Does Military Service = Patriotism?

Here’s my question of the day.

If a person spent part of his/her life wearing a military uniform, is that person automatically more patriotic than someone who didn’t wear the uniform?

Military service in the United States has changed over the years. Today, we have an all-volunteer army, but through most of the 20th century, service in the military was compulsory. We’ve always had volunteers, but we’ve also drafted millions of young Americans who did not want to fight — whether the foe was North Vietnam, North Korea, Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany.

And that led to cases of soldiers deserting their outfits under fire — and draftees fleeing the country to avoid service.

Under the right circumstances, an all-volunteer army is probably the best way to defend a country. Its members want to be there, and they are unburdened by the presence of unhappy draftees.

In the case of America’s all-volunteer armed forces who participated in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, they had the assistance of millions of servicemen from all over the world. Thus, they were able to whip Iraq’s overwhelmed army and drive it from Kuwait in a few weeks.

But even an all-volunteer army is not without its flaws.

With the nation essentially engaged in a two-front war that has seemed to stretch the existing armed forces beyond their capabilities, many people — including myself — have been astonished that a draft has not been necessary.

Stress on America's military is even greater because there is no massive international effort in Afghanistan and Iraq — only the United States and George W. Bush's loosely cobbled "coalition of the willing."

The pressure on America's fighting men and women has led to cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression that has led to alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide, and fear that has led to desertion under fire.

People who serve in combat — whether they are compelled to do so or are there because they want to be there — are vulnerable to pain and pressure, the horrors of war. There are heroes, and there are those who lose their nerve in the service. Sometimes it takes the brutality of a battle to identify which is which.

It seems to me that, if anything, military service should mean that the veteran of such service learned something valuable from the experience that can be utilized in future endeavors.

Clearly, that can be an asset in a president.

In the case of John McCain, I have seen glimpses of the wisdom that was imparted to him in Vietnam in the form of his unflagging opposition to torture. That's a position worthy of a president who was shaped by his service in war — and a clear improvement over the current occupant of the White House.

Joe Conason writes, in Salon.com, that ”[t] he most pertinent issue is not what McCain did or didn't do during the war in Vietnam, but what he learned from that searing, incredibly bloody and wholly unnecessary failure of U.S. policy.” He contends that what is vital to McCain's approach to governing is not what he learned in Vietnam but what he didn't learn.

And, while Conason applauds McCain for his ”moral authority” on the issue of torture, he chastises McCain for what his experience in Vietnam did not teach him. He ”seems not to have learned why that war itself was a tragic mistake — and why we needed to leave Vietnam long before we did.”

Conason rejects McCain’s ”bitter analysis” that ”suggests that a ground invasion and an even more destructive bombing campaign, with an unimaginable cost in human life, would have achieved an American victory.”

Somehow, ”military service” has become synonymous with ”patriotism.” More than a mere synonym, it has become a blanket synonym, a ”one size fits all” designation of infallibility.

If one is called a military veteran, it immediately implies that person is a patriot. In the post-9/11 world, ”military service” is code wording for ”patriotism.”

It also implies an almost slavish devotion to an aggressive military approach to foreign affairs.

The point, it seems to me, is not whether one should be aggressive when engaged in combat.

The point is that one should show restraint until the decision has been made to engage in such combat.

And, with the Bush-Cheney administration, I believe such a decision was made about Iraq before many things had even been tried. It was not the "last resort" that George W. Bush said it would be.

I don't believe a person is a patriot simply because he/she wore a uniform. In many cases (unless the person in question was dishonorably discharged), it proves is that he/she was good at taking orders.

And, after America's five-year presence in Iraq, it appears to me that the phrase "military service" isn't quite as magical as it was recently — although it still retains some of its muscle.

Margaret Talev, writing for McClatchy Newspapers, asks, ”How important is military service in this presidential election?”

McCain would like for the voters to believe in the aura of infallibility that surrounds the veteran status in the popular myth, but it remains to be seen if it will benefit him in this campaign. As Talev points out, ”History shows that whether a candidate has military experience rarely determines who'll win election to the nation's highest office.”

It’s true that military service hasn’t prevented some men from becoming president. The nation’s first president, George Washington, was a general during the Revolutionary War. Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower all served in the military — as did a few other chief executives in the 19th and 20th centuries.

But the last two presidents never served in combat and were elected and re-elected against opponents who served overseas during wartime. Ronald Reagan qualified for limited service during World War II because of his nearsightedness, meaning that three of the last four presidents never served overseas — but nevertheless were elected to two terms each as commander in chief.

Surveys have suggested that, while Congress and the president have continued to lose ground in terms of public approval in recent years, the military retains its high approval in the public’s eyes.

So military service, like wearing an American flag on your lapel, is seen (unjustifiably) as proof of patriotism — when, in fact, they are code words and symbols.

Well, OK, some words really are code words for something else.

And some words have acquired that status over time — usually without total justification — but not without at least a kernel of truth behind it, which is usually how it is with stereotypes.

Like the phrase ”states’ rights” — which I used in this blog in a reference to my reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on guns.

”States’ rights” came to be associated with resistance to integration.

In my mind, it means that certain rights have always been reserved for the states and, in those areas, the federal government oversteps its authority if it interferes — or attempts to interfere — in state business.

The concept of the rights of the states has always been crucial in American history, and it is legitimate to defend states’ rights. But the phrase was hijacked by the racists and used to shield the terrorist activities of groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

That doesn’t make the concept of states’ rights any less legitimate — it was part of the original Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment, to be precise.

The Confederates used the concept to justify the continuation of slavery — which was based more on economics than racism.

And in the years since the Civil War, particularly since the advent of the modern civil rights era, ”states’ rights” has come to be viewed as code wording that implies support for segregation and opposition to civil rights.

By the way, one of the last practitioners of the politics of states’ rights, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, died yesterday at the age of 86.

If there’s anyone left from that generation who participated in the hijacking of that phrase in order to promote the idea of racial segregation as a way to build political power, I don’t know who it is.