Toward a Theology of War--The Veteran

Last week I argued that Dwight Eisenhower had a constructed a kind of theology of war by imagining that the cold war had turned America into one large foxhole. And because there are no atheists in foxholes, all Americans needed to find faith to fight an ideological war to prevent a real one.

This week I want to explore the other side of the looking glass, where America is at war but very, very few Americans actually feel themselves hunkered down in a collective foxhole. The transition from the Ike's era to our own is significant not because Ike was necessarily more honest about war, but because the relationship between the public and war had yet to become a "culture" rather than an event. We might consider this drift in the perception of war by looking at three statements: the first is a watershed essay in Neocon thought, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," from Robert Kagan and William Kristol; the second is a seminal essay on the "state" of the military by Thomas Ricks, in the July 1997 issue of the "Atlantic." And the third is a very recent post at "Home Fires," a blog sponsored by the New York Times. While each piece is different in its intent and two are from one era and the third from another, I see them in conversation with each other over the role war plays in moralizing American society.

In Kagan and Kristol's essay--celebrated at the time as a call to arms against the Clinton administration's foreign policy--the two Neocons put their charge succinctly: "The remobilization of America at home ultimately requires the remobilization of American foreign policy." The combination that had moralized America in the cold war had flipped--by the late 1990s, according to Kagan and Kristol, foreign adventures would provide moral clarity for Americans thus reversing the logic that the public's moral clarity about the nation would guide America's missions abroad. "It is foolish to imagine," they asserted, "that the United States can lead the world effectively while the overwhelming majority of the population neither understands nor is involved, in any real way, with its international mission." K & K provided a new understanding of war--war would moralize the nation.

The high opinion of the military implicit in Kagan and Kristol's argument corresponded with an attitude about the nation that Ricks found within the military. In an obvious nod to the culture wars, Ricks wrote, "There is widespread agreement that over the past few decades American society has become more fragmented, more individualistic, and less disciplined, with institutions such as church, family, and school wielding less influence. Whatever the implications of these changes, they put society at odds with the classic military values of sacrifice, unity, self-discipline, and considering the interests of the group before those of the individual." In a statement that echoed other culture warriors, William S. Lind, a military analyst and resident intellectual for the Marine Corp, declared that given the state of his nation, "The next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil." Ricks observed that Lind's statement echoed the sense that many soldiers had of the great distance between themselves and civilians. The military had become latter day Puritans living out a jeremiad in the name of an abstract understanding of their nation and pitted against evil from within as well as without.

That was before September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq. The New York Times started running its Opinionator blog "Home Fires" in 2007 to provide reflections for "men and women who have returned from wartime service in the United States military." The question that pervades the entries here is whether we can call this era "wartime" and what it means to return from military service. In a post entitled "On War and Redemption," from Timothy Kudo, a Captain in the Marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kudo ruminates not so much about how he can't relate to folks stateside, but how difficult it is to relate the experiences he's had without sounding incomprehensibly evil.

"It's not the sights, sounds, adrenaline and carnage of war that linger," he writes. "It's the morality. We did evil things, maybe necessary evil, but evil nonetheless." What did he do? He contributed to the killing of two unarmed Afghan men on a motorcycle. Kudo recognized that this is war and the war creates destruction--including the ultimately senseless killing of civilians. He can't justify this action or the totality of hundreds, perhaps thousands of similar actions to the people who suffer. As a few of my colleagues said about the previous post, while most Americans might not sacrifice in these current wars, there are plenty who do.

What has troubled Kudo in a way that I think approaches a theological grappling of war is the collective, systematic engagement with the moral implications of war. "Civilians can't shoulder the responsibility for killing, but" he asserts, "the social contract demands they care for those who do. And this is the great disconnect in our society now, because that feeling of responsibility is still locked behind the fences of our military bases." A responsibility for what, though? According to Kagan and Kristol and perhaps an earlier iteration of Kudo's peers in the military, it was for that abstract moral understanding of America. Now? The war remains in actions committed in it but does the war gesture toward something greater--does it reveal the meaning for which it was fought?

