On supporting the troops.

A chap called Hobgoblin, who you came to via Charlotte and Aphra Behn’s postings on the topic, has requested movingly and persuasively that people blog about what it means to support the troops. This seems like an admirable project, even if it didn’t run headlong into your latest train of thought, so here goes.

It’s not something you feel you have the right to comment on usually.

No one in your family has ever, as far as you know, been a professional soldier. You also can’t say that any of them particularly distinguished themselves when forced to take part in times of mass conscription. One of your Grandads, for example, was laid out in a London hospital with hepatitis and missed the landings on D-day as a result. And your family doesn’t talk about the other one.

B’s family tended to be more on the receiving end of armies – half of them starved to death in the blockade of St Petersburg and B’s Grandmother had her house burned down around her by advancing German troops down Lipisk way ten days after giving birth to B’s mother. And don’t mention the civil war. The menfolk of his family who have had anything to do with it tend to have practiced desertion, getting themselves disappeared, being assigned to suicide squads – either we shoot you or you let them do it - or draft dodging. B’s family were, in fact, enemies of the people (with certificates and the stint in Siberia to prove it) although they never covered themselves in glory by becoming out and out dissidents.

This doesn’t mean, though, that you don’t have an opinion, which you are sure will surprise no one. Here’s what support means to you:

Soldiers should not be used as cannon fodder. This means not getting involved in unnecessary wars - and there’s an obvious way we could support our troops there - and also having effective commanders of armies and strategies so that they are not wasted once they are committed. Quite apart from the obvious benefits of there being fewer opportunities to get killed, you think it would be better for the soldiers if they could believe in what they are doing. It also entails using the new technology which allows the armed forces not to put soldiers at any more risk than they have to be. This is a dangerous line to walk though as the technology mostly involves killing at a distance and that very distance makes killing very easy. 

So soldiers should not be asked to do utterly indefensible things. There should be loud debates about what sort of acts are permissible and what are not. There seems to be a general acceptance now, for example, that involving civilians in wars is inevitable, yet it’s this that puts the most stress on soldiers on the ground. If our outrage were loud enough, would more alternatives be found?

Unfortunately this is one of those areas where critisism of the policy is seen as being criticism of the troops. Mainly because it often has meant that. Remember all those ‘baby killer’ comments to the Vietnam veterans? You always felt that it was the sixties only fine moment, that such an energetic anti war movement existed. But you also felt that it was their worst moment as well as so much of the ire seemed directed at the soldiers themselves. Which in turn meant they came home to hostility and a determination to brush the whole thing under the carpet. At best.

Soldiers should be protected from themselves. You’ve posted at length about what atrocities people can commit in extreme circumstances, and in war soldiers have a habit of going off the rails. This is a failure of army discipline and structure and so support of the troops includes guarding against creating the conditions where such acts become possible, and preventative policing so that the conditions which can lead to them are nipped in the bud.

Soldiers also need acknowledgement. World war vets were probably able to integrate back into civilian life more easily partly because, unlike Vietnam vets for example, they were uncontroversially recognised as heroes. And continued to be fiercely celebrated. Presumably when the doubts set in or the nightmares rise up, this is of some comfort. However, you also wonder if it wasn’t also because when they got back home everybody there had also been caught up in the conflict – everybody and society as a whole was in the same boat of having to go from a war footing to a peacetime footing. You wonder how much harder it is for soldiers coming back from Iraq to be met with, by and large ringing silence. Not just on the subject of their hero status, but about the experience they have been going though as a whole. It’s an extreme form of culture shock and the worst of culture shock is watching everyone else wonder round behaving as though everything is perfectly normal.

More fuss, then, should be made about returning soldiers by the communities they return to. Not just when they return but repeatedly thereafter. Our Remembrance Day is important – it doesn’t do to forget the costs of war entirely. But you wonder if  we are being a bit self indulgent and trying to purge ourselves of the guilt of engaging in war at all with it sometimes. We know war is indefensible but as long as we are sorry then that’s alright. This day allows us to maintain the moral high-ground, but probably doesn’t do much to boost the moral of those who didn’t, in fact, die. There are celebrations of the end of the second world war, but perhaps more fuss should be made of veterans of all kinds.

Mind you, the problem of having a Veterans’ Day is that people have a tendency to take the observance of such days as the only thing they need to do in order to contribute towards whatever problem is being acknowledged. Still, while you’d prefer to get paid more, you were always pathetically grateful for the acknowledgement the Russian habit of continuing to celebrate the Soviet holiday of Teachers’ Day gave you. Just because it’s a bit of a cliche, doesn’t mean it doesn’t actually have benefit.

But soldiers also need practical help when they get back. It really is a bit much to send people out to do a most unpleasant job which you recognise is pragmatically necessary but which, frankly, you aren’t prepared to do yourself and then not ensure that there is adequate recompense and support when they get back. You’ve noticed a few stories in the news recently about the substandard accommodation soldiers are expected to put up with when they return and while by and large you disapprove of media campaigns faking outrage to sell newspapers, this one might have some useful purpose. There’s not much on this topic though around and perhaps it’s time to try to get it more prominently talked about. You have decided it might be time to make a few enquiries and send a few letters to the relevant institutions.

And then of course there’s Hobgoblin’s original request:

So, here is my plea. I want to start people talking more and more and more about supporting the troops. I want people to think more about how we treat the people who have made the sacrifices for our country. I want people to think about how cynically politicians exploit the troops for their own ends. I want people to think about how a drunken frat boy draft dodger can be seen as a hero and biggest supporter of our troops, and I want people to think about just what this absolute and complete collapse of meaning says about our country. Please, write something about this. Spread the word. Talk about how we need to support our troops in real, tangible, material ways–starting with bringing them home from this evil, stupid, stupid war. Reference me or not, link to me or not, but talk about it. Ask everyone who reads your blog to write about it–just one post–until everyone in the blogosphere is talking about it. Create a chain blog, an enormous pyramid of entries. It may mean nothing–probably will mean nothing–but things only start to happen when people talk and agitate.