Under Fire: Empire and the Politics of Peace

Turns out Barack Obama is the commander in chief of the American military, and it’s “a role in which at times he has seemed uneasy.” This uneasiness, as the Washington Post reports, is a feeling whole-heartedly requited by top brass. “The prospect of an attack to punish Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons exposed the Nobel Peace laureate’s strained and somewhat tentative relationship with the military,” the Post concludes. “His dramatic oscillation from detachment on Syria to the brink of military action, with him ultimately settling for a potential diplomatic solution, has unsettled many people in uniform.”

But Post reporters Ernest Londoño and Craig Whitlock never quite get to the reasons why the military would be uncomfortable with the current president, stranding their story in an empty space where no history can intrude. Look at this paragraph, a perfect evocation of an old tension — but one that never notices the presence of the old tension:

As the debate unfolded, an uncomfortable narrative for the White House began taking root: While Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry were advocating a strike with zeal, senior military leaders had deep reservations. The divide was perhaps most noticeable during congressional hearings that featured an emphatic Kerry sitting alongside Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the cerebral and soft-spoken chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Emphatic politicians and reluctant soldiers: the oldest conflict in the republic, from James Madison pushing for another invasion of Canada to Abraham Lincoln demanding that George McClellan get off his ass and attack Richmond to Dick Cheney <http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/09/01/>grumbling that Norman Schwarkzopf wouldn’t get on with it already to Madeline Albright’s infamous jackassery in a meeting regarding Kosovo with Colin Powell.

It’s simply normal for someone with John Kerry’s curriculum vitae to demand that, by God, the military must start blowing things up, and it’s historically predictable that soldiers will sigh and say: “Hey, civilian, have you thought about how many people will die in this thing?” Fundamentally, those in the armed forces understand conflict differently than those in the rest if the country. For instance, even in a political climate wherein everyone knew that commies only understood power and violence, President Dwight Eisenhower had seen the alternative firsthand, so he rode into Korea to rack up a peaceful stalemate.

After the recent twelve years of continuous war, take everything laid out in previous paragraph and double it. American military leaders are far more ready for peace and a policy of restraint than many in the nation’s political class, Nobel Peace Prize recipients included. Take a moment to read about the blistering speech Adm. James Winnefeld gave last week to the lobbying group, the Association of the United States Army.

Winnefeld, the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sounded like what the current political narrative might label as “hippie” or “dove-ish”. America will have no more long wars, he said, because “we can’t afford it.” Instead, the admiral called on the nation to heed some old military advice: “Never fight unless you have to, never fight alone, and never fight for long.”

What of the counterinsurgency tactics that have been the flavor of the week for the last 500 weeks or so? Forget it. “We are more likely to see a Desert Storm type of operation, ejecting a nation that has invaded an ally or a friend of the United States, than we are to see another decade-long counterinsurgency campaign,” he said.

In short, Winnefeld says, the military wants America’s political-types to knock it off, already. This might be a refreshing to hear, but the likelihood that it will come to pass is nearly nil. Congress, Winnefeld explained, keeps paying for things that the armed forces don’t want; politicians have blocked the military’s “ability to downsize.”

However much, a military wants to shrink and pull inward, it is pushed endlessly forward, against its own reluctance, by the old reality: There’s money in guns. However much strategic and political sense a new conflict might make, war is still a racket.