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Guest Post: The Real Causes of Violence in Iraq and Afghanistan

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:41:00 -0700

(Today's guest post is by Joseph Suh. Joseph is currently a student at the University of Utah who writes for their The Daily Utah Chronicle. He is currently in the Army ROTC program, and plans to join the U.S. Army after graduation. If you would like to guest write for us, please check out our guest post guidelines. We look forward to publishing reader posts on future Thursdays.

Quick note: The views of guest writers are not necessarily the view of Michael C or Eric C. For our take, please check out the comments below.)

Think that the West is the root cause for the most casualties with its most malevolent intentions? You aren’t alone. Scholarly studies and pundits have been tirelessly repeating the claim that the United States’ foreign policy is the underlying cause for the violence in the places it intervenes in.

The general sentiment from such arguments is that America’s violent invasion of countries is the indisputable motivation for the sanguine killing and the catastrophic violence in the aforementioned regions. Despite the convenience of such simplistic views, they don’t correlate with the facts. Let’s take, for instance, the facts about the United States' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here are thereligionofpeace.com’s statistic on killings in 2006 Iraq:

Iraqi civilians killed (mostly intentionally) in 2006 by the Iraqi resistance: 16,791.

Iraqi civilians killed (mostly accidentally) in 2006 by Americans: 225.

All of these deaths, undoubtedly, are extremely tragic and disheartening. However, a comparison of body counts is the only way to dispel the myths surrounding such a heated issue.

The common, “blame America” explanation fails to expound why the number of Muslim civilians murdered by other Muslims is so magnanimously disproportionate. Perhaps, in spite of their supposed mission statements calling for war against the West, the fact that the vast majority of targets chosen by insurgents suggest their war is against other Muslims.

In Afghanistan, this paradigm is also sadly ever-present.

According to the United Nations in a 2010 report, 75 percent of the deaths in Afghanistan are caused by the Taliban while 16 percent are caused by NATO and Afghan forces. Again, although Western forces may be contributing to the aggregate total of Islamic extremists to fight in Afghanistan, and ergo inciting more frequent skirmishes, it’s ultimately irrelevant. Simply because Western troops are present doesn’t necessitate the clash between the different sects of Islam.

Yet another example of this turbulence in Afghanistan is the repugnant and under-reported Taliban massacre of the Shi’a Hazara population in Afghanistan. This massacre took place in May 2000 and January 2001, significantly before any type of direct American intervention. This should further illuminate the core problem not as Western invasion.

In response, the counter-argument could be made that this pattern is only applicable to a particular region at particular times.

Not so. According to a 2009 study by West Point, “non‐Westerners are much more likely to be killed in an al‐Qa’ida attack. From 2004 to 2008, only 15% percent of the 3,010 victims were Western. During the most recent period studied the numbers skew even further. From 2006 to 2008, only 2% (12 of 661 victims) are from the West, and the remaining 98% are inhabitants of countries with Muslim majorities”.

These are global, international numbers — so if these Islamic extremists were created due to Western occupation of Muslim lands, then why is it that their victims are almost unanimously adherents of the same religion?

Even though some contend, to this day, that western foreign policy is the foremost and root generator of Islamic extremist violence, their positions are undermined by the sheer facts that illuminate most of the bloodshed to be Muslim-on-Muslim, a truism which doesn’t sit well with this strain of contention.

After all, if it was due to Western intervention that’s responsible for the killing in the Near East, why is it that in Iraq after the US left, fellow Muslims are murdering each other? Why is it that before the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban were killing the innocent Hazara people? Ultimately, it may not be because of the difference of sectarian beliefs of the same religion. It may simply be power politics played by a stronger sect in order to ensure its position.

One thing is unequivocal and irrefutable, though: the core cause isn’t Western foreign policy.

Join The Taliban...The Americans Will Kill You Anyways

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:13:00 -0700

(To read the rest of "Over-Reacting to COIN (Again): On Cultural Empathy and 'Gratitude Theory'", please click here and scroll to the bottom.)

