Maintaining Freedom

There is, these days, a political mantra that seems both undebatable and incontrovertible: "support the troops." The mantra is intoned at political rallies, by talk show hosts, in the streets, and the media at large. No matter where a candidate for the presidency stands on any given foreign policy issue, respect is due to the troops who put themselves in harm's way to carry out the orders of the commander-in-chief.

I have no truck with such a sentiment. Soldiers face the gravest of risks and of all our public servants are the only ones repeatedly asked to put their lives on the line. That they do so deserves and demands our respect, which is precisely why the mantra works.

The problem, however, is what the mantra hides. To "support the troops" does not mean to "support the war." To call attention to the atrocities of war is not to countermand the order to "support the troops." And to suggest that we need a less intrusive foreign policy (three cheers to Republican Ron Paul for calling attention to the American Empire) has nothing to do with "supporting the troops."

Granted, this has not been as much of an issue in the last year as it has been in times past. Jingoism will always be invoked by some, but its capacity to persuade has been diminished by the dismal results of Bush's ill-fated adventure in Iraq.

Which brings us to the surge, sure to be an issue in this November election, and a major question for voters to address at that point. John McCain has staked his presidential bid on the success of the surge, which he has been trumpeting for some time now. The media, for the most part, seems to be agreeing with him. Violence, after all, is down -- and General Petraeus has the numbers to show it. With progress comes the hope of more progress, leading to the ultimate success of the intervention in Iraq. And, if McCain's 2007 Foreign Affairs article is any guide, it is a blueprint for future operations. McCain's presidency would likely see the rebuilding of the military to handle these situations and engage in more nation-building exercises.

I do not admit the surge's success. Violence only declined when Muqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire in August of 2007. Granted, he did so under enormous pressure from the United States which only could have been contemplated with the surge. But additional factors pressured Muqtada as well, including a growing dissatisfaction on the part of Shiites within Iraq with the corruption that was accompanying the Sadrists rise to power. And there has been great cost with the surge's success. The most important may prove to be the deals struck between the U.S. military and anti-Sadr militias. Empowering local thugs to fight against other local thugs may not prove to be the best bet to secure a stable democracy in the Middle East, even if it does provide some order and put America's enemies on the run. Most of the American media establishment is oblivious to such details, preferring the much simpler argument of whether the surge is "working" and what "defeat" might mean for the United States (forgetting, it would seem, the Iraqis who must live amidst this violence).

So will "support the troops" translate into a "support the surge" come November? It will if the American media continues to conflate concepts and slip promiscuously from one idea to another in repeating the mantra. To give but one horrific example, the ladies from _the View_ on ABC debated Gloria Steinem's remarks about John McCain's POW experience. One of the vapid hosts--Elisabeth Hasselbeck, whoever she is--took Steinem's simple statement that military service was not a prerequisite for high office and turned it into a syllogism that would have made George Orwell blush: 1. Gloria Steinem argued that John McCain's POW experience did not qualify him for high office; 2. Gloria Steinem argued that military training does not in-and-of-itself qualify somebody to be commander-in-chief; 3. Therefore, Gloria Steinem argued that our men and women in uniform are bad because they are trained to kill; 4. This is evil because it denigrates our men and women in uniform.

Simple logic has never been easy for talk show hosts, so I don't want to dwell too much on Hasselbeck's inability to reason from premises (1&2) to necessary conclusions (3&4). Suffice it to say that it does not follow logically.

What I do want to dwell on is the latter assumption, revealed noisily by a frustrated Hasselbeck when pressed on this point by Barbara Walters and others on that show. She blurted out that we wouldn't be free if it wasn't for our troops in Iraq.

There is, needless to say, a huge difference between "supporting the troops" and claiming that the only reason we enjoy, say, the privilege of blogging, is because they are in Iraq right now. It represents the worst in logical fallacies, complete with internal inconsistencies and faulty premises.

But it does raise the question of what precisely it takes to maintain freedom. Doubtless, a strong military presence is important. More debatable is whether that military power ought to be projected or not (or, perhaps more accurately, when it should be presented). But strong militaries have not traditionally been the sign of a healthy, free society. Certainly no one would argue that a strong military is more important to a despotic state than a free one.

So what else does it take to maintain a free society? I am hoping to solicit some responses that list some of the requirements for maintaining freedom. It may be the only way to get past the mindless and uncritical United States media and its coverage of U.S. power abroad.