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Where Are This War's Winter Soldiers?Why Iraq war veterans have not had much impact on the debate over the war.

By Ronald R. Krebs
Posted Friday, March 7, 2008, at 7:06 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Nevertheless, Iraq war veterans have been shunted aside for three reasons. First, veterans have shown even less interest in protesting the war than has the public at large. This is largely the legacy of the end of the draft. The installation of the all-volunteer force in 1973 over time produced armed forces that were less representative of society at large—racially but also politically. The officer corps is now composed disproportionately of self-identified political conservatives and Republican partisans, to the point that a brouhaha erupted in the 1990s over the "civil-military gap," with some worrying (thankfully baselessly) that a coup might even be in the offing. The Iraq war has opened up an unprecedented partisan divide, and Republican support has been remarkably resilient. While there have been signs of mounting discontent—including surprisingly large active-military contributions to Ron Paul, the only Republican presidential candidate to oppose the war—the current crop of veterans is less fertile soil for the IVAW's plow than for its Vietnam-era counterpart. Put simply, veterans have been quiet partly because many are strong partisans who, at least until quite recently, have been committed to the administration, the war, or both.

Second, if veterans' will has been lacking, the political opportunities for protest have been few. On the one hand, counterinsurgency is a cruel business, in which the brutalization of civilians is, sadly, hardly exceptional. Although many Americans shrugged off revelations that U.S. soldiers were murdering, raping, and otherwise mistreating noncombatants in Vietnam, the disclosures transformed the nagging concerns of others, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., into full-throated opposition. And these incidents created a special opening for veterans to bear witness against military transgressions and thrust them to prominence within the anti-war movement. Iraq has, of course, seen its share of U.S. violations of the principle of noncombatant immunity, but the scale of abuse has paled compared with Vietnam. Moreover, while the armed forces have predictably covered up abuses and impeded investigation, they have also taken serious and sincere steps to learn from their mistakes, and they have instituted standard operating procedures to limit the number of civilians killed and injured. The Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine has taken the winning of Iraqi hearts and minds seriously and has mandated more discriminate uses of force. On the other hand, while the Iraq war has stretched the volunteer army's manpower structures and has entailed mind-boggling economic and other costs, the United States has deployed only between one-third and one-fourth of the forces it sent to Vietnam, and casualty rates in Iraq remain comparatively low relative to that earlier military conflict.

Finally, the broader political environment has been less hospitable to veteran protest. Since the late 1960s, the United States has become more "liberal"—not in the usual political sense, but rather with regard to its conception of citizenship. The United States has shifted toward a culture of rights, away from its "republican" heritage in which the performance of civic duty was prized. As I have argued elsewhere, soldiers and veterans can make substantial political headway when the citizenship discourse is heavily republican; this, for example, explains why Druze Arabs, who serve in the Israel Defense Forces, have been able to garner disproportionate attention and resources in Israel, a Jewish state that historically has discriminated against its Arab citizens. A liberal political culture undercuts veterans' capacity to make unusually weighty claims on the polity.

Where, then, are this war's Winter Soldiers? Many are in permanent hibernation: They are committed political conservatives dismissive of evidence that the war cannot be won, fearful of the consequences of even a gradual U.S. withdrawal, eager for signs of a thaw in Iraq's frozen communal politics. Others are on ice, still awaiting an opening to bring their personal testimonials to bear on American political debate—an opening that will likely never arise.

In general, veterans are a vanishing force in American politics. Notwithstanding the attention devoted to Iraq-war-veteran candidates in the 2006 elections, the 109th Congress has 13 fewer veterans than the 108th and 14 fewer than the 107th, and there are proportionally fewer veterans in Congress than in society at large. There is little evidence that veteran status matters much to contemporary elections, despite the post-9/11 focus on security—this has been true of both congressional and presidential politics. In this sense at least, John McCain represents the past of American politics, not its future.

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Ronald R. Krebs is assistant professor and McKnight Land-Grant Professor in the department of political science at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Fighting for Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship.
Photograph of protest by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.
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Notes from the Fray Editor

Arlington's post, below, sparked an excellent thread. Ravenfrog gives a military wife's view here, while Melvyl, below, also wonders if an increase in domestic violence might be a long-term result of the conflict in Iraq. A post by morganb called "or they just don't agree with you" led to a long, long argument here. And here's an idea for Fray DNA: a line with that "You could reconstruct the whole thread from this sentence" feel--Pherdnut's "you do realize 'swiftboating' is a derogatory term now, right?"

Comments from the Fray

The lesson we learned from Vietnam is to not allow ourselves to think too much. We invaded a small, weak nation on a flimsy pretext supported by phony evidence. We destroyed the infrastructure and killed hundreds of thousands of people. We tilted our domestic economy so far toward propping up our military occupation that we're incapable of dealing with something like disaster relief in the wake of a hurricane. We are--literally, not figuratively--more committed to rescuing and rebuilding a foreign nation on the other side of the world than we are to rebuilding one of our own cities.

As a nation, we are remarkably uncritical of ourselves about all this. We feel perfectly justified rampaging around the world, invading other countries, telling others what to do, and reconfiguring the government so that we work for the military instead of the other way around.

It will be interesting to see how much longer this lasts. The Soviet Union kept it up for over 50 years. We're starting at a more advantageous place, but the effects of globalization may accelerate our decline. Whether the end comes slowly or quickly, it will come. One day we'll run out of money and the business of making war will go bust.

--Arlington

(To reply, click here)

The real issue here is conscription. Maintaining the kind of force levels our occupation will need to be effective will require a draft. Privatizing the war is a non-starter, as the Blackwater scandals have shown us. While you might not be able to use draftees for nation-building, you can't use mercs either. If McCain wins and commits to a draft (about the only way he could continue the war as he says he finds necessary) the whole culture of our engagement and also of the veteran community will change, and the longer we stay in, the more it changes. If we stay in Iraq as long as we stayed in Vietnam, the damage to the military will be the same or worse, and that veterans' antiwar movement that Slate's designated expert finds so puzzlingly absent will be quite present.

--Melvyl

(To reply, click here)

(3/11)

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