I want to describe two scenarios in Afghanistan.

In the first, we have two brothers. Both drive “jingle trucks” to support their family. One spends his nights working for the Taliban; the other doesn’t. One fateful evening, while smuggling illegal weapons, a U.S. missile kills the Taliban brother. The family asks why; the government says, “He was Taliban.”

(A picture of a jingle truck)

The surviving brother has a choice: support the government or join the insurgency.

In the second case, we again have two brothers. Both drive jingle trucks to support their family. Neither has joined the insurgency. One fateful evening, a U.S. missile kills one of the brothers in a missile attack, unwittingly executing a tribal vendetta (after receiving bad intel from an unvetted source). The family asks why; the government says, “He was Taliban.”

The surviving brother has a choice: support the government or join the insurgency.

From the U.S. perspective, each situation played out the same way--intelligence led to an operation and a dead Taliban soldier. From the Afghan perspective, though, they couldn’t be more different. In the first case, the brother should rightfully fear for his safety. Unless he turns himself in, he will probably end up in a crater like his brother. In successful counter-insurgencies, fear of impending death sweeps through the insurgency, and it collapses in on itself like a dying star going supernova.

But consider the thoughts of the brother in the second scenario. He knows that U.S. forces will soon come for him too; they just killed his brother because of a spurious intelligence report. Wouldn’t they think he was Taliban as well? So if the Americans plan to kill you--even if you aren’t Taliban and even if your brother wasn’t--why not join the insurgency? You’ll die either way.

The arguments for a “combat focused” or “target-centric” approach to counter-insurgency--or against the idea of providing security to the population as the utmost priority--rely on the first scenario. Proponents of looser rules of engagement use the first scenario to buttress their arguments. They point to it--for example, its uses in Malaya--and say, “See violence wins wars!”

But, as a commenter said a few weeks back, we must “kill the right people”. I totally agree. I just emphasize the word “right” and most of the Army emphasizes the word “kill”. Too many thinkers emphasize the “kinetic” or “target-centric” or “killing”--whatever euphemism works--approach without explaining the drawbacks. While they sing the praises of killing more people, they avoid the consequences of killing the wrong people.

The logic for killing more insurgents makes sense. Kill an insurgent, then another, then another and soon word will spread that someday the the counter-insurgents will kill all the insurgents. Rationally, if you want to survive the war, you should stop being an insurgent.

But this same logic applies to the population. Kill an insurgent, then an innocent family, then capture another innocent guy and his brother. Soon word will spread among the population that someday the counter-insurgents will kill you too. Rationally, if you want to survive the war, you need to stop the counter-insurgents.

Remember that killing (or violence) has political ramifications. We wrote a few weeks back about humanity’s innate desire to avoid making decisions; killing the wrong people helps them make a decision...against the government and counter-insurgents. If killing the right people will help end an irregular war, killing the wrong people prolongs it. Pro-killing/target/kinetic-centric advocates--when pitching their wares in talks, blog posts, or op-eds--should always bring up the huge downside to killing the wrong people; it can lose the war.

This is why, as I have said before, accuracy is the most important value in an insurgency, not body counts or quantities or totals or anything else that sounds good leaked to reporters. And if people want more offensive operations--like kill/capture raids--fine. But stress accuracy over any other value. And warn door kickers that kicking down the wrong doors prolongs the war. (And costs U.S. soldiers their lives too.)

Loving, Hating, and the War in Afghanistan

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:36:00 -0700

(To read the rest of "Over-Reacting to COIN (Again): On Cultural Empathy and 'Gratitude Theory'", please click here and scroll to the bottom.)

I mentioned in our first round on “gratitude theory” that I absolutely despise the phrase, “I don’t care if they like me as long as they respect me”. Plenty of people disagree with me though. Take, for example, this comment:

“Essentially, they're [On Violence] working to show that the "I don't care if the population likes me, as long as they do what I require" attitude is flawed. (It's not, at least not when it's a third-party counterinsurgent who holds it.)”

