Maybe you’ve seen the ad. A soldier in fatigues makes his way through an empty airport, gets his duffel bag, rides an empty train, walks empty city streets and then someone walks up and says, “Welcome home.” Suddenly people appear all around him. The tag line is something like, “If you are a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan, you are not alone.” There’s a website to go to for support. Every time I see the ad, I respond to its blatant pathos with something akin to frustration and disdain but I wonder if it points us to a deeper and more troubling reality.

Andrew Bacevich’s book The Limits of Power has gotten a lot of commentary here at OneUtah. After reading it, I delved into his prior The New Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. The two books dovetail thematically – the first exploring the ways in which Americans are in love with military power and the second the inherent limits on such power and the concomitant dangers of attempting to maintain America’s military superiority over any and all real, potential and imagined enemies.

Although Bacevich highlights a troubling and problematic theme in American history (which I need to explore in depth later), I remain oddly struck by the divide between the military and civilian United States. Since the all volunteer army was created, the US Army has become an institution dedicated both to the concept of its own professionalism and the preservation of high social status for members, especially the professional officer class. Such high status is intended to place military judgment beyond the realm of questioning by civilians and civilian authority. Restoring the prestige of the military and of military service was a long term project – aimed at reversing the popular perception of military life as dehumanizing, degrading, and something to be avoided.

After Vietnam, the military actively encouraged the “stabbed in the back” myth – that the Vietnam war could have been won were it not for the interference of civilian leadership. To that end, military leaders intentionally created a system in which any major military activity would require the activation of the reserves – such as we’ve seen in Iraq. The goal, at least, was to force the citizen leadership to take the politically risky step of activating the reserves for long periods of time (and hopefully, to shore up widespread popular support for military actions). At the same time, we’ve experienced a dramatic drop in the number of elected officials who are veterans.

The result is a deep and growing divide between the military and the rest of us. Bacevich cites research showing that members of the military perceive themselves to be more patriotic, more virtuous, more moral and more in tune with American values than the nation they defend. Though they don’t say it, apparently members of the US military the rest of us as lacking in patriotism, virtue, morality and out of touch with American values. I find such a divide dangerous and such attitudes on the part of the military abhorrent and profoundly troubling.

Bacevich’s entire book is a meditation on civilian attitudes toward the military – attitudes exemplified but not unique to chickenhawks like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush who see the military as the primary example of American power and a tool to be used ruthlessly, relentlessly and fearlessly at any time the citizen leadership sees fit. Such attitudes appear simultaneously with the idea of “supporting the troops” – one doesn’t question their actions or their mission even if one does everything and has done everything in one’s power to avoid actual military service.

I think there’s another aspect of civilian attitudes toward the military that needs exploration. I’m not done with the book so Bacevich may do so but I’m going to plunge in here.

Military service is voluntary. The military, until Iraq, went to great lengths to recruit volunteers who met minimum requirements of mental health and intelligence. However, the military is not representative of America; it is poorer, more rural, more Southern, less well educated and significantly less white. The children of middle and upper middle class and wealthy families do not find their way to military service with any alacrity. For non-military people, I think the military seems to be two very different institutions – one, the “professional” class of military persons – the West Point or Anapolis educated officer class – and the lower class enlisted ranks. For the professionals it is a career – for the others it is a “way out” of whatever mess they were in before. Since service is optional, people choosing to serve are doing so for personal reasons (and those not serving are doing so for equally personal reasons).

There’s a mismatch between the military’s self image and the tax paying public that supports the military.

In a moment rich in disastrous hubris, the revelations of abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq devastated the public perception of the military as a highly professional organization and confirmed the worst public perceptions of those who serve as psychologically damaged and socially suspect. While the military and its defenders attempted to argue Abu Ghraib was the result of a few bad apples, many people saw a bad barrel. Decades of carefully cultivated public image were utterly destroyed by a few photographs.

The self perception of members of the military – that they are more patriotic, moral, virtuous and connected to American values – seems almost laughable in light of the varied disasters of last few years. The process of scapegoating civilian leadership has already begun and is every bit as dishonest as it was after Vietnam.

Yes, the Bush administration’s incompetence and mismanagement are legendary, but the US military has also failed repeatedly – both to apply its own lessons from the past and to learn the right lessons of the past. We didn’t lose in Vietnam because of civilian meddling or protesting hippies. We lost in Vietnam because it was an unwinnable war. We cannot win in Iraq because it is unwinnable. The US military convinced itself that the answer to avoiding another Vietnam was more professionalism, better technology and smart PR, the ability to strong arm civilian leaders into obeying the military’s advice and having overpowering force. Having marched into a box canyon, the military found itself an unwilling accomplice in its own dismemberment over the past 8 years (misuse in the years before that). The US military, rather than embracing innovation and change, seems instead to have become an even more conservative and hidebound institution, one intent on congratulating itself on its moral rectitude.

The tension between a military that sees itself a morally superior to the population it defends and a population being taxed to support such a military cannot be allowed fester. The potential for disaster is simply too great. The military’s attitude is the first steps down a road which must not be traveled, which leads to the dangerous potential for the military leadership to see itself as superior to and not answerable to civilian authorities. Corresponding, we civilians need to adjust our attitudes toward the military. Our military spending is outrageously out of proportion to our actual defense needs. We need to see the military as neither the highest of callings (the “support the troops” trope) nor as the waste bin of American society into which we toss the sociopaths and people who aren’t yet criminals. There’s almost no need for the US to have a standing army of millions and its long past time we deal with the reality.

We also need to accept that security and peace cannot be purchased with a gun (or a giant army). We cannot build a fortress America and we cannot isolate ourselves from the world. We need to build bridges and connections. And we need to accept that perfect safety is unachievable. And ultimately, we need to engage in a deep, long national conversation about the military, about public service and our values. The amount we spend on a military we don’t need is enough to fund programs the likes of which would make the Great Society seem small scale. It’s not ultimately about how you feel about the military or the troops; it is about discerning and identifying our real needs and priorities and then putting our resources to work.