Only the Dead Stop Fighting

Since the army is made up of career soldiers, America fights wars constantly.

In the early ‘80s, the British band Gang of Four sang the song “I Love a Man in Uniform” with so much irony and zeal (“The girls, they love to see you shoot”) that the song was apparently banned by the BBC during the Falklands War in 1982. On the other side of the Atlantic the love affair is still in full swing, but this time it has a goal and no irony. Men and women in uniform are considered heroes in the U.S.; without the army and the intelligence services, the endless wars with targeted killings, drones and Special Forces units in a dozen countries wouldn’t be possible. There is hero-inflation in the United States, which historian William Astore has already compared to the German hero-worship in World War I.

For the United States, this sort of patriotism is relatively beneficial: Young people and their parents in particular are relieved that a professional military has taken the place of the draft since it was abolished in 1973. Richard Nixon had no choice at the time; in Indochina, particularly in South Vietnam, the armed forces were near collapse. The ultraliberal economist Milton Friedman, who died in 2006, was a decisive voice in the switch to career soldiers. His argument was that professionals were more efficient and economical. Today, taxpayers pay the military salaries of U.S. heroes, and they pay with more than just a handful of money: For a taxpayer, a soldier’s life is worth $100,000 — after death. Many Americans only found out about this rule during the recent government shutdown over the budget. Not the entire administration was closed — the military continued to be financed and the soldiers received their pay. However, the Department of Defense had to curb its spending. On the line were the so-called death gratuities.

The death gratuities are surely very helpful to the family of the deceased. It is “shameful and embarrassing” that the state can’t pay it, complained Democratic Senator Harry Reid. The Senate weeps for “those servicemen and women who have lost their lives in defense of our great nation,” claimed Republican Ted Cruz. The politicians quickly found a solution: A foundation would provide the money until the government was once again able.

A Clear Conscience

Because of the budget crisis, the otherwise-overlooked names of three soldiers and an officer who had died in Kandahar in Afghanistan caught the eye of the media: Sergeant Patrick Hawkins, 25, an Army Ranger from Pennsylvania on his fourth deployment; Private First Class Cody Patterson, 24, an Army Ranger from Philomath, Ore. on his second deployment; Sergeant Joseph Peters, 24, from Springfield, Mo., a military policeman; First Lieutenant Jennifer Moreno, 25, from San Diego, Calif. Moreno was a nurse who was supposed to help her unit better understand the local people. Thirty Americans and allied soldiers were wounded in this encounter — more blood spilled in a war which has gone on for more than a decade.

The nation has men and women in uniform who risk their lives when the president calls. The people’s conscience remains clear — the wars take place far from home. The social contact between those not in uniform and those who are is generally little, and the patriotic sentiment now is no longer comparable to that after 9/11. Barely 1 percent of the population serves in the military. A military caste has been created: 57 percent of soldiers had or still have a parent in the military, announced the Pentagon in 2011.

However, the 1.5 million men and women in uniform do not enjoy the same governmental care that they did after 9/11; the government feels even less responsible for the accompanying contractors. This despite the fact that in Iraq and Afghanistan, twice as many private contractors were in deployment as state-employed soldiers.

General Karl Eikenberry, U.S. commander in the Hindu Kush from 2005 to 2007, spoke critically of this sort of war. According to information from the Congressional Research Service, U.S. forces have been sent on foreign operations 144 times since the draft ended, compared to 19 times between World War II and 1973. Career soldiers make the decision for war easier, said Eikenberry in a commentary with the historian David Kennedy. “Americans are happy to thank the volunteer soldiers who make it possible for them not to serve and deem it is somehow unpatriotic to call their armed forces to task when things go awry.”

Founding father George Washington warned that the existence of a strong military during peacetime threatened the freedom of a nation. What old George couldn’t have imagined is what exists in the U.S. today: a strong military and nearly constant wars — big, small, secret — and economic interests which profit from them. Who governs in the White House at the moment … it makes less difference than the voters want to believe. As Obama explained in a highly viewed speech at the Washington National Defense University in May, all wars must end. So far this view seems rather devoid of substance. The U.S. loves its military to death.