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May
3, 2003
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May
5, 2003
"Lethal and Compassionate"
The Militarization of US Culture
by JORGE MARISCAL
The story of Jesus Gonzalez is a cautionary tale
for the future. A young Chicano born in Mexico and raised in
California, Gonzalez grew up surrounded by relatives who were
active in the United Farm Worker's, the labor union founded by
pacifist Cesar Chavez. In high school, he organized against Proposition
187, the anti-immigrant initiative, and in support of Native
American environmental causes. Despite his early childhood formation
within progressive circles, Gonzalez surprised everyone who knew
him when he decided to drop out of college because he had to
be a marine. "I know school is important," he told
his parents, "but I need to do this" (Jennifer Mena,
"Fallen Marine Is Recalled as Pacifist, Activist,"
L.A. Times 4/24/03).
In the simple phrase "But I need
to do this" lie the dire consequences of militarization's
power and success. Drawing upon distorted notions of masculinity,
the glamour of the uniform, and the myth of rugged individualism,
military recruitment ads-a solitary marine scaling the face of
a mountain, for example-cast a spell to which working class youth
are especially susceptible. A relative lack of economic and educational
opportunities seals the ideological deal. In Gonzalez's case,
the fantasy of military service simply overwhelmed the humanistic
values with which he had been raised. On April 12, 2003, he was
killed by small arms fire at a checkpoint somewhere in Iraq.
Scholar John Gillis contrasts older forms
of militarism in which civil society is separate and subordinate
to military authority with contemporary militarization. According
to Gillis, militarization is the process by which "civil
society organizes itself for the production of violence."
Whereas militarism once was understood as a set of beliefs limited
to specific social groups or sectors of the ruling class, militarization
is a series of mechanisms that involve the entire social edifice.
In liberal democracies in particular,
the values of militarism do not reside in a single group but
are diffused across a wide variety of cultural locations. In
twenty first-century America, no one is exempt from militaristic
values because the processes of militarization allow those values
to permeate the fabric of everyday life.
Examples are numerous and I will name
only a few. The incursion of military recruiters and teachings
into the public school system is well known. The proliferation
of JROTC units in American schools began in the early 1990s and
continues today. Television spots, print ads, and websites for
all the service branches are sophisticated marketing tools designed
to attract young people who are unsure of their future.
At marines.com,
for example, after the initial sounds of gunfire open the home
page the potential recruit reads: "At the core of every
Marine is the warrior spirit, a person imbued with the special
kind of personal character that has defined greatness and success
for centuries. And in this organization, you will be regarded
as family." "You are special, you are a fighter, we
will take care of you"--this is an especially seductive
message for young men and women without economic privilege and
who often do not enjoy stability at home.
For middle class suburban youth, one
of the fastest growing "sports" is "paintball"
in which teenagers stalk and shoot each other on "battlefields"
(In San Diego, paintball participants pay an additional $50 to
hone their skills at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base). Far from
the figurative violence of popular culture, the Bush administration
is rewriting nuclear arms policy and plans to militarize outer
space are moving forward without public scrutiny. At the level
of media ritual, the president favors speaking to captive audiences
at military bases, defense plants, and on aircraft carriers.
These and other practices that glorify
the instruments of real and symbolic violence will have unforeseen
and long-term consequences. In the meantime, billions of dollars
for the military-corporate-educational complex ($399 billion
for the Pentagon alone according to the administration's FY2004
Discretionary Budget Request), color-coded "terrorist alerts,"
police and "homeland security" raids on immigrant communities,
and FOX news bulletins for even the most mundane Defense Department
briefing all work to create a climate of fear and anxiety that
is unprecedented in U.S. history.
If we feel less safe today than ever
before, it is because the entire culture has organized itself
with the dual objective of either perpetrating violence or defending
itself from violence. Given the current administration's proposed
budget cuts (including major reductions in veterans's benefits),
it appears that self-defense is a less worthy objective than
arsenal building. One commentator recently put it this way: "George
W. Bush has inspired new terrorist threats to the United States--according
to the official testimony of his own CIA--where none existed.
At the same time, he purposely starves those localities and institutions
on which the complex and expensive task of terrorist protection
ultimately falls and yet the increasingly Foxified media tell
a story only of heroism: of the US military, of the American
people and of the President of the United States, who has so
far managed to avoid service to either one" (Eric Alterman,
"Bush goes AWOL," The Nation 4/17/03).
