Andrew Bacevich and an American 'Agape'

Andrew Bacevich has been among the most persistent and perceptive critics of recent American history. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote a piece at tomdispatch that marked a kind of turning point in his assessment of the American troubles. In light of a series of reports, polls, and essays about the American wars of the last decade, Bacevich concluded, tentatively, that America has begun to awake from a martial stupor. What follows is one part of my argument regarding Bacevich's significance. His thought seems to place him among critics such as William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, J. William Fulbright, and, even, George Kennan. Yet, I think the fact that Bacevich is Catholic complicates mattes a bit because he takes his religion seriously in matters of politics but not as seriously as someone such as Stanley Hauerwas. I am curious what others think.

Over time the war on terror became a strange amalgam of two traditions: an American penchant for hand-wringing when things go bad and an impulse to look for redemption in failure. Among the many critics who attempted to untangle these traditions, the best was perhaps Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich had credentials and the arguments similar to many other critics of American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He saw them as part of larger ideological problem as well as a patchwork of policies and assumptions about the world since 1945. But to my mind, Bacevich has had a few things going for him: he had been a soldier, and so could see both sides of the deification of “our troops;” he became a scholar, and thus sought critical distance from events (for example, he has used to great effect Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought in picking apart an American theology of nationalism); he is Catholic, and has made clear that like Stanley Hauerwas he takes seriously the requirements of faith and the restrictions imposed by dogma; and finally he is a father who has suffered for American civil religion—he lost a son in Iraq.

This combination made Bacevich a particularly astute and acute critic of recent American civil religion. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University and has become well-regarded as a public intellectual whose recent books include Washington Rules (2010), The Limits of Power (2008) and The New American Militarism (2005). His moral accounting of recent American wars stand as Bacevich’s contribution to the deluge of critical appraisals of post-war and, more specifically, Bush-era delusions of grandeur. But Bacevich is also a graduate of West Point and a veteran of the U.S. Army, for which he served a year in Vietnam and, as a colonel, in the Gulf War. In a revealing comment regarding his training at West Point, Bacevich explained that a significant problem with the popular adulation of the military is that as an institution the military is not an expression of democracy but it’s opposite. The point is “to socialize you to the primacy of duty, while not encouraging you to assess critically whether the duty makes any sense,” Bacevich observed. “One is devoted to one’s country above devotion to anything else other than your family: country above the notion of humanity; country above the notion of what’s right or wrong or true or beautiful.” When a nation’s civil religion becomes increasingly defined and incarnated by war, the consequences are dire.[1]

Andrew Bacevich and his wife personally experienced those consequences in the most tragic way when they lost their son Andrew Bacevich, Jr., who was killed in the Sunni triangle north of Bagdad on Mother's Day 2007. A few weeks later, on May 21, his family buried him in a cemetery in Walpole, Massachusetts. Thousands of people lined the streets of the town to witness the funeral procession—a gesture that “profoundly moved” the Bacevichs. Andrew Jr.’s death was the first casualty of the Iraq War for Walpole. Andrew Sr. supported his son's decision to enlist in the military, but continued to write critically about the war and President Bush’s prosecution of it.

Was this a disjunction? Bacevich ruminated on it, especially after receiving two messages contending “that my son’s death came as direct result of my antiwar writings.” Bacevich reasoned that such a charge, while seemingly vile, forced him to consider “what exactly is a father’s duty when his son is sent into harm’s way?” He answered that like his son’s service to the nation as a soldier, he, as a critic of the war in which his son fought, was doing his duty as well. But both father and son saw the tragedy of war: for Bacevich he lost his son to the war he opposed and lost hope that speaking out against war would make a difference. Bacevich remarked ruefully, “Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.’s life is priceless. Don’t believe it.” The cost of the war was in fact the point, he argued. It was about money—money to buy influence, money spent on the war that sank the economy, and money that was given to the family of a fallen soldier to pay them for the sacrifice they made for the nation. “I know my so did his best to serve our country,” Bacevich concluded. “Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.”[2]

Bacevich’s profound sense of loss came in the two areas that matter most: the personal and the mythical. He lost his son to a war that had done a great deal to undermine the mythical nature of the nation he loves. Through his work, Bacevich has expressed his agape for America—his love for the nation that has been hard-earned through suffering and extensive reflection. He is not merely a cold-water critic, dousing the hopes of Americans—he chose not to dash the wishes of his son when he wanted to serve his nation. He wrote in Limits of Power, “ironically Iraq may yet prove to be the source of our salvation. For the United States, the ongoing war makes plain the imperative of putting America’s house in order. Iraq has revealed the futility of counting on military power to sustain our habits of profligacy. The day of reckoning approaches. Expending the lives of more American soldiers in hopes of deferring that day is profoundly wrong.”[3]

Can Bacevich find something in the fact that he was right?

[1] Wendy Murray, “U.S. delusions: An army man changes his mind,” The Christian Century Magazine, August 11, 2009, accessed at:

[2] Andrew Bacevich, “I Lost My Son to a War I oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty,” Washington Post, May 27, 2007).

[3] Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 12-13.

Andrew Bacevich and an American 'Agape'

Andrew Bacevich has been among the most persistent and perceptive critics of recent American history. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote a piece at tomdispatch that marked a kind of turning point in his assessment of the American troubles. In light of a series of reports, polls, and essays about the American wars of the last decade, Bacevich concluded, tentatively, that America has begun to awake from a martial stupor. What follows is one part of my argument regarding Bacevich's significance. His thought seems to place him among critics such as William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, J. William Fulbright, and, even, George Kennan. Yet, I think the fact that Bacevich is Catholic complicates mattes a bit because he takes his religion seriously in matters of politics but not as seriously as someone such as Stanley Hauerwas. I am curious what others think.

Over time the war on terror became a strange amalgam of two traditions: an American penchant for hand-wringing when things go bad and an impulse to look for redemption in failure. Among the many critics who attempted to untangle these traditions, the best was perhaps Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich had credentials and the arguments similar to many other critics of American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He saw them as part of larger ideological problem as well as a patchwork of policies and assumptions about the world since 1945. But to my mind, Bacevich has had a few things going for him: he had been a soldier, and so could see both sides of the deification of “our troops;” he became a scholar, and thus sought critical distance from events (for example, he has used to great effect Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought in picking apart an American theology of nationalism); he is Catholic, and has made clear that like Stanley Hauerwas he takes seriously the requirements of faith and the restrictions imposed by dogma; and finally he is a father who has suffered for American civil religion—he lost a son in Iraq.

This combination made Bacevich a particularly astute and acute critic of recent American civil religion. Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University and has become well-regarded as a public intellectual whose recent books include Washington Rules (2010), The Limits of Power (2008) and The New American Militarism (2005). His moral accounting of recent American wars stand as Bacevich’s contribution to the deluge of critical appraisals of post-war and, more specifically, Bush-era delusions of grandeur. But Bacevich is also a graduate of West Point and a veteran of the U.S. Army, for which he served a year in Vietnam and, as a colonel, in the Gulf War. In a revealing comment regarding his training at West Point, Bacevich explained that a significant problem with the popular adulation of the military is that as an institution the military is not an expression of democracy but it’s opposite. The point is “to socialize you to the primacy of duty, while not encouraging you to assess critically whether the duty makes any sense,” Bacevich observed. