our troops actions in an illegal war and not judge them to the same standards set forth at Nuremberg against the German Nazis, Italian fascists, and Japanese militarists. This may be comforting for the majority American population, it is not acceptable for the majority of the world (and does much to answer that most important philosophical question, “Why do they hate us?”). They hate us because we are acting like the German Nazis or Japanese imperial expansionists, at least in regards to our foreign policy principles and our treatment of established international law standards. What else can we expect the world to feel? Would we be any different in our strong condemnation of, say China, if it embarked on a similar course of warfare and imperial expansion? Would we not condemn her, justly, of violating the Nuremberg principles, the principles of international law, etc.?

I applaud the self-reflection occurring these days in the national media, in local and national forums, and in expressed American opinion. That’s real democracy. But, one thing I refuse to acknowledge or support, is the long hold-out of recalcitrant and hypocritical right-wing thought which is the idea that "responsible" anti-war opponents must tie their opposition to the war to automatic support of the troops. I will take the more intellectually courageous, historically accurate, and world-supported position that war crimes are war crimes, wherever they occur, and that, as set forth in Nuremberg, soldiers cannot be absolved from guilt of crimes because of lacking the power to decide the foreign policy that sends them to war or from the argument that they were just following orders.

For the reasons outlined above, I cannot support the U.S war in Iraq and I cannot support the U.S. troops.

Rene L. Gonzalez Berrios <renegonzalez7@hotmail.com>  M.A. Political Science
University of Massachusetts