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The Warrior Elite

By Kevin Funnell

I made the mistake recently of visiting a blog that I try to avoid. It's populated by bloggers and commenters who are people that I generally despise. Reading the biographies of those writers for the blog who personally identify themselves or whose identities I've discovered with a few mouse clicks, it seems to me that most of them are either graduate students, academics, or otherwise employed by institutions of "higher learning." What all of them seem to share is, at best, a lack of appreciation for members of the American military branches and, in some apparent cases, outright contempt for those members.

A recent post on that blog in the wake of Memorial Day (and, I assume, inspired by that holiday) warned Americans that not every American who died in battle fighting in one of America's wars died for a noble cause. Some died for corporate greed, others for flawed national policies. One commenter to that post made the following comment: "Christians should completely ignore Memorial Day." Another wrote, "As for 'not having died in vain,' all one has to consider is the word the G.I.s in Vietnam took to using in reference to the deaths of their fallen comrades?'wasted.' Says it all."

I thought about sending the post on to my friend JP Borda, the creator of the leading military blogging site "Milblogging.com," and have him post it to his blog and let his bloggers, many of whom, like JP, have served more than one recent combat tour or are currently serving in a combat zone, react to these folks who spit on their daily sacrifice. I still might do that, along with forwarding to JP the personal information I've gleaned from what's readily available on the internet with respect to each of these condescending assholes. It would be interesting to see how people who act so brave when posting hateful comments on a blog that appears to be an echo chamber populated solely by fellow leftists hold up when a confronted face-to-face with one of the objects of their scorn, objects who are used to acting tough, not just talking tough. In fact, I'd pay to see that.

I'll give it a day or two to make up my mind whether it's worth the effort. In the interim, I'm re-posting and updating an entry of mine from five years ago on an earlier version of this blog. It discusses a trend that, I think, is even more pronounced today.

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As I watched a discussion today between two "experts" on military affairs - both of whom agreed that our military was stretched too thin to put any additional troops into Iraq, no matter what John McCain advises - I wondered about the kinds of folks who became professional "warriors" in a time when society at large seems to ignore them and their sacrifice while it goes about its principal business of satisfying its carnal pleasures. I recalled an article published in Newsweek magazine earlier this year that attempted to explain the phenomenon of military service as "The Family Business," even though the intent of the article appeared to be to isolate and marginalize our military men and women.

The father-son tradition of inherited sacrifice and honor goes on and on, and now includes some mothers and daughters as well.

But it also underscores the isolation of the military from the rest of society. Increasingly, it seems, America is divided between the vast majority who do not serve and the tiny minority who do. The shared sacrifice of World War II is but a distant memory. During World War II, 6 percent of Americans were in uniform; today, the Pentagon says, the figure is four tenths of 1 percent. On military bases, wives warily watch for a pair of somber-faced officers emerging from a car, a sign that bad news is about to arrive at the front door. At military hospitals, young men and women missing limbs are an increasingly familiar sight. But for the rest of us, going about our daily lives, it can be hard to tell there's a war on.

I'd agree that there is a large problem with the rest of us acting like it's business as usual, while our warriors fight our battles.

Since February, the Army - Regular, Reserves and National Guard - has been missing its monthly recruiting goals by as much as 42 percent. On the other hand, re-enlistment rates are up, especially for those serving in combat arms in Iraq. Incongruous as it may seem for the millions whose closest brush with battle is on cable, soldiers and Marines on the front line are proud to be there and willing to serve again. The overall effect is to heighten the sense that the military is becoming a proud cult that fewer and fewer outsiders want to join.

"Incongruous as it may seem" to the liberal, soft, weak, and increasingly traitorous minority that the editors and writers of most of Newsweek's stories epitomize, perhaps. The article is full of left-wing canards: racism in the military; the "family tradition" of sons following fathers into the service being fueled by the need for a son to "prove his manliness" to his father (which doesn't explain the father-daughter, mother-son, husband-wife examples); the old guilt of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and it's supposed effect in causing the death of Admiral Zumwalt's son (unproven); the armed forces as a cult "few wish to join."

I especially love this passage:

Career service members often see themselves as a breed apart. "You know, you don't make a lot of money, but there's a lot of good things about it," says General Odierno. "It's good people, it's very rewarding, you feel a great sense of service, duty, personal discipline." The Marines, in particular, have their own culture of duty, honor, sacrifice. These ideals are both noble and actually lived up to in the Marine Corps, but as Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks noted in his book "Making the Corps," many Marine officers harbor a disturbing disdain for the decadence and selfishness of modern American society. And it's not just Marines: Army officers for some years have passed around copies of "Once an Eagle," a 1968 novel by Anton Myrer about a duty-bound Army officer who tries to rise above back-stabbing civilian harpies.

What, exactly, is "disturbing" about the "disdain" Marine Corps officers hold for "the decadence and selfishness of modern American society"? It's that disdain that shows that they have values that many others in society do not possess, values we should possess. Moreover, the authors of the piece don't understand that many Americans outside the Marine Corps share that disdain. The Corps represents values that many Americans admire, even revere. Obviously, Newsweek's writers believe that they are on the other side of the divide.

At least Newsweek finished with a flourish.

Marine Corps duty is especially hard on families. A Marine could once expect to be home 18 months for every six months spent deployed abroad. Now he or she is gone half the time. And yet General Conway, who is now the chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was surprised to learn that young married Marines re-enlist at a greater rate than unmarried troops. The only explanation is that for many, the Marine Corps is a world in which they wish to raise their families, despite the dangers and frequent moves.

There is no doubt that the military can encourage family values. There are undoubtedly a few fathers right out of Pat Conroy's "The Great Santini," about his abusive Marine Corps dad. But there are many more who fit the model of the Conways, or Ray and Tony Odierno, father and son trading tips on body armor and inexpressible love as they passed an ancient torch, in a tent in Kuwait, on the way to war.

An isolated cult? Maybe so. Perhaps we're headed for a future where small communities with moral rigor and essential faith and character carry our culture forward on their strong backs, while the majority of us are oblivious, or even opposed.

"The Warrior Elite." A tribe of men and women that rejects the lazier, more popular "values" of civilian society and instead "actually lives up to" noble ideals of service, duty, self-discipline, fidelity, and courage. As the rest of us are running on the fumes of a half-remembered spiritual fuel that once actually animated our ancestors and gave purpose to their lives, the Warrior Elite builds and perpetuates a community separate and apart from us. The few, the proud, the brave - the only people standing between the soft, the weak, the clueless and their enemies.

I'm glad they exist today. However, with the rest of Western "Civilization" marching toward self-destruction faster than its overweight slobs can stuff Quarter Pounders with Cheese into their gaping pie holes, you can't help but wonder how many more generations will endure "separate and apart." At some point, a group with its values has to start identifying more with an enemy who embraces many of the same values, albeit in pursuit of a different cause, than with a public unworthy of its sacrifice.

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on June 12, 2010 (boomark / email).