“With Gratitude”: The New Greatest Generation Is Right Here Among Us
For nearly a decade I have had the privilege of teaching veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, though they have taught me more.
Most of them were Army captains and majors who had done three or four tours of duty. And here’s the most remarkable thing: Not one of these men and women complained about what we asked of them.
They have, however, occasionally objected to the shameful fact that after the first few years of hostilities, these became largely invisible conflicts. In the final stages of the Iraq war and for a long time now in Afghanistan, there has been something close to media silence even as our fellow Americans continue to fight and die.
The ongoing war barely impinges on our daily discussions, and we don’t bother to argue much about our Afghanistan policy. Mostly, we hope that President Obama can keep his promise to bring our troops home.
My Thanksgiving thoughts have often turned toward my military students at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute and to the thousands like them who have done very hard duty with little notice.
But this year, the gratitude that they inspire has been heightened, perhaps paradoxically, by the news about David Petraeus, his affair and the mess left behind. I won’t add to the mountain of Petraeus commentary, so much of which has been driven by preexisting attitudes toward Petraeus himself, the wars he led or the matter of how we should deal publicly with sexuality.
What has troubled me is how writing on all sides has aggravated the understandable but disturbing tendency to lay so much stress on the role of famous generals that we forget both the centrality of midlevel military leadership and the daily sacrifices and bravery of those in the enlisted ranks who carry out orders from on high.
There is, of course, nothing at all new about celebrity generals, and many of them truly deserved the accolades that came their way. One thinks, for example, of Ulysses S. Grant, who is enjoying a comeback among historians, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose subsequent presidency should give Republicans trying to rebuild their party some useful guidance.
But our military has been at its best when it combined two deeply American impulses, one more honored on the right, the other on the left.
We are an entrepreneurial country, and members of our officer corps do extraordinary work when they are given the freedom to think for themselves and to innovate.
We are also a democratic nation, and although the military is necessarily rank-conscious, the U.S. armed forces have traditionally nurtured an egalitarian ethos that cultivated loyalty all the way down. This is one reason reports of rather privileged living by generals are grating, even if none of us begrudges a bit of comfort for those — including people at the top — who give their lives to service.
The entrepreneurial and democratic spirits are important in battle, but they are even more important to the many noncombat tasks that we are now asking our military to undertake. Petraeus’s approach to Iraq depended upon officers who had exceptional political gifts and an ability to improvise as they worked with local leaders. As an Army major serving in Iraq wrote in a memo that was shared with me back in 2007, “We discovered that we were not fighting a military campaign but a political campaign — not too different from what a small-town mayor might do to win reelection back in the U.S.” The surge was as much about this kind of inventiveness as it was about military planning.
We can show our gratitude toward these officers and their troops in at least two ways.
First, as my MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow keeps reminding us, we need to cut through what the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America calls the Department of Veterans Affairs’ “egregious failure to process the claims of our veterans” in a timely and effective way.
And we need to recognize the contribution that this new generation of veterans can make to our nation. The character of the “Greatest Generation” that fought World War II was established not by the generals or the admirals but by the officers in the lower ranks and the millions of enlisted men and women who carried into civilian life both the skills and the sense of service and community they learned in the war years.
My students taught me that we don’t need to be nostalgic about the Greatest Generation. It’s right here among us.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 21, 2012
“Like It Or Not, Only In America”: Be Thankful For Our Democracy And The Troops Who Protect It
Six years ago I celebrated Thanksgiving on a small Iraqi base in western Ninewa province. Nearly halfway through my year-long tour on that day me and 9 other members of the military transition team I served with (one man was home on leave) settled in to watch a game of football. No, not the Cowboys or the Lions. In this case it was a soccer match between the young members of an American cavalry troop who were co-located with us at the time and ringers from the Iraqi battalion. Final score, 1st Battalion: 20, B Troop: 2. Or something like that. (The energy and fitness of the young troopers could not overcome the superior passing skills and finesse of the Iraqis.)
The weather in the high desert was changing from the arid heat to the cooler fall. We sat down that afternoon to a meal of hot, or at least warmish, and plentiful “A” rations of some form of pressed turkey loaf and fixings. This certainly was not the feasts available on some of the larger American and coalition forward operating bases throughout the country, and certainly was not as joyous an occasion as being surrounded by friends and family and favorite foods and beverages as available back here in the United States, but in retrospect it was quite good. It certainly was much better than what I am sure some soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines will be having tomorrow in remote combat outposts in Afghanistan. The fellowship of being surrounded by fellow soldiers, American and Iraqi, made the circumstances of being so far from home in a war zone bearable.
