Individual-level celebrations and grieving for an individual-level war
Barnett
ARTICLE: "Tribute or Protest? Lowering flags for soldiers killed in Iraq emerges as another flashpoint on the home front," by Jeffrey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal, 1-2 July 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: "Breaking Party Protocol: In the Iraq war, a new approach to welcoming home the troops is emerging. From bonfires to black-tie galas, how some families are bucking tradition," by Ellen Gamerman, Wall Street Journal 1-2 July 2006, p. P1.
Pair of fascinating articles that tell us much, I believe, about the emerging reality of the Long War.
First one explores how state and local politicians are using the flag-at-half-mast tribute in light of losses in Iraq.
Governor Jennifer Granholm, who would be a presidential contender if she wasn't born outside the U.S. (Canada, I believe) orders Michigan's state offices to put flags at half mast whenever a Michiganer is killed in Iraq. The U.S. flag code says states can do this only when a state official dies, so, in effect, governors like Granholm are abusing the privilege by treating soldiers like officials.
Is this political in motivation? Anything a politician does is political in motivation. That's the job.
I think the act is really warranted in the sense that many soldiers dying in Iraq are de facto servants of the state, being in the National Guard, which belongs to the governors first and foremost, but can be appropriated by the Fed when needed. If you extend that privilege to them, then I think it's no big stretch to do so to non-NG soldiers who also hailed from your state.
Granholm has done this 72 times, each time calling up the family in question in advance to tell them of her decision. To me, this is a solid call that recognizes sacrifice in a Long War where individual soldiers will die fighting individuals--not states. In a war of our ideology of freedom and connectedness and individuality against their ideology of authoritarianism and disconnectedness and collective identity, I think it's crucial to recognize individual sacrifice, because it's what defines us in this struggle.
A historian notes that if we had done that in WWII, when Michigan alone lost 13 soldiers, on average, every day, then Michigan's flags would have been at half-mast the entire war. And I agree with that notion: in that state-on-state war, recognizing sacrifice so individually would have been damaging to morale. But here, in this Long War, fought primarily by our individuals against their individuals, within states and across them, I think individual recognition makes more sense.
Yes, some will abuse the symbology here, but they will do within their rights as U.S. citizens speaking freely on matters of great concern to us all, and that's okay.
But it's not just the tragedy that will be marked more individually in this way, so too will the celebrations:
This war's unique aspects are also changing the homecoming equation. Iraq marks the first extended conflict for the U.S. since the draft was abandoned in 1973. About 29% of the 1.3 million troops deployed since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 have done two or more tours of duty. This is a big change from Vietnam when the draft assured supplies of fresh troops, and from the 1991 Gulf War, which lasted eight months [in terms of deployments]. In this conflict, homecoming is often temporary--and when troops do come back for good, it follows an extended absence.
More troops are returning to spouses eager to celebrate the event. About 52% of the fighting force is married, according to the Defense Department. Military experts say the troops in Vietnam, with a draft that tilted heavily toward young men, were largely unmarried, though the Defense Department said it had not compiled marriage statistics for all the services in that war.
In another shift, many of the troops today are returning directly to civilian communities. National Guard and Reserve members have comprised as much as 40% of forces, compared with a high of 20% during the Gulf War.
The reality is that the Long War will be fought far more by SysAdmin troops in a SysAdmin function than by traditional warfighting troops in a blitzkrieg-ish, high-tech Leviathan way. This will be long and slow, involving the Reserve Component (Guard and Reserves) far more than anything we did in the Cold War.
And this reality will radically alter all sorts of rule sets for this war-within-peace.
thomaspmbarnett.com |