That’s just one example. This unsourced article on West Point’s website writes that “popularity or likeability among the population is NOT a consideration [in an insurgency]”. It then advises that, “being ‘liked’ is insignificant.”

Insignificant?

Saying “likeability” is insignificant ignores the basic role of emotion in warfare, which I discussed back in December. Saying, “I don’t care if they like me” does not mean, “I don’t care if they hate me”. It is wildly significant if the population hates you. While you can lose an insurgency even if the population likes you, you can’t win an insurgency if the population hates you.

Think of the Russians in Afghanistan. By all regards, they tried to cow the Afghan rural populations into submission through carpet bombings and excessive force. The Russian Army did not care if the rural population liked or hated them, only if they feared them. As a result, they lost Afghanistan. (And I know, U.S. provided Stinger missiles and generally poor strategy also helped.) Conducting operations simply to inspire fear--another emotion ever present in war--also engenders hatred.

Hatred motivates insurgents and terrorists the world over. Hatred of the U.S. and Shia Islam drives Al Qaeda as much as their own love of Sunni Islam. Insurgents, from Iraq to Somalia to Afghanistan, absolutely hate foreign invaders, as we wrote about in “Everyone Hates Everyone Else’s Soldiers”. This has been true since the dawn of time. Hatred can motivate a household to store weapons. Or motivate a child to spy on U.S. forces. Or motivate a teenager to blow himself up in a suicide vest.

So while a counter-insurgent “doesn’t care if people like him”, he still must acknowledge the emotions of the population. It matters if the population loves, hates or fears the government...or the insurgents. Saying you “don’t care” is admitting you don’t care about a significant form of intelligence about the battlefield; you might as well say, “I don’t care if we win or lose here.”

Since we should use emotion to our own advantage in warfare, here are my tips to improve the use of emotion in counter-insurgencies:

1. Think about the emotional response of the population during planning. Specifically, I’m writing about kill/capture raids. Rationally, they could discourage an insurgent from fighting. Raids that detain the wrong person, or kill women and children, emotionally turn the population against the government. (Same with drone strikes.)

2. Security defeats fear, and creates confidence. Most criticisms of the fictional “gratitude theory” say, “It doesn’t matter if you buy people things if the Taliban comes at night to threaten the population.” In other words, a fearful population won’t support the government. The best solution isn’t reconstruction, it is more security. (Which means more troops, but that is a different issue.)

3. Care about your personal relationships. It is so much easier to do business with someone who likes you as opposed to hates you. So maybe I don’t care if the “population” (most of whom I never interacted with) “like” me, but I better have a good relationship with my interpreters, my government counterparts, and my Afghan Army partners. Those good relationships can filter down to the population at large.

4. Collect emotional intelligence. To be honest, eventually the Army’s human intelligence folks got good at conducting “atmospherics”. Unfortunately, the units with the most human intelligence collectors lived the furthest from the battlefield (isolated at Division and Corps headquarters). Battalion and Company commanders should work with their human intelligence and line platoons to measure the emotions of the population they work with. And the Army in general should push as many human intelligence folks to the lowest levels possible.

The big P, General Petraeus, lived these ideas. I don’t recall a lot of articles about General Petraeus in Iraq describing him as brow-beating people into working with him. In fact, he was/is famous for getting people to like and respect him, then getting work done. At the CIA, he reinvigorated the Open Source center to focus on global atmospherics.

I showed before Thanksgiving that people really do care if they are liked. They do, at least, among their countrymen. Every insurgency ever attempted started with two twin pillars: ideology and leadership. Leaders and ideologies rely on emotions to influence their followers. Love, hatred, respect, fear and gratitude are all emotions that can influence the population. We forget this at our own peril.

