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The United States is the most warlike nation on earth and has been for a very long time. It would take too much space simply to enumerate all of the places where the United States is involved today in wars of one kind or another. Not only are U.S. troops actively fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but our government has military bases in every part of the globe and CIA and other undercover agents in every country imaginable. Yet to hear our leaders and media pundits tell it, we are a peace-loving country. We are drawn into wars with great reluctance and only because of the bad behavior of others. We are good, and these others are bad, some so bad that they are the incarnation of evil, and it is our duty as the greatest place on earth to rid the world of this depravity. We have military outposts and soldiers in foreign countries only to ensure global security and safety. When the United States goes to war, then, our soldiers are the embodiment of our virtue, knights in shining armor sent forth to do good deeds. Newscasters never tire of celebrating and thanking our "heroes," those brave men and women who are sacrificing—and sometimes making the "ultimate sacrifice"—so that the rest of us can remain free. Neither the notion that the United States is a "peace-loving country" nor the image of our soldiers as "embodiments of our virtue" can stand up to a close look. The facts of U.S. war making and the unsavory motives behind it are easy enough to find. Just read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States for most of the details. Here I want to talk about the troops. Ever since the United States invaded Iraq, we have been admonished by nearly everyone to "support the troops." Even those opposed to the war use this slogan. When we lived in Estes Park, Colorado, we went to a meeting of a local organization called "Patriots for Peace." They were opposed to the war but said that we had to "support the troops." In the discussion that followed the meeting, we discerned an unwillingness by most of the participants to ever say anything negative about U.S. soldiers. If we say that we support the troops, doesn’t this mean that we also support what the troops are doing? If not, then it must mean that we are somehow able to divorce the soldiers as persons from their actions. I don’t see how this is possible. A person cannot be separated from his or her actions. "Actions speak louder than words." "By their fruits ye shall know them." These are cliches, but they are true. There is no other way to judge the troops that to judge their actions. Every year, in honor of my late father, who was indelibly shaped by his experiences in the Second World War, I read a book or two about war. This year I read The Deserter’s Tale by Joshua Key. Key grew up poor in a small Oklahoma town, without a father and a string of violent stepfathers. He learned how to shoot and hunt at a very early age, and he was adept at fighting and fixing things. Army recruiters found their way to the family trailer when he was in high school, but he didn’t join the army until he was in his early twenties. By then he was married with two children and another coming soon. He and his wife couldn’t make enough money to get by, no matter what jobs they took or how many time they moved in search of something better. Their debts began to pile up, mounting to near the breaking point after four trips to the hospital for a kidney stone. In desperation, he and his wife began to think about the military as a way out of their financial mess. The Marines turned him down because he had too many kids and too much debt. The army recruiter, however, saw a warm body who would help him meet his recruiting quota. He told Key how to answer the questions he asked and took a "don’t ask, don’t tell" approach to facts such as Key’s pregnant wife, his two herniated discs, his arrest for hitting a policeman, and his mounting debts. When Key said adamantly that he didn’t want to be separated from his family, the recruiter promised Key that he would get the training he wanted and spend his tour of duty building bridges in the United States, where he would be assigned to a "nondeployable base." Key duly enlisted and soon found out that everything the recruiter told him was a lie. Not long after basic and then specialized training, he was sent to Iraq. He had been taught to make and defuse bombs and mines.
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