In the United States, where elaborate
formal structures of representative democracy, a free press,
and pluralism exist (at least on paper), militarization's primary
structures must take shape through lies and the obfuscation of
reality. The Bush administration has taken the art of the lie
and the control of information, strategies that sustain all large
bureaucracies, to a new level. Colin Powell's performance at
the United Nations before the invasion of Iraq was only the most
spectacular example of the Bush regime's willingness to lie to
the world.
Frustrated by the pattern of deceit that
led to the invasion of Iraq, a leading economist writing in the
New York Times was compelled to pose the question: "Aren't
the leaders of a democratic nation supposed to tell their citizens
the truth?" (Paul Krugman, "Matters of Emphasis,"
4/29/03). Or as one journalist predicts: "We're heading
for big trouble as a nation if we aren't even concerned that
our heads of state may be manipulating us by manipulating the
truth. In a nation where hypocrisy is rewarded, expect more lies"
(Robert Steinback, "Did Our Leaders Lie to Us? Do We Even
Care?," Miami Herald 4/30/03).
Militarization and open democratic societies,
then, do not make a good match, the former producing pathologies
at both the individual and collective levels. The face of militarization
on the ground is perhaps most disturbing insofar as it reveals
a disconnected hardening of individuals to human suffering. The
most highly militarized sector of U.S. society-the armed forces
-attempts to deny this by concocting a self-image premised on
humanitarian concern for their victims. From Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld down to officers in the field, the illusion is that
the U.S. military is the most effective and destructive in history
even as it is the most concerned with avoiding civilian deaths.
From this bizarre cocktail of contradictory
missions comes the novel phase "lethal and compassionate."
The phrase is deployed to erase from the historical record hundreds
of Iraqi and Afghan civilian casualties (the exact number of
which we will never know) or to congratulate ourselves for airlifting
an Iraqi boy to a hospital in Kuwait. There is no mention of
the "lethal" side of the equation-the fact that the
boy lost his entire family and both his arms to U.S. bombs.
"Lethal and compassionate"
may work as a public relations slogan and a psychological sleight
of hand for some in the military but recent accounts of combat
in Iraq suggest that the brutality of warfare cannot be sanitized
for long. Simply read Peter Maass's devastating description of
marine activities near Baghdad in which two journalists report
how a squad leader, after his troops fired on several civilian
vehicles, shouted: ''My men showed no mercy. Outstanding'' ("Good
Kills." New York Times 4/20/03) or the admission by recently
returned marine reservist Gus Covarrubias that he executed in
cold blood two Iraqi prisoners because some marines had been
shot and "The Marines are my family" ("Marine
Discusses Execution-Style Killing," Associated Press 4/26/03).
Or consider the case of Sgt. 1st Class
Jeff Lujan who gave the order to shoot into a civilian truck
at a checkpoint only to discover that his men had killed a woman
and a young girl. "I've reconciled myself," Lujan said.
"We did the right thing, even though it was wrong"
(Geoffrey Mohan, "Memories Don't Die So Easily," New
York Times 4/18/03). For other GIs, militarized values will not
be reconciled so easily with the values instilled by family and
church. The psychic and social costs of these dreadful ironies
are hidden in a flurry of flag-waving and patriotic zeal.
As James Carroll brilliantly put it:
"Photographic celebrations of our young warriors, glorifications
of released American prisoners, heroic rituals of the war dead
all take on the character of crass exploitation of the men and
women in uniform. First they were forced into a dubious circumstance,
and now they are themselves being mythologized as its main post-facto
justification -- as if the United States went to Iraq not to
seize Saddam (disappeared), or to dispose of weapons of mass
destruction (missing), or to save the Iraqi people (chaos), but
''to support the troops.'' War thus becomes its own justification.
Such confusion on this grave point, as on the others, signifies
a nation lost" ("A Nation Lost," Boston Globe
4/22/03).
Assuming the nation is not beyond redemption,
people of good will who opposed the American invasion of Iraq
ought to consider turning their attention to the long-term consequences
of militarization. Unless militarization is systematically exposed
and resisted at every site where it appears in the culture there
will be more young men and women who follow the path of Jesus
Gonzalez. What should become of the antiwar movement now? Perhaps
yet another march and demonstration will prove less productive
than focusing our energy on devising strategies to slow down
a process that threatens both the future of our children and
the soul of the nation.
Jorge Mariscal
is a member of Project YANO, a San Diego-based organization made
up of veterans and activists who are working to demilitarize
our schools.He can be reached at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu
Yesterday's
Features
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
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Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
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Caoimhe
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Steve
Perry
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Website
of the Day
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