[Peace-discuss] Obama and the military, by Street

[Morton K. Brussel]

ZNet | Anti War

"Without Question"? On Growing Military Opposition to the Invasion of  
Iraq

by Paul Street; January 11, 2007
It's nice to know that, as the New York Times reports today, there is  
"widespread skepticism about the Bush administration's Iraq strategy"  
among congressional "Democrats and some Republicans" (Michael Gordon  
and Jeff Zeleny, "Latest Plan Sets a Series of Goals for Iraq  
Leaders," NYT, 8 January 2007, A1).

Too bad the newly emboldened (one would think) Democratic leadership  
in Congress has taken de-funding Bush's war (not to mentioning  
impeaching Bush for the deceptions that led to that war and the  
criminal nature of the war's conduct) off the table in advance of the  
new legislative session.

Too bad top Democrats are too frightened of being tarred with "losing  
Iraq" to act fully and forcefully in accord with the majority of  
(United States of) Americans' (and Iraqis', for what that's worth)  
opposition to the war.

And too bad the Democrats' centrist presidential hopeful Barack Obama  
says that his party will be "punished in '08"  if it doesn't seem  
like it wants to "work with"  the criminal, incompetent,  messianic,  
vainglorious and (surprise) remarkably unpopular Bush administration.

What about the troops charged with actual prosecution of Washington's  
illegal, racist and imperialist oil occupation, currently poised for  
a deadly escalation (a so-called "Surge")? How do they feal about the  
ongoing invasion? Their resistance to Bush's terrible Iraq policy  
could become a major factor leading to the end of the war before  
untold thousands more GIs and Iraqis die.

"DUTY WITHOUT QUESTION" AND A "UNIQUE QUALITY OF OPTIMISM"

In a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) two weeks  
after George W. Bush's party received its mid-term "thumping,"Obama  
tried to curry favor with the gatekeepers of imperial power by  
praising U.S. occupation soldiers for "performing their duty with  
bravery, with brilliance, and without question." (B.O., "A Way  
Forward," speech to CCGA, November 22 2006).

This claim of unthinking "service" by loyal troops was consistent  
with the tribute Obama gave to an obedient Marine in his heralded  
Keynote Address to the 2004 Democratic Convention.  After referring  
to Americans as "one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the  
stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America,"  
Keynoter Obama told the story of  "a young man" named Shamus who  
"told me he'd joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the  
following week." One of Shamus' endearing qualities, Obama said, was  
"absolute faith in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty  
and service." "I thought," Obama said, "this young man was all that  
any of us might hope for in a child."

The claim of unquestioning GI "service" in Iraq is consistent also  
with Obama's portrait of U.S. soldier opinions he allegedly  
encountered during a trip to Iraq in January of 2006.  In his recent   
conservative and power-worshipping book "The Audacity of  
Hope" (2006), Obama claims that the only thing the troops wanted to  
tell him about was the "pride" they felt in (what Obama perversely  
calls) "the house we were building" in Iraq with (what he deceptively  
terms) "the best of intentions." "Again and again," Obama claims, "I  
was asked the same question: Why did the U.S. press only report on  
bombings and killings? There was progress being made, they insisted -  
I needed to let the folks back home know that their work was not in  
vain."

Obama claims to have been "reminded of that unique quality of  
optimism that everywhere was on display - the absence of cynicism  
despite the danger, sacrifice and seemingly interminable setbacks,  
the insistence at the end of the day our actions would result in a  
better life for a nation of people we barely knew"  (B.O., "Audacity  
of Hope," pp. 297-298).

PESSIMISM AND ALIENATION BORN OF HARD GROUND TRUTHS

It's hard to determine which is more disturbing in these comments  
from the junior Senator from Illinois:  (i) Obama's upholding of the  
unquestioning execution of criminal orders as a good thing; (ii) his  
declared blindness to the cynical and brazenly imperialist nature of  
the mass-murderous oil invasion;  or (iii) his declared blindness to  
the important and welcome fact that many U.S. troops question and  
oppose the war.

Antiwar activists and others who care to look have known about that  
GI opposition for some time. Thanks to a survey of active duty U.S.  
military personnel conducted as Obama was touring the country to sell  
his book (and his campaign) last fall, we now have hard data that  
makes Obama's rendering of troop attitudes look inaccurate and  
dishonest. We've got the 2006 "Military Times" poll, carried out by  
the U.S Armed Forces leading (Gannett-owned) newspaper.  It is based  
on a mail survey of the paper's active-duty military subscribers, two  
thirds of whom have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan at least once.

Here are the most relevant findings on active duty military opinion:

* Percentage who feel that "success in Iraq is likely": 50% (down  
from an "optimistic" peak of 83% in 2004)

* Percent who approve of the way President Bush is handling the war:  
35% (down from 63% in 2004)

* Percent who disapprove of Bush's handling of the war: 42%

* Percent who think the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the  
first place: 41% (down from 65% in 2003) - four points lower than the  
general U.S. population (45%) in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll

* Percent who think U.S. should have NO TROOPS in Iraq: 13%

That's right, more than 1 in 10 troops polled say there should be no  
U.S. forces in Mesopotamia.

Other interesting "Military Times" discoveries include the finding  
that less than half the active-duty military thinks War Criminal Bush  
has their best interests at heart.  Less than half think the war on  
Iraq deserves to be considered part of the so-called war on terror.   
And less than a third thinks the nation's civilian military  
leadership has their best interests at heart.

These interesting findings come despite the fact that just 10 percent  
of the military identifies as "liberal" (the leftmost category troops  
are permitted to use). They also arise in spite of what Dr. Alan  
Segal (director of the Center for the Study of Military Organization  
at the university of Maryland) calls "a strong strain in military  
culture not to criticize the commander-in-chief" ("Down on the War,"  
Military Times, 29 December 2006, available at www. militarycity.com/  
polls/2006_ main.php).

Authoritarian ideology and culture are trumped by real experience as  
troops are seeing more fatalities and casualties and less  
"progress."  There's no substitute for actually "serving" on the  
killing fields of Empire.

Troops know the war's grisly "Ground Truth" in ways that Obama will  
never grasp (even if he cared to) by squeezing an occasional flight  
into the Green Zone between photo shoots for Vanity Fair, Men's  
Vogue, and Ebony and endless visits to the dining, lobbying and  
lecture halls of Empire and Inequality, Inc.

Politicians can make all the calculating, false-patriot assertions  
they like about supposedly noble GI obedience in the execution of  
Bush's agenda.  The deeper reality is that a large and growing number  
of the Empire's active-duty military are understandably and heavily  
conflicted about the war on Iraq. By one measure at least, their  
experience of harsh on-the-ground realities makes them more opposed  
to "Operation Iraqi Freedom" - a supposed exercise in the export of  
"liberty" curiously opposed by the preponderant majority of its  
purported beneficiaries (less than 2 percent of the Iraqi people  
share Obama's notion that the occupation was carried out with  
benevolent, democracy-promoting intentions) - than the U.S.  
population as a whole.

Remember, antiwar activists: you have a growing and large number of  
potential allies inside the U.S. military and among the rising mass  
of Iraq War veterans.

Paul Street (paulstreet99 at yahoo.com) is a veteran radical historian,  
social policy critic, journalist and political commentator located in  
Iowa City, IA.  Street is the author of Empire and Inequality:  
America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004),  
Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights  
Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), and Still Separate, Unequal:  
Race, Place, and Policy in Chicago (Chicago, 2005) Street's next book  
is Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago  
History (New York, 2007).
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