What a day! What a night! What an asker!I generally try not to get political here, since negotiation is all about bring opposing sides together. Seller and buyer. Boss and employee. Right and left. Basically, I don't want to ramble about my personal views (unless the those views involve asking, raspberries or cruel library workers).
But... Let me just say this... A black man from Chicago asked people to vote for him. The grandson of a Hawaiian secretary-turned-exec asked for change. A junior senator with magnetic oratory skills asked America to listen.
And America did!!
From a purely intellectual standpoint, Obama's campaign and his quest for the White House have a lot of takeaway points for my own project: Persevere. Believe in what you ask for. Make givers (voters, in this case) confident there's something in it for them. Learn from those who are more experienced. Stay civil and focused on the target even when you think you're going after an impossible goal. Know that nothing is impossible.
I spent Election Night at a GoObama party, where I met a man who butted into my conversation with a friend in a most brazen fashion. Middle aged, white, buzz cut, in the military since high school.
I asked him why.
Because he graduated from school with an interest in accounting and electronics, and the military offered a career doing electrical work on ships. He joined, got money for college, and then went back to the army because he wanted to make a difference. A seasoned fighter. He deployed to Afghanistan on 9/11, he's been to Iraq 5 times, and he's proud to be in the military and fight for America abroad.
I asked him why.
Because he belives in what America is doing. He believes the military has the Middle East's priorities at heart. Democracy, not oil. He has to believe it, or else his career and so many lives would have been lost in vain. But he doesn't agree with the methods. He thinks they should help the Iraqis govern themselves and then phase out. Stop fighting. Reduce the majority of troops. And stay the hell out of Iran.
I asked him why.
Because Iran can fight back. Because he's seen too many of his friends die. He just buried two of his closest friends at Rosecrants. He's had enough. He knows we'd be in trouble if there was another war. Most of his coworkers agree with him on this. Most people would be surprised at how many people in the military are are voting for Obama.
I asked him why.
Because they've also had enough.
It was an intriguing conversation, because his perspectives and opinions are different from most in my social and family circle. I don't know anyone in the military, and talking to John opened my eyes in a new way to the thoughts of someone serving in the armed forces. I never suppored this war, but when I meet someone who faced gunfire and worse, with the earnest belief he's helping someone like me cross the street in safety-- be it someone in California or in Fallujah -- I have to respect him.
Gained: A new president. A more nuanced view of what it means to fight for what you believe in.
Well, I don't know. What this conversation suggests is that he believes US policy is right because he has made sacrifices for it. But the logic does not follow. There's nothing inconceivable about people making huge sacrifices in an unworthy, evil endeavor. Most wars are like that.
ReplyDeleteYou don't just hope your leaders are right if that means that you will have to invade and kill others. When other people's lives lie in the balance, you better be sure you are doing the right thing.
Wishful thinking and self-delusion are not worthy of respect ever; but they're even less so when their consequences include the destruction of a country.
Hi multitasker,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point. Thanks for writing.
I don't think he supports US policy in order to retroactively justify his choices or out of straw-grasping idealism that the US might be virtuous after all, and if my writing made it seem that way, I should correct that.
That formulation -- hoping the US was right about Iraq, or else it was a pointless loss of lives -- was one of many ideas he expressed.
However, it did seem to me he thinks US policy is about democracy, freedom, and other positive ideals.
In any case, in answering every "why" with a "because" for rhetorical flourish as I composed the post, I neglected to show the very clear transition this soldier made from believing in the war and the US agenda in Iraq and Afghanistan, to wanting to get the troops out of Iraq in no uncertain terms and transition to Iraqi self-government. From absolute faith in the system, to rejecting this war but still believing America is worth fighting for.
Hence his vote for regime change (in the US).
That made me view him as someone with an independent mind, someone who questions authority as well as his own prior actions and beliefs. Hence, someone I can respect as an individual -- even if he has participated in a war I do not support or views America's foreign policy as more benevolent than I do.
Roxy
All of your points are well taken.
ReplyDeleteI would like to add something--and this is not a criticism of anything you have said.
I suppose if somebody engages in mass-murder or destroys a country, as the American troops have done in Iraq, we would normally label them as evil, and that would be the end of that: we would show them no sympathy.
However, experience shows what has been called the "ordinariness of evil." By that I mean that the same people who would normally be kind and courteous to you would not, under the right circumstances, hesitate to condemn you to death. That is how mass murder comes about, whether it be in Rwanda, Germany, Iraq, or Hiroshima.
So, I'm perfectly willing to think of this soldier as an intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful person who wants to do the right thing. But I would say exactly the same thing about the tens of thousands of Hutus in Rwanda who turned against their Tutsi compatriots with machetes, or about the pilots in Saddam's army who doused Kurdish villages with nerve gas.
Objectively, their actions appear cruel and barbaric. But they proceed on the basis of narratives that justify their actions, and therefore they don't see themselves as culpable. In other words, evil is always done in the name of good.
The problem, though, is that the narratives are wrong and flimsy. Establishing democracy was never one of the goals of the attack on Iraq. Records show that the neoconservatives' intention was to turn Iraq into another Egypt--an autocracy with sham elections, headed by Chalabi or somebody like him that would depend on the US for staying in power and therefore acquiesce to US plans for the region. And while Ayatullah Sistani was calling for free elections, the US was opposing it. The neoconservatives were not shy about expressing any of this. Of course, things didn't work out as originally planned.
The US could have made a huge contribution to democracy without firing a single shot. A good starting point would have been to stop propping up dictatorships in the Middle East and Pakistan (say, stop giving 2 billion dollars every year to Mubarak of Egypt), and to stop undermining elections (in Gaza, Lebanon, etc.) that brought people to power whom the US didn't like.
Finally, the soldier needs to ask himself whether disagreeing with a country's political system is enough justification for destroying that country.
* * *
Now, the soldier could have tried to educate himself about some basic facts about the region and the history of American policy. It appears though, that he found it psychologically easier to accept the ideological indoctrination of his superiors. Well, that is exactly how we end up with mass murder. Nobody does evil in the name of evil.
Your points are, in turn, well taken -- particularly the moral arguments. As for the historical and political evidence you introduce, I'm not informed enough on this subject to know how to respond, but if my hunch is right (and you are who I think you are), then your expertise in US foreign policy is far greater than mine, so thank you for sharing these insights!
ReplyDeleteAn amendment: From the cadence of the writing, I thought you might be a particular friend and middle east expert, but perhaps I got trapped by the newbie blogger move of imagining all the readers are my (in this case, grad school) friends. Hmm...
ReplyDeleteIn any case, thanks for reading and writing!
No, I'm indeed the person you think I am!
ReplyDelete