Introducing our Band of Brothers Series

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:35:00 -0700

As you may have guessed (if you read the title of this post), we’re starting a new series on Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and HBO’s preeminent World War II mini-series, Band of Brothers.

But--huge but here--we’re not planning on reviewing the series, because, honestly, what’s left to review?

On almost every level, from writing to directing to cinematography to historical interest to special effects to whatever, almost everyone everywhere admires Band of Brothers. The series won six Emmy’s out of 19 nominations, a Golden Globe and a Peabody. On Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, Band of Brothers garners a 9.7, a 96% and a 9.6 rating, respectively. When I tried to find Band of Brothers criticism, the only critiques I could find were written by white supremacists. On a personal level, our dad has plunged his way through the series at least four times; if the series comes on TV, he watches the whole damn thing.

Reviewing the series would mean ranking and comparing episodes against one another, which means we would have to disparage one episode in favor of another, pointing out criticisms that come across as nitpicks. (When Chuck Klosterman suggested that The Wire was the second best television series of all time--pretty strong praise--some internet commenters interpreted that as, “Klosterman hates The Wire!”) Who cares if “Carentan” isn’t as good as “Points”? Both episodes are better than most TV in general.

We don’t want to do that.

Instead, we want to ask big questions. Researching this series, I found this essay by Leonard Pierce, “Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers, and The Pacific: Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ World War II“. Describing Saving Private Ryan, Pierce sums up the goal of our series on Band of Brothers:

“Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat deserve equal praise for depicting, in what is essentially an action-movie format, the kind of Big Questions that are usually reserved for smaller, more philosophical films: Is any goal worthy of the carnage of total war? How much value do we place on a single human life, and is one life worth more than another if it has symbolic value? Where do we find heroism and courage, and how do we deal with cowardice and failure?”

Big questions. Band of Brothers inspires big questions, so we’re starting a series on the miniseries. It makes us think. It makes us want to write, on everything from paratroopers to the media portrayal of officers and World War II to the futility of killing civilians in war. It’s all in there. (Leonard Pierce, strangely enough, was the one critic we could find who didn’t like Band of Brothers. For the exact opposite opinion--hating Saving Private Ryan but loving Band of Brothers--read Paul Fussel’s review of the series on Slate.)

Here’s how the series is going to work: every other week, using one episode as a jumping off point, we’re going to write about an idea sparked by the miniseries. Some episodes may have more than one post, and we’ve already invited regular guest poster Matty P to contribute his ideas.

Guest posts on Band of Brothers are more than welcomed. Again, we don’t want reviews of the episodes, or posts on which episode is your favorite. We want the thoughts and ideas Band of Brothers gave you about your life, the military, the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, on art, whatever.

Enjoy!

The World War I Problem

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:24:00 -0700

As I’ve been told many times, pacifists, to believe in their silly, idealistic philosophy, have to deal with a problem. I call it “The World War II problem”. As Michael C challenged me in his post on civilian bombing: what about World War II, the most unassailable just war?

At the very least, the Allies saved continental Europe from fascist, dictatorial rule. At the very best, they saved the entire world from Hitler and accidentally saved tens of millions from the concentration camps. Craig Mullaney, as a conflicted young cadet at West Point, discusses his lack of enthusiasm for killing with his priest in The Unforgiving Minute:

    “...Do you believe in a just war?”
    “I think so, Father, like World War II.”
    “Sure, that’s a good example. Do you think Hitler could have been stopped without war?”
    “Of course not, Father.”
    “So you agree that war, although always evil, is sometimes necessary to stop evil?”

The World War II problem: how do you stop Hitler, the embodiment of evil, without war? There isn’t a good answer, ergo, the position of pacifists is morally untenable. Take that pacifists.

Not so fast “just war”-iors. From my perspective as a pacifist, I think soldiers--and war hawks, Gingrich-type realists, pro-war pundits and politicians--have a different problem, one that questions their entire reason for supporting the use of deadly force. I call it “The World War I problem”.

How does a soldier justify fighting in World War I?

