Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (2 page)

Yet if the squadron did not literally share G. M. 100’s fate, it was succumbing incrementally to a defeat that was hardly less decisive. As any home owner will tell you, a leaky roof, if left unattended, can pose as much danger as a category five hurricane. Collapse is just a longer time coming. In the backwater that was An Khe, the roof was leaking like a sieve.

No one was likely to mistake the United States in 1971 for a land of concord and contentment. During the interval between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the election of Richard M. Nixon, cleavages dividing left and right, black and white, flag burners and flag wavers, college kids and working stiffs had become particularly acute. Looming in the background was an even more fundamental cleavage between state and country. Depending on which camp you occupied, the government appeared either clueless or gutless. In any case, those exercising political authority no longer commanded the respect or deference they had enjoyed during the 1940s and 1950s. Sullen citizens eyed their government with cynicism and mistrust.

Comparable division and discord pervaded the ranks of those sent to serve in Vietnam. In the war zone, the animosity between the governing and the governed at home found its parallel in the relationship between leaders and led. In Vietnam, sullen enlisted soldiers—predominantly draftees—eyed their officers with cynicism and mistrust.

To vent their anger at policies not to their liking, outraged citizens engaged in acts of protest. To express their animus toward leaders not to their liking, alienated soldiers did likewise, their acts of protest ranging from disrespect to shirking to out-and-out insubordination. (The army’s unofficial motto had by then become “don’t mean nothin’,” usually muttered sotto voce at the back of some annoying superior.)

On January 27, 1971, Private First Class James D. Moyler, a twenty-year-old helicopter crewman from Chesapeake, Virginia, carried matters further. After exchanging words over allegations of barracks theft, the black soldier flipped the safety off his M16 and in broad daylight shot C Troop’s white commander at point-blank range. Captain Reichert bled to death in front of his own orderly room.

With the military justice system promptly cranking into high gear, Moyler was quickly arrested, jailed, charged, court-martialed, convicted, and sentenced to a long prison term. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared. From an institutional perspective, so too did the entire episode. In Saigon and Washington, those presiding over the war had no intention of allowing the death of Captain Reichert to affect their plans.

So in its sole report on the incident, the Pacific edition of
Stars and Stripes
offered the barest recitation of the facts—a masterful exercise in journalistic minimalism. As if in passing, however, the newspaper hinted at a larger context. Earlier that same month in Quang Tri Province,
Stripes
noted, one officer had been killed and another wounded “following a quarrel with enlisted men.” Meanwhile, at Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon, someone had rolled a fragmentation grenade into the quarters of a military police officer, wounding him as he slept. Again, enlisted soldiers were suspected of perpetrating the attack, “although no one ha[d] been charged.”
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In other words, what had occurred at An Khe, however shocking, did not qualify as particularly unusual. Disgruntled soldiers obliged to fight a war in which they (along with most of the country) had ceased to believe were not without recourse. Among the options available was the one PFC Moyler had chosen, turning weapons intended for use against the enemy on those whose authority they no longer recognized.

The implications of Moyler’s action were, in military terms, beyond alarming. To sustain a massively unpopular war, the state had resorted to coercive means: report for duty or go to jail. At home, clever young men had become adept at evading that choice and so the war itself. Those less clever or more compliant ended up in uniform and in Vietnam. There, the nominally willing—now armed—were having second thoughts. In increasing numbers, they not only refused to comply but were engaging in acts of resistance.

The problem was Vietnam, of course. But the war had become inextricably tied to conscription. To save itself, the army desperately needed to free itself of the war—and of those compelled to serve against their will. Allowed to spread unchecked, the poisons made manifest at An Khe posed an existential threat to the institution as a whole. Even to a subaltern as callow and obtuse as I was, that much was apparent.

That other, unforeseen consequences might also ensue, unfavorable to the army, to soldiers, and to the country, did not occur to me. All that mattered then was to escape from an unendurable predicament. If that meant putting some distance between the army and the American people, so be it.