So on this Thanksgiving I say we give thanks for many things, even though individual circumstances may dictate the depth of our thanks. But collectively we Americans should be thankful for living in a country where violence and intimidation are not the norms for resolving political differences. Sure, we just exited from a contentious presidential election. And yes there was some hyperventilation about the results from some quarters (just as there was following the 2000 and 2004 elections) and the economy continues to sputter along, but we do live in a country where the deliberate, indiscriminate use of explosives or mass violence to systematically target to kill people simply due to their race, ethnicity, religion, or creed is not the norm. Yes, tragic incidents occur from time to time, but their rarity makes their occurrence all the more shocking.
We should also give thanks to the men and women of the armed forces and other members of the U.S. government and supporting contracting personnel who are separated from friends and family and are providing for the common defense and the advancement of U.S. interests abroad, whether they be in war zones or not. We hope to see you back home soon. For those in harm’s way be as safe as the mission allows.
By: Michael P. Noonan, U. S. News and World Report, November 21, 2012
“The Ugly Strain Of GOP Racism”: Right Wing Fumes As General Colin Powell Endorses President Obama
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election this morning, crossing party lines — and setting off an ugly reaction from the right wing.
Powell, a retired four-star general who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the George H.W. Bush administration before becoming George W. Bush’s top diplomat, told CBS’s “This Morning” that “I voted for [Obama] in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012. I’ll be voting for he [sic] and for Vice President Joe Biden next month.”
Powell credited President Obama for stabilizing the financial system, ending the war in Iraq, and beginning to end the war in Afghanistan. By contrast, Powell criticized Romney’s economic plans and expressed concern that Romney is a “moving target” on foreign policy.
“The governor who was speaking on Monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier,” Powell said. “So I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting in terms of foreign policy.”
“Sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have,” Powell added. “And he gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to adjust and modify as he goes along.”
Predictably, many on the right could not accept that Powell — who maintains that he is still a Republican despite endorsing both of Obama’s presidential runs — could have serious policy reasons for supporting the president. Instead, the fringe came up with the same answer that they embrace to explain almost every Obama-related event: it’s all about race.
A brief scan of right wing message boards and media figures reveals the ugly strain of racism that lurks barely beneath the surface of many hyper-partisan criticisms of the president. Note that no Caucasian is ever labeled as a racist for endorsing a white candidate.
Some mainstream Republicans were also critical of Powell’s endorsement. Arizona Senator John McCain went on Brian Kilmeade’s radio show this morning and slammed Powell’s decision, saying “General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime.”
This is an especially interesting critique, given that Powell is the man who stood before the United Nations in 2003 and made the disastrously faulty case for an invasion of Iraq. Powell considers the incident to be a “blot” on his record that will always be “painful” to him. If anyone would understand the value of restraint — which McCain and his colleagues in the Republican foreign policy establishment tend to consider “feckless” — it would be a man like Powell, who has seen firsthand what type of damage Romney and his foreign policy team can do.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, October 25, 2012
“Completely Clueless”: No Wonder Romney-Ryan Pretends There’s No War In Afghanistan
For much of the campaign, Mitt Romney seemed to forget that the United States is still fighting a war in Afghanistan, culminating in his convention speech which inexplicably ignored the war and American troops altogether.
Last night, we were reminded of why the Republican ticket says so little about the conflict: they haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re talking about. In reference to Paul Ryan, Charles P. Pierce wrote overnight, “He was more lost in Afghanistan than the Russian army ever was.”
In a debate which had plenty of ups and downs, the congressman’s efforts to be coherent on the war were cover-your-eyes awful. One the one hand, Ryan supports the Obama administration’s withdrawal timetable:
“Now, with respect to Afghanistan, the 2014 deadline, we agree with a 2014 transition.”
On the other hand, Ryan thinks the Obama administration’s withdrawal timetable is dangerous:
“[W]e don’t want to broadcast to our enemies ‘put a date on your calendar, wait us out, and then come back.’ … What we don’t want to do is give our allies reason to trust us less and our enemies more — we don’t want to embolden our enemies.”