Kudo doesn't want war to moralize America or to provide moral clarity to his civilian peers. He seems to want something that exists beyond war--something postwar--but can't imagine that such a place exists when so few have attempted to come to terms with war. He wonders what, if anything, he killed for. In the comments section on his post, many readers scolded him for thinking he could find redemption in war at all. And yet, his point, it seems to me, wasn't to ask for clemency but to wonder if war can ever make apparent the morality of a cause. Kudo's wonder strikes at the heart of an imagined covenant that makes war more than mechanized slaughter. His experience, though, disturbs the confidence that we, the civilians he ostensibly fought for, know what that covenant means.

The End of American Exceptionalism? No Kidding.

On Monday night, March 28, President Obama defended American intervention in the Libyan civil war. Many pundits had anticipated the president's remarks as a signal of what might come to be called, the "Obama Doctrine." The president, though, disappointed those hopes. His speech became noteworthy for what it did not address as much for what it did. For many observers, Obama's unwillingness to exert leadership over the multi-national force taking on Moammar Gaddafi made his position and that of the United States rather, well, unexceptional. The U.S. was just like any other member of a coalition.

Such action made Josef Joffe, the all-purpose pro-America European pundit, declare an end to American Exceptionalism. Joffe wrote in the New York Times that the Obama Doctrine, if there really is one, offers the world a vision of "America Lite." "There is nothing wrong with bringing ends in line with means and interest," Joffe allowed. "It’s the American way — and the way of all great powers. And yet. The Obama doctrine is to Truman et al. like chardonnay to moonshine: pleasing to the palate and easy on the blood, but without punch and power -- kind of un-American, isn't it?"

Is it? Or better, what is American about our understanding of American Exceptionalism?

We have discussed this issue before on this blog and will do so at the 2011 conference. But there was a convergence this past week that made me wonder how many times we will declare the end of American Exceptionalism.


The President delivered his "unexceptionalism" speech the same week as Rolling Stone released a special issue on "The Kill Team." For those unacquainted with this report, Rolling Stone exposed an official investigation into a particular American army platoon in Afghanistan and the vile campaign of murder some of its soldiers engaged in. These soldiers have been accused on hunting Afghanistan civilians for sport. The photographs and videos posted on Rolling Stone's website accompany the story of this crime.

While researching the American relationship to war since 1945--primarily how political and theological leaders led Americans in a debate over how war shapes their relationship to the nation--the role soldiers play in defining what America is has of course changed over time. Not surprisingly, other than the initial burst of euphoria for returning troops following World War II, there had been little effort to glorify the American soldier as a significant representative of American power and ideals.

It seems to me that perception changed most dramatically in mid-1990s. Certainly Reagan talked big about the military, and George H.W. Bush hoped the Gulf War would cleanse the nation and its military of the malaise created by Vietnam. But it was the rise of the third generation of neocons (as Justin Vaisse calls them in his book) that remade the American soldier into the symbol of American Exceptionalism--or in my terms, the medieval Jesuits of a modern American theology of exceptionalism.

In perhaps the most celebrated essay by this third generation of neocons, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," William Kristol and Robert Kagan declared:"There is no more profound responsibility than the defense of the nation and its principles." Of course, their argument was that Americans had been allowed to forget this understanding, which had led to a general fracturing American-ness, the eruption of the culture wars, and a fading sense of exceptionalism.

Their point was that throughout the 1990s, the American public had been distracted—had been allowed to grow distracted—by the lack of a coherent martial vision. Kagan and Kristol believed that the American military was not some unfortunate appendage of a peace-loving, civic polis, but an essential branch of the American system of ideals. “It is foolish to imagine" they wrote, "that the Untied States can lead the world effectively while the overwhelming majority of the population neither understands nor is involved, in any real way, with its international mission." They clearly believed that the military stood as the sole institution in American public life that should command universal admiration. Americans needed to be reminded, educated, and trained, Kagan and Kristol claimed, in “military virtues.”

Americans need moral clarity--an activist foreign policy would remoralize America itself. America need war.

I don't know if Obama reminded Americans that they are not immune to the moral catastrophes of war. Like all other presidents before him, he praised and thanked the military for, yet again, taking on the burdens of war and for doing their jobs with courage. Yet Joffe saw Obama's speech as cautious, an abdication of America's "claim to world power and responsibility." Truly, an activist foreign policy has made America an exceptional nation, but surely we should remember that such activism comes with consequences that can be considered exceptional in ways that are possibly heroic and possibly horrific. If we can claim heroism as American, must we not also claim the horror? This has indeed been a week to end American exceptionalism, again.

