Cannon fodder

When George Bush and Dick Cheney look at our troops fighting and bleeding and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, they look on them with the eyes of aristocrats and see the lesser orders doing their duty to protect the privileges and comforts of their betters.

In other words, they see the hired help.

When John McCain looks at them he looks at them through the eyes of the generals on the hillside in Woody Allen's Love and Death and sees...sheep.

Rebellious, ungrateful sheep who don't know it's their role in life to be sent to the slaughter and like it and like the people sending them to it.

Reminded of all the flag-draped coffins, Dick Cheney shrugs and says, "They volunteered."

Faced with the fact that a great many of our troops don't want to come home in flag-draped coffins and actually plan to come home not dead and go on to resume normal lives and finish their educations and find good jobs afterwards, John McCain hollers, "Not so fast, you chickenshit weasels.  Did you really think volunteering meant you get a say in what happens to you?  Don't you know we still need your candy-asses over there?  Fall in line, maggots, and be grateful if when we do let you come home we bother to pay for your textbooks let alone your entire fucking college tuition!"

We have an all-volunteer military.

The question is what do they volunteer for?

Let's leave aside the probability than even the most gung-ho Marine did not sign on to fight and die an unnecessary war for the sole glory of George Bush's vanity and ego and Dick Cheney's pals' profit margins.

And let's also leave aside the truth that with stop-loss and the Bush League's commandeering of the National Guard a great many of our troops in the Middle East are effectively draftees not volunteers.

Whatever the reasons they volunteered,  it's certainly not the case that any of them volunteered to be mere cannon fodder.

Or flypaper.

I've always thought that our soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen and women volunteer to be our first line of defense.  I have never thought that their volunteering lets any of the rest of us off the hook when it comes to fighting for and defending the country.

I've always thought that they volunteered to do the fighting for us up until the point when they couldn't do it alone anymore and needed our help, at which point all the rest of us, at least those of us able-bodied enough, would volunteer to join them or line up to be drafted.

I've also thought that in their volunteering and our accepting their service, there was no offer of pure self-sacrifice on their part and no expectation of unadulturated altruism on ours.

I always thought we made a deal.

They promised to stand up to protect us.

We promised to take care of them and give them what they need to do the job.  We promised not to send them off to fight under-equipped and under-trained.  We promised not to send them into battle commanded by morons.  We promised to take care of their families if they were killed.  We promised to take care of them if they were wounded.  And we promised to pay them for their service, pay them well, and pay them in more than just money and medals and an annual parade.

We promised that for handing over their lives to us for a set number of years we would hand back to them at the end of that set number of years better lives for them to return to.

But what do I know?  I had the good luck and the luxury of not having had to serve in the military, thanks to the volunteers, so I can't help feeling a bit grateful to them.

Perhaps if I'd been born the son and grandson of admirals and served as a Navy pilot and then been as far as you can tell from the things I say about it the only US serviceman in Vietnam to have been captured and tortured, I'd know better.

I'd know that the ground troops have only one purpose.

Cannon fodder in my planned hundred year war.

I cede the floor to my honorable colleague, Mr TBogg:

One way to expand the military would be to, you know, stop invading countries for no good reason which results in soldiers being killed. Now that would get the retention rate up in a variety of ways. Beyond that, McCain acknowledges the difficulty of fighting a war with soldiers who want to get out while the getting is good. After all, nobody ever won a hundred year war using temps.

____________

Recommended:  Brilliant at Breakfast's Jurrasicpork on McCain's and Bush's opposition to the new GI Bill, No, you can't leave and better yourself.

Hat tip to Avedon Carol, naturally.

Comments

[Vir Modestus]

Hear, hear. Beautifully said.

[chris the cop]

I think you can find lots of ways to legitimately criticize John McCain. (the guy's wrapped a little too tight to have his finger on The Button as far as I'm concerned) I say this as someone who likely won't vote for him.)

But I find the image you created of McCain on a hillside viewing soldiers as "sheep...who don't know it's their role in life to be sent to the slaughter and like it and like the people sending them to it" deeply offensive.

The man served his country and displayed unimaginable courage as a POW. I believe his particular reasons for supporting the continuation of the war could be called misguided by opponents of that war, but not dishonorable.

I like the take on Cheney, though and I always wanted to see 'Love and Death' but never did. I remember hearing Allen describing it as an "intimate love story, with battle scenes' knocking me off my chair I laughed so hard.

[Falstaff]

Maybe here would be a good place to ask -- not that you're under any requirement to or anything -- if you're planning to discuss your feelings about Clinton's Iraq War vote, as you said you would in response to a comment of mine some time back.