World War I was essentially a pointless war, fought for no reason, costing millions of lives.

Look at the casualties alone: 21 million injured, 16 million dead, including 5 million civilians. That’s about 10,000 people dying every day. Putting that in perspective, that’s more people per day than America has lost in both the 9/11 and the war on terror. Counting total death tolls including American, Iraqi and Afghanistan deaths, using the most generous estimates, this war was 32 times as deadly in a world one fourth the size.

And no one died well in World War I. Trench warfare, the ugliest, most fatalistic style of war ever created, meant charging over a trench wall, essentially committing suicide by machine gun fire, all the while dodging sniper fire, artillery and gas. If you retreated, you could be shot for treason. That’s if you didn’t die in the trenches from disease.

Yes, as many, if not more, people died in World War II. And yes, proportionally more people died in the Thirty Years War. What’s more upsetting than the casualties are what the soldiers “died for”. They died for nothing. European “entangling alliances” and military buildups forced by pushy generals created the keg, and the anarchist-inspired assassination of an insignificant archduke lit the fuse. There was no reason to fight and no reason to keep fighting, except to honor those who had already died.

America’s entry into World War I is even more illogical. We had nothing to do with either side, had stayed out of the war for most of it, and only joined because German submarines kept sinking our ships.

Worse were the tangential effects. The Ottoman empire committed not one but two genocides. The Russians killed 60,000 to 200,000 Jewish people in Pogroms. The Germans raped Belgium. Long term, World War I caused both World War II--because of the Versailles treaty--the Cold War--because of the Russian revolution--and twenty years of economic calamity--because of reparations. World War I disenfranchised, ruined, an entire generation.

All of this loss, for what? Not security. Not safety. What? Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, World War I was a pointless war, horrific in its costs and senseless in its purpose.

Which brings me back to my original question. Instead of pointing to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War II, let’s look at the Mexican American War, or World War I, or Vietnam, or the Spanish American War. Let’s look at the pointless, needless wars. The Franco Prussian war, the Crimean War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Thirty Years War, the Gallic Wars, the Punic Wars, and like 1,200 Chinese wars.

How do soldiers, “just war”-iors, war hawks and “war is war”-iors justify the pointless wars? Instead of pointing to the most just war of all time asking, “How could you not fight that war?”, I point at World War I and ask, “How can you possibly go to fight that war?”

To put it more bluntly, how can a soldier who fought in World War I justify what he did? You killed other men, took lives, for no reason. How can you justify that?

There really isn’t a good answer. Just like pacifists, the position of soldiers is morally untenable.

Iran and the Battle of Historical Analogies

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:27:00 -0700

(To read the rest of our series, “The Case Against War with Iran”, please click here.)

Whether or not the U.S. decides to attack Iran--or whether it supports Israel in a similar attack--boils down to which historical analogy we (or the decision-makers) choose to frame the situation.

Unfortunately, if we go by the current debate, only two analogies matter: the war in Iraq and the appeasement of Nazi Germany.

Analogy 1: The Iraq War.

Based off faulty and scant evidence, the Bush administration invaded Iraq, overthrew Saddam Hussein, and spent eight more years trying to reestablish order. Skeptics of war with Iran--like myself--point to the horrendous disaster of intelligence that led to war with Iraq and ask, “Again?”

Iran seems eerily similar: the same warnings about “weapons of mass destruction”...the same warnings about Iranian involvement with terrorist organizations...the same warnings about crazed, unreliable, irrational dictators who do not listen to reason (War hawks have repeated this last point going back to the Cold War and the leaders of the U.S.S.R. and China, but don’t worry about that now.)...the same “failure” of the U.N. to handle the country in question...the same worries about how war will affect gas prices or stability in the Middle East.

Except that the differences loom just as large: Iraq was a secular government headed by the religious minority; Iran is a religious theocracy led by the majority. Inspectors could not verify in any way if Iraq had a nuclear or biological or chemical weapons program; the world knows that Iran has a nuclear energy program, just not if Iran has a nuclear weapons program, a crucial distinction. Iraq has 30 million people and is about the size of California; Iran has nearly 80 million people and is about the size of Alaska.