The End of American Exceptionalism? No Kidding.

On Monday night, March 28, President Obama defended American intervention in the Libyan civil war. Many pundits had anticipated the president's remarks as a signal of what might come to be called, the "Obama Doctrine." The president, though, disappointed those hopes. His speech became noteworthy for what it did not address as much for what it did. For many observers, Obama's unwillingness to exert leadership over the multi-national force taking on Moammar Gaddafi made his position and that of the United States rather, well, unexceptional. The U.S. was just like any other member of a coalition.

Such action made Josef Joffe, the all-purpose pro-America European pundit, declare an end to American Exceptionalism. Joffe wrote in the New York Times that the Obama Doctrine, if there really is one, offers the world a vision of "America Lite." "There is nothing wrong with bringing ends in line with means and interest," Joffe allowed. "It’s the American way — and the way of all great powers. And yet. The Obama doctrine is to Truman et al. like chardonnay to moonshine: pleasing to the palate and easy on the blood, but without punch and power -- kind of un-American, isn't it?"

Is it? Or better, what is American about our understanding of American Exceptionalism?

We have discussed this issue before on this blog and will do so at the 2011 conference. But there was a convergence this past week that made me wonder how many times we will declare the end of American Exceptionalism.


The President delivered his "unexceptionalism" speech the same week as Rolling Stone released a special issue on "The Kill Team." For those unacquainted with this report, Rolling Stone exposed an official investigation into a particular American army platoon in Afghanistan and the vile campaign of murder some of its soldiers engaged in. These soldiers have been accused on hunting Afghanistan civilians for sport. The photographs and videos posted on Rolling Stone's website accompany the story of this crime.

While researching the American relationship to war since 1945--primarily how political and theological leaders led Americans in a debate over how war shapes their relationship to the nation--the role soldiers play in defining what America is has of course changed over time. Not surprisingly, other than the initial burst of euphoria for returning troops following World War II, there had been little effort to glorify the American soldier as a significant representative of American power and ideals.

It seems to me that perception changed most dramatically in mid-1990s. Certainly Reagan talked big about the military, and George H.W. Bush hoped the Gulf War would cleanse the nation and its military of the malaise created by Vietnam. But it was the rise of the third generation of neocons (as Justin Vaisse calls them in his book) that remade the American soldier into the symbol of American Exceptionalism--or in my terms, the medieval Jesuits of a modern American theology of exceptionalism.

In perhaps the most celebrated essay by this third generation of neocons, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," William Kristol and Robert Kagan declared:"There is no more profound responsibility than the defense of the nation and its principles." Of course, their argument was that Americans had been allowed to forget this understanding, which had led to a general fracturing American-ness, the eruption of the culture wars, and a fading sense of exceptionalism.

Their point was that throughout the 1990s, the American public had been distracted—had been allowed to grow distracted—by the lack of a coherent martial vision. Kagan and Kristol believed that the American military was not some unfortunate appendage of a peace-loving, civic polis, but an essential branch of the American system of ideals. “It is foolish to imagine" they wrote, "that the Untied States can lead the world effectively while the overwhelming majority of the population neither understands nor is involved, in any real way, with its international mission." They clearly believed that the military stood as the sole institution in American public life that should command universal admiration. Americans needed to be reminded, educated, and trained, Kagan and Kristol claimed, in “military virtues.”

Americans need moral clarity--an activist foreign policy would remoralize America itself. America need war.

I don't know if Obama reminded Americans that they are not immune to the moral catastrophes of war. Like all other presidents before him, he praised and thanked the military for, yet again, taking on the burdens of war and for doing their jobs with courage. Yet Joffe saw Obama's speech as cautious, an abdication of America's "claim to world power and responsibility." Truly, an activist foreign policy has made America an exceptional nation, but surely we should remember that such activism comes with consequences that can be considered exceptional in ways that are possibly heroic and possibly horrific. If we can claim heroism as American, must we not also claim the horror? This has indeed been a week to end American exceptionalism, again.