Of course, the posts since then have been fairly awesome -- I don't agree with everything you've said in the past few days, but I pretty much put that down to anger at the whole election process and at some of the things various candidates have said.

As for this post, just so I don't act like an ass and ignore what I'm supposed to be responding to, I think you hit the nail right on the head. As a Quaker, I try to get away from the rage inspired by that "They volunteered" crack, but it's hard going, and you've done a better job than I could of explaining just why -- not to mention McCain's outrageous positions on that G.I. bill.

(I do keep coming back to Cheney. He didn't just say that, he said it with a smirk on his face -- he just couldn't help it. Dear God, I've never hoped someone trips and falls down the stairs so much in my life.)

[Apostate]

In response to Chris the Cop's outrage, a lot more people would honor McCain's military/POW record more if he hadn't capitulated on the issue of torture.

[KC45s]

Far be it from me to throw cold water on the demonization spree American politics indulges every four years, but nothing I've seen says to me McCain looks on the military as sheep. Bush? Perhaps. Or as so many sheep--even with him I think it's a bit more complicated, that "hired help" hits closer to the mark.

I'm willing to believe McCain thinks war a legitimate solution to all foreign policy problems. I'm willing to believe he wants to re-fight (and win) Vietnam and thinks he can by leading us to glory in Iraq. I'm even willing to believe he's neither a neocon nor a practicioner of realpolitik, but instead running as he does on Iraq for the pure political expediency of placing himself in direct opposition to the Democratic candidate.

Really, I'm willing to believe a lot of things. Especially of conservative politicians.

But I don't believe he's soulless enough to see the military as ciphers in the great Risk game of spreading American hegemony and securing raw materials (among other so-called goals). That's Cheneyism. That's neoconservatism. If somehow McCain gets elected, he may yet ruin himself by embracing such craziness, by herding the sheep, if you will. But, fair is fair. I don't see him anywhere near that kind of appalling yet. Having watched such attitudes in action for six years, I hope I'd recognize more of the same when I see it.

Won't argue with the rest of the post, though.

[Falstaff]

I'd like to take this opportunity to, you know, properly address the points made in this entry and not make demands, and I'm going to do that by doing that thing you're not supposed to do when you're commenting on a blog.

I think Apostate's totally right.

I think I know where Chris the Cop's coming from, though. Even though I'm a raging leftie by American standards, I grew up in a family full of police officers and ex-cops (many of whom, including my dad, are veterans as well) who are anywhere between what I'd call moderate -- my dad, the last Eisenhower Democrat in America -- and full-on hard-core rightie types.

We all get along okay, as families do, but my point is, I've heard that viewpoint quite a bit. McCain is a man who did genuinely brave things, bore up under torment far better than he could've been expected to, and how dare we not focus on that?

Personally, I'd rather focus on the things he's done *since* he bore up so bravely under torture and torment, like justifying the use of torture on helpless prisoners. I don't care how dangerous he thinks they are -- I don't care what information he thinks torture will get out of them.

The man, who once did heroic things and bore up bravely, endorsed the use of torture. That is disgusting, and that's why so many of us think he's a dishonorable lout.

[Lance]

Bad writing on my part. I was referring to McCain's attitude regarding the GI Bill specifically. And his own statements damn him here. He basically wants to coerce troops into re-upping. He says so they can have the privilege of getting promoted to non-coms. That's of dubious benefit to anyone not planning to make a career of the military. It is very useful though to have experienced corporals and sergeants if you plan on keeping the rank and file fighting in Iraq for a hundred years.

Maybe he doesn't see the grunts as sheep, but he isn't seeing them as much more than necessary to his war effort.

But this has been one of my long-term complaints about McCain. He is an extremely self-centered person. Always has been. This is a vanity run for President. He's too old for the job. He has no real plans for what he'll do when he's in the White House. He wants to be President because he believes the country "needs John McCain."

As Falstaff said, once upon a time McCain did heroic things. But in the 35 years since he's pretty much done nothing but advance the career and interests of John McCain.

Now, on the broader issue of the war, that's his only campaign issue. He's the war hero, he's the guy who knows what it means to fight and kill. Why is that a qualification for President? Because that's what he plans to do, fight and kill a lot of people. He's going to win that damn war. Except that it won't be him. It'll be the troops he sends over there, or makes stay there. They are going to do the fighting and dying to advance John McCain's personal legend. He's going to be the guy who won the war on terror. If that's not seeing them as cannon fodder, then what is it?