Iran will probably fight the U.S. much harder than Saddam Hussein’s forces, but Iran also has a nuclear program, something Hussein didn’t even have. In other words, the consequences of inaction or action with Iran are higher than they ever were with Iraq.

If America decides to go to war with Iran--with all the terrible consequences that will entail--the analogy of our previous failure in the Middle East doesn’t really matter; it will be a bad decision on its own.

Analogy 2: The appeasement of Adolf Hitler by Neville Chamberlain.

Ah, Chamberlain, the most vilified Briton in the 20th century. The analogy goes--and war hawks make it relatively easily--that appeasing Iran will lead directly to World War III. In the most worrying association with World War II, the end result is not a long bloody war like World War II, but a nuclear holocaust over Israel which will certainly happen--the arguers say--if the world negotiates with Iran.

But I mean, rational debaters in America wouldn’t just casually throw out this accusation against Barack Obama willy-nilly, would they?

I won’t even try to torture out similarities between Iran/Germany and Barack Obama/Chamberlain. Instead, the gaping chasms of differences stand out. Germany spent the years before World War II building up its military and taking territory. Iran’s military cannot, according to Anthony Cordesman and any coherent military observer, conquer any nation around it. Moreover, if Iran attacked Israel, Israeli submarines would fire nuclear weapons back in retaliation, destroying Tehran and countless other cities. America looms over Iran like a thousand Englands facing Germany.

So which analogy should we choose?

Easy. Neither.

I agree with George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Not a quote behaving badly...if you cite Santayana.) But “the past” or its paraphrase “history”, have many more examples than World War II and Iraq. Iraq wasn’t the first time America went to war for bad reasons. Think the Vietnam War, the Spanish-American war, the Mexican-American War, or World War I. Hitler isn’t history’s only appeased dictator, merely history’s current personification of evil.

Instead, the comparisons with Iraq or Chamberlain turn these historical analogies into anecdotes, paralyzing the debate with emotionally charged connections. As I said above, we don’t need historical analogies when it comes to Iran: going to war will be a terrible decision all on its own.

War is War is Film Part II

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:04:00 -0700

(To read the entire "War is War” series, please click here.)

Before we coined the term “war is war”-iors, we were writing about “war is war”-iors. In the second part of our “War is War is Film” post, we want to revisit the movie characters we’ve discussed before, looking at them as "war is war"-iors.

Colonel Jessup

We’ve written about A Few Good Men before, because, like other great films, it asks tough questions, like the “The "Have You Been There" Argument” and whether, in real life, officers ever get charged with war crimes.

But Colonel Jessup is also a “war is war”-ior. He does what it takes to keep this country safe, and he doesn’t want politicians or non-warriors to question his methods. Famously, he monologues:

“Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg?...I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post.”

Aldo Raine

Aldo Raine, in an opening monologue and the trailer of Inglorious Basterds, (We’ve written about him before here and here.) explains exactly why he plans to commit war crimes and torture Germans:

“We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with.”

In the hypothetical book, War is War, Aldo Raine would write the introduction.

Gabriel

In one of our first On Violence posts, we wrote about Gabriel--the character from Swordfish, not the angel--who eloquently sums up a process for defeating terrorism:

“Someone must bring their war to them. They bomb a church, we bomb ten. They hijack a plane, we take out an airport. They execute American tourists, we tactically nuke an entire city. Our job is to make terrorism so horrific that it becomes unthinkable to attack Americans.”

Michael C wanted to chime in: “I would call Gabriel’s solution to the war on terror, ‘the Hatfield and McCoy logic of waging wars’. As we’ve written before, violence begets violence. Gabriel should, more accurately, say, “They bomb a church, we bomb ten, and they bomb a hundred in response. We bomb a thousand back. Someday, one side will run out of churches.”