In the years that followed, the army effected that escape, shedding the war, the draft, and the tradition of a citizen-based military. Henceforth, the nation would rely on an all-volunteer force, the basis for a military system designed to preclude the recurrence of anything remotely resembling Vietnam ever again. For a time, Americans persuaded themselves that this professional military was a genuine bargain. Providing fighting forces of unrivaled capabilities, it seemingly offered assured, affordable security. It imposed few burdens. It posed no dangers.

In relieving ordinary citizens of any obligation to contribute to the country’s defense, the arrangement also served, for a time at least, the interests of the military itself. In the eyes of their countrymen, those choosing to serve came to enjoy respect and high regard. Respect translated into generous support. Among the nation’s budgetary priorities, the troops came first. Whatever the Pentagon said they needed, Washington made sure they got.

As a consequence, the army that I left in the early 1990s bore no more resemblance to the one into which I had been commissioned than a late model Ferrari might to a rusted-out Model T. The soldiers wanted to soldier. NCOs knew how to lead, and smart officers allowed them to do so. Given such a plethora of talent, even a mediocre commander could look good. As for an unofficial motto, the members of this self-consciously professional army were inexplicably given to shouting “Hooah” in chorus, exuding a confidence that went beyond cockiness.

Here, it appeared, was a win-win proposition. That the all-volunteer force was good for the country and equally good for those charged with responsibility for the country’s defense seemed self-evident. Through the twilight years of the Cold War and in its immediate aftermath, I myself subscribed to that view.

Yet appearances deceived, or at least told only half the story. Arrangements that proved suitable as long as deterring the Soviet threat remained the U.S. military’s principal mission and memories of jungles and rice paddies stayed fresh proved much less so once the Soviet empire collapsed and the lessons of Operation Desert Storm displaced the lessons of Vietnam. With change came new ambitions and expectations.

For a democracy committed to being a great military power, its leaders professing to believe that war can serve transcendent purposes, the allocation of responsibility for war qualifies as a matter of profound importance. Properly directed—on this, President George W. Bush entertained not the least doubt—a great army enables a great democracy to fulfill its ultimate mission. “Every nation,” he declared in 2003, “has learned an important lesson,” one that events since 9/11 had driven home. “Freedom is worth fighting for, dying for, and standing for—and the advance of freedom leads to peace.”
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Yet the phrasing of Bush’s formulation, binding together war, peace, and freedom, might have left a careful listener wondering:
Who
fights?
Who
dies?
Who
stands? The answers to this triad of questions impart to democracy much of its substantive meaning.
4

In the wake of Vietnam, seeking to put that catastrophic war behind them, the American people had devised (or accepted) a single crisp answer for all three questions:
not us
. Except as spectators, Americans abrogated any further responsibility for war in all of its aspects. With the people opting out, war became the exclusive province of the state. Washington could do what it wanted—and it did.

In the wake of 9/11, as America’s self-described warriors embarked upon what U.S. leaders referred to as a Global War on Terrorism, the bills came due. A civil-military relationship founded on the principle that a few fight while the rest watch turned out to be a lose-lose proposition—bad for the country and worse yet for the military itself.

Rather than offering an antidote to problems, the military system centered on the all-volunteer force bred and exacerbated them. It underwrote recklessness in the formulation of policy and thereby resulted in needless, costly, and ill-managed wars. At home, the perpetuation of this system violated simple standards of fairness and undermined authentic democratic practice.

The way a nation wages war—the role allotted to the people in defending the country and the purposes for which it fights—testifies to the actual character of its political system. Designed to serve as an instrument of global interventionism (or imperial policing), America’s professional army has proven to be astonishingly durable, if also astonishingly expensive. Yet when dispatched to Iraq and Afghanistan, it has proven incapable of winning. With victory beyond reach, the ostensible imperatives of U.S. security have consigned the nation’s warrior elite to something akin to perpetual war.

Confronted with this fact, Americans shrug. Anyone teaching on a college campus today has experienced this firsthand: for the rising generation of citizens, war has become the new normal, a fact they accept as readily as they accept instruction in how to position themselves for admission to law school.

