More ideal ramblings. The more I ponder this the more I think the American Soldier suffers from an identity crisis.
First, the professional Soldier is a tool of policy. War is an extension of foreign and domestic policy. Foreign policy will drive where and how he is used. His thoughts on that policy should be irrelevant. Being a professional, much like the attorney defending the person she knows is guilty; he must separate his personal feelings from the mission at hand. Otherwise he is not a professional and is useless to the civilian leadership he serves.
In domestic policy the Soldier is used as hero, martyr, and “America’s sons and daughters.” He is a hero in that he volunteers to risk his life in furtherance of the ideals of Freedom and the “American Way.” Here the first cracks in the veneer of “Professional Soldier” start to show. I read a letter to an editor recently allegedly by a Soldier who said that, while he deployed twice, because he was not an infantrymen who placed his life on the line every day he was not a “hero”. Sorry, but that is not your call. You can admit that amongst your peers, but to the outside world you carry the mantle of “hero” because that is what the public expects of you. Be gracious, be respectful, and suck it up, cause its part of the mission.
The “sons and daughters” one drives me the most crazy. It tends to be used in two ways. The first is to make clear who will shed the “blood” in “blood and Treasure”. The next generation - the future of America itself. Using this phrase is intended to give pause and make the politician think long and hard about the decision to use the military. I have no problem with that. The other way it is used is to force the military to buy stuff, a lot of which the Soldier ends up wearing or carrying. Giving the Soldier the “best equipment money can buy” helps relieve the guilt the people who are screaming for war might feel about sending America’s sons and daughters into harm’s way – it’s the Soldiers fault if they die of heat exhaustion from wearing all this crap.
The public has idealized the WWII Soldier. The average Joe who answers the call of duty, receives the best training we can come up with, marches off to war, wins, and then comes home to live on a farm in peace the rest of his life. The public does not really trust the Professional Soldier; the one tied into the “military-industrial complex” that uses the term “national security” as a shield to protect them from public scrutiny or disclosure.
I don’t think we prepare are Soldiers for the schizophrenic nature of their duty. I am certain that the fact that we tell them they are liberating people and spreading democracy does not square with what they actually do in places like Iraq and Afghanistan weighs on them. That the people in the village down the road you are protecting really don’t like you and want nothing to do with your culture - whith the American Way. A professional might be able to deal with that. Or maybe not.
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