I’m guessing we’d have to move on to schools after that.

Lieutenant-Colonel Matthieu

Do whatever it takes to win in war, especially counter-insurgencies, sayeth the “war is war”-ior. This quote by Colonel Matthieu--from the often-cited-on-On-V-due-to-its-own-excellence The Battle for Algiers--explains:

“Our duty is to win. Therefore to be precise, it is my turn to ask a question. Should France stay in Algeria? If your answer is still yes, then you must accept all the consequences."

Those “consequences” include torture, indefinite detention and all the other things that cause a population to turn against you.

John Rambo

As I wrote earlier, when I started trying to think of “war is war”-iors, I mostly planned to write about action heroes like John Rambo. (We’ve written about First Blood series before.) Rambo blames politicians for losing Vietnam, “But somebody wouldn't let us win!”

“Somebody wouldn’t let us win” is code for massacring villages, not following ROE/loosening ROE, or bombing the hell out of North Vietnam. Basically, “war is war”.

Lt. Rasczak

Finally, we wrote about this before, but thought we’d include the link to our previous post, “War is War is Starship Troopers”, which now has the embedded video.

Guest Post: Coward in a Family Full of Heroes

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:15:00 -0700

(Today's post is a guest post by longtime reader Matty P. If you would like to guest write for us, please check out our guest post guidelines. We look forward to publishing reader posts on future Tuesdays.)

I never served in the military.

While this is true for the vast majority of our country, I realize that the rest of the country isn’t a part of my family. We’re a military family. Dad served in the Special Forces (and yes, he did teach me to capitalize that) in Vietnam. Mom treated wounded soldiers as a nurse in Vietnam, at one point one of the highest ranking women in the US Army, one day away from a star. One brother deployed three times to active conflicts and one flies missions over them. There are multiple Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts present at our family gatherings. I, on the other hand, lounge in comfort and relative safety.

In my family, I am a coward.

It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the military. To be honest, I was groomed for it. I held my first gun when I was seven. I was taught knife techniques when I was a freshman in high school. Dad always promoted situational awareness wherever we went. For father/son time, we took martial arts lessons. I took to all of it like a fish in water. To me, it seemed like the things a father should teach a son. With my parent’s status and connections matched by my grades, I was a shoo in for West Point.

But I never went. I knew the option was there, but I never even applied. Something bothered me. And it took me awhile to figure out what.

Clearly it wasn’t the culture. I was familiar with it, experienced it. Though military life can be hard on a family, my own immediate goals did not include a family, but education. Further, the extreme personalities that can be found in military culture I found to be a stereotype of poorly made war films. While I had experienced the gun-ho, ultra patriotic, abrasive, uber-Christian, meat-head grunt type; I found this to be in equal proportion in the military as it was on the college campuses. In reality, the men and women I’ve encountered that serve are no different from the rest of the population with the notable exception of wanting to serve their country.

What truly gave me pause was the question on whether I could take a life. The common question: could I or couldn’t I? Perhaps better phrased: should I or shouldn’t I? Raised a good Christian--hell, even President of my youth group, I believed that killing, no matter the circumstance is a bad thing. The bible says so. There are explicit passages on this and forgiving enemy. Yet, my brothers and my father taught me that you protect those who cannot protect themselves. That honor is in action and that the greatest act one can do for another, is lay down his life. A sentiment also explicit in the Bible (reference John 15).

As much as I battled back and forth on the morality of action I may never have to take, the unsettling truth became apparent. I was comfortable with the moral implications, a moral grey for me that while never good, the taking of life could be justified in extremis. Thus, my dilemma wasn’t that I could never take a life. The problem was, I’m almost sure I could and would. And I would probably sleep soundly the following night. Everything I believe highlights the sanctity of life. As Eric has said, it should break your heart to kill and I was afraid it wouldn’t. That’s why I’m a coward, because I refused to put myself in a position to find out.