The approach this nation has taken to waging war since Vietnam (absolving the people from meaningful involvement), along with the way it organizes its army (relying on professionals), has altered the relationship between the military and society in ways that too few Americans seem willing to acknowledge. Since 9/11, that relationship has been heavy on symbolism and light on substance, with assurances of admiration for soldiers displacing serious consideration of what they are sent to do or what consequences ensue. In all the ways that actually matter, that relationship has almost ceased to exist.

From pulpit and podium, at concerts and sporting events, expressions of warmth and affection shower down on the troops. Yet when those wielding power in Washington subject soldiers to serial abuse, Americans acquiesce. When the state heedlessly and callously exploits those same troops, the people avert their gaze. Maintaining a pretense of caring about soldiers, state and society actually collaborate in betraying them.

This book subjects the present-day American military system to critical examination. It explains just how we got into the mess we’re in. It shows who benefits and who suffers as a consequence. By way of remedy, it proposes that defending the country once more become a collective responsibility, inherent in citizenship.

PART I

NATION AT WAR

How war, which once served to enhance
American power and wealth,
became a source of national rack and ruin.

1

PEOPLE’S WAR

War is an unvarnished evil. Yet as with other evils—fires that clear out forest undergrowth, floods that replenish soil nutrients—war’s legacy can include elements that may partially compensate (or at least appear to compensate) for the havoc inflicted and incurred.

For the United States, the Civil War offered one such occasion. To preserve the Union and destroy slavery, Americans served and sacrificed without stint. The citizen-soldiers who responded to the charge contained in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic
”
—“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free”—won a great victory. In doing so, they set the stage for the nation’s emergence in the latter part of the nineteenth century as the world’s preeminent economic power. Out of blood came muscle.

World War II proved to be a second such occasion for acquiring muscle, if not for other powers at least for the United States. Yet by 1941, in return for service and sacrifice, Americans expected rewards more tangible than the satisfaction of doing God’s will. Once again, citizen-soldiers would fight for freedom. Thanks to the New Deal, however, freedom meant something more than submission to market forces. It now implied some measure of reciprocity, with citizens guaranteed access to the minimum essentials of life.

In describing what was at stake in World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called this “freedom from want.”
1
Making freedom thus defined available to the average American was by now becoming the job of political authorities in Washington. So in their approach to justifying war against the Axis, Roosevelt and his lieutenants shrewdly emphasized a shimmering consumer-oriented vision of democratic purpose.

To a greater extent than any prior conflict, mobilizing for World War II became an indisputably communal undertaking, involving quite literally everyone. So, too, did the war’s actual conduct. As a result, the historian William O’Neill writes, the United States fought World War II as a “people’s war.” Rather than “uphold[ing] personal gratification as the be all and end all of life,” Americans demonstrated a hitherto hidden capacity for government-prescribed collective action.
2
The appetite for personal gratification did not disappear. Yet at least for the duration Americans proved willing to curb it.

In this regard, the cultural moment was propitious. For a short time, the distance separating elite, middlebrow, and popular artistic expression seemed to collapse. Proletarian impulses released by the Great Depression persisted into the war years, infused now with a sense of hope that the promise of American life might indeed find fulfillment—and soon. Yearning and expectation gradually displaced the anger and despair that had characterized the 1930s. On symphony stages, this popular mood found expression in works like Aaron Copland’s
Fanfare for the Common Man
(1942) and
Appalachian Spring
(1944). On Broadway, there was
Oklahoma!
(1943) by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. (“We know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand!”) At the movies, Oscar-nominated films such as
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939),
Our Town
(1940),
The Grapes of Wrath
(1940), and
Sergeant York
(1941) all mined the rich vein of populism. In photography these tendencies suffused the social realism of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. In painting, American regionalists such as Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and John Steuart Curry paid homage to ordinary workers while expressing nostalgia for small-town and rural America. In a war-specific context, there was the memorable work of the cartoonist Bill Mauldin, creator of the “dogface” soldiers Willie and Joe. Elitism had not disappeared from the American scene, but for a time it was thrown on the defensive.