The Lies We Live By: Redeployment

You say you want the truth?  Whose truth?  We all live by lies, some more than others, but for every truth there are two lies. 

To be politically correct, one must always begin by saying, "I honor your service," and "The brave men and women who have borne the burden of this war."  And, "He is serving a greater cause."  And "He is fighting for his country." And, she is "fighting for freedom, for us, for our freedom over there."

There have been wars which should have been fought because they brought down evil--the Civil War of the United States 1860-1865, and the war against Hitler. In those wars, Mad Dog likes to think, he would have served, even though that might have meant obeying orders from incompetent officers who had conceived breathtakingly stupid approaches to fighting the enemy. 

But in his lifetime, Mad Dog has seen only unnecessary, stupid and unsuccessful wars against Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, part of a cycle of unending war fought for a filthy web of reasons, profiting the few at the expense of the many.

In "Redeployment"  a book of short stories about American soldiers in Iraq, the fighting men and women of the U.S. forces are deployed and re deployed, as the rest of the country goes shopping, pays little more in taxes and never has the war hit home in the form of a neighborhood kid returning in a body bag.

The narrative about what an injustice this is--that only a few serve--has been used to shame us into taking action, and is meant to say, "Look how heroic these people who fight for us are, while the rest of us go about our fat, self indulgent lives."

And what are these soldiers actually doing? Are they awakening every morning saying to themselves, "I am going to defend America today?"  For many soldiers, war was the greatest adventure of their lives. It was terrifying. It was risky. But like driving fast and drunk, it was fun.

War took them, to exotic places, and put guns in their hands, where,  in the immortal words of  Private Joker of "Full Metal Jacket, "I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people, of an ancient culture...and kill them."

Which is not to say American soldiers walking down an Iraqi street have the same level of blind lethality and rage their fathers had in Vietnam, but the experience is similar in the sense these young Americans are dropped into a strange planet and they are armed and there to kill.  On his helmet is penned, "Born To Kill," and in the case of so many young men and women who see no viable financial options in life, they are indeed.

Duty, honor, country.
They are fighting for "freedom."
But, really, are these men and women fighting for your "freedom" and mine?  Are they fighting for their country?  Sad to say, Mad Dog cannot buy that. They are fighting as mercenaries and dressing up their decision in patriotic terms. The American soldier enlists because it's the best job and the best career he or she can find. These soldiers fight out of self interest and they say, and we say and their generals and Congressmen say they are fighting for "freedom." That's really a deep insult to the idea of fighting for freedom. The 20th Massachusetts fought for freedom in the Civil War.

Today's American soldier is fighting for a paycheck, fighting for himself, for respectability and, as too many learn, they are doing it all for chump change. It's a business, like the merchant marine. You go abroad, you come home and you go out again. It's a job. 

Which is not to say, on some level, the American soldier does not believe that by taking orders he is fighting for freedom, serving his country, but as Thoreau observed long ago, mindless marching off to war is not serving your country: Thinking serves your country. You serve your country by acting to prevent young men and women from being swept up into the military, told they are fighting for freedom. Whose freedom?
How free are the soldiers who fight for freedom? Are they not trapped by a paucity of economic and financial options? 

If we never fired a shot in Iraq would a single American be less free? Less safe?

"Full Metal Jacket" the movie based on "Short Timers" documents how typical, feckless American boys are transformed into green, mean, killing machines and what happens to them as a result.  There have been other depictions of this experience, and "Redepolyment" is a part of that line.

What Mad Dog has seen is this:  You are born into a family of eight children. Your parents cannot provide for the education of all these children. They were in the same boat themselves. Your father, if you and he are lucky, was gainfully employed, drove a truck, worked for the state or for Walmart. Your mother went to cosmetology school and works as a cashier at Seven Eleven. You got through high school, looked around and by far the most money you could make, the best promise for ongoing employment is the Army or the Marines, or the Navy if you have Navy in the family or Air Force if you grew up in near Pease.  Not only that, you can take a leap up in respectability, if you get yourself into a uniform. Your girlfriend's parents look at you differently now.

So off you go, to fight for the Koch brothers and for all those American voting districts where they make weapons systems,  which the government wants to close but which are so much part of the economy, Congressmen keep those factories going, and the forts and bases open--It's Undershaft's truth: There is too much money in weapons and war to close it down.

So are you fighting for freedom or for wealth?

At your funeral, they will say the words: "Duty, Honor, Country."

Shakespeare had Falstaff look at a bloated, rotting corpse and say, "There's honor for you."

That they are sold lies is nothing new. It is necessary, even. How do you get an eighteen year old to carry a gun, to fire it at someone, to go back out the next day even when he's seen his friend's head blown off? You train him. Duty, honor, country. What you are doing is good. This is the best thing you have ever done in life, the best thing of which you are capable.  A lie you can fight by.

This is why Slim Charles tells his chief executive, in "The Wire:"
"I mean, shit, it's what war is, you know?  Once you in, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight."

Even during World War II, how did the kid in Brooklyn know that Hitler was killing children in concentration camps? Before the Civil War, how did the farm boy know that Simon Legree  was chasing down the slave woman across the ice floes--how did anyone know what was the representation of reality, of truth? Was slavery "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or the contented darkies singing "Swing Lo, Sweet Chariot," as they happily worked the cotton fields of Tara?  How do you get the truth, when truth is the first casualty of war?

As for "Duty," well now you are talking about a contract.  You sacrifice something to get something.

And "Country," well, our country fought Hitler, fought a bunch of Nazi thugs who were trying to cleanse Europe of dirty, dark, non Aryan vermin. But we fought the racist Nazis with an army which segregated Black men from white men, because, Heaven Forbid, those Black men contaminate the white troops. Back home, in America, in Alabama and Mississippi white men were lynching Black men, and raping Black women while   Black brothers and fathers,  in uniform, flew airplanes, dug ditches, died and burned alive for their country, for honor and to do their duty. 

Duty, honor, country, all true. 

Whose truths?