What’s the Romney-Ryan ticket’s position on the war? No one has a clue because the Republican candidates, four weeks from the election, haven’t picked one yet. As Rachel noted in the post-debate coverage, “The Romney-Ryan ticket is not credible on the issue of the war…. Paul Ryan embarrassed himself on Afghanistan tonight in a way that he embarrassed himself on no other issue. He did not understand the question well enough to know that he was making a mistake because he’s just learned this for the test. He doesn’t understand any of it. I find that terrifying.”
Incidentally, Dan Senor, a leading Romney-Ryan adviser on foreign policy, told Fox News yesterday that the Romney-Ryan position on Afghanistan “is the same as the president’s,” adding that Romney “obviously supports the president’s position.” Senor also said, “We have some disagreements with the president on Afghanistan.” After endorsing 2014 withdrawal, Senor added, “If you’re the Commander-in Chief, to broadcast timelines so our enemies are in the know about our next move” is a mistake.
If this wasn’t so critically important, I might even feel sorry for the Republican ticket.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 12, 2012
“Terror Management Theory”: The Republicans’ Foreign Policy Problem
Pop quiz: if you had to describe the Obama foreign policy in one sentence, what would you say? Not easy, is it? Back in 2008, it was pretty simple: “Not Bush.” Now back then, there was something called the “Bush doctrine,” which may have had a subtle meaning to those working in the administration, but as far as the public was concerned mostly meant “invading lots of countries and making everyone in the world hate us.” So it was easy to imagine Obama as a breath of foreign policy fresh air. He’d use a less-bumbling combination of diplomacy, “soft power,” and carefully restrained force. He’d get us out of Iraq. Things would change for the better.
But now that Obama has been president for four years, “Not Bush” has lost its relevance. Obama’s actual foreign policy is too complicated to sum up easily, and probably therefore too complicated for most voters to understand. We did get out of Iraq, but things don’t seem to be going too well in Afghanistan; Obama has dramatically increased the use of drone strikes, which have solved some problems and created others; though opinions of America are somewhat better, lots of people still don’t like us. It’s a complex picture, and in the context of an election, the Obama campaign is going to react to most foreign policy questions with, “Remember that guy Osama bin Laden? He’s dead.”
True enough, but this complexity has left Republicans seemingly unable to critique the Obama foreign policy. As Conor Friedersdorf points out, Republicans can’t figure out what to say:
President Obama’s foreign policy is vulnerable to all sorts of accurate attacks. But Mitt Romney, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement are totally unable to exploit them. This is partly because the last four years have been spent advancing critiques so self-evidently implausible to anyone outside the movement that calling attention to them seems impolite. There is no factual basis for the assertion that Obama rejects American exceptionalism; or that he embarked on an apology tour; or that he is allied with our Islamist enemy in a “grand jihad” against America; or that his every action is motivated by Kenyan anti-colonialism. And while those critiques are especially inane, they aren’t cherry-picked to discredit conservatives. They’re actually all critiques advanced by prominent people, publications, and/or Republican politicians.
I’d say they have two problems. First, their impulse is to just say that their foreign policy is “Not Obama,” and that just doesn’t have the same persuasive power as “Not Bush” did four years ago, because American foreign policy doesn’t look like a disaster. For instance, when Mitt Romney criticizes Obama for getting out of Iraq too fast—since if Obama did it, it had to be wrong—most people are going to respond, “Are you crazy?” Second, the closest thing to an articulation of their own foreign policy vision they can come up with is “Obama weak! America should be strong! Grrr!” And voters don’t actually think Obama is weak.
That’s partly because of his own actions, and partly because in 2012, Americans aren’t actually fearing for their lives. They did during the Cold War, and they did in the aftermath of 9/11, but that feeling has faded. There have actually been some experiments showing that when you remind people of the possibility of their own deaths, they’re more likely to support conservative candidates (it’s called “Terror Management Theory”). I’ve heard pollsters say that one of the key moments of the 2004 campaign was the horrific Beslan school massacre that September in which 330 people were killed, over half of them children. It brought terrorism and fear back on to the front pages, to George W. Bush’s advantage.
But today, for all the world’s problems, Americans aren’t feeling like they might be killed tomorrow. That’s a good thing. But it leaves the Republicans without much of a coherent foreign policy critique.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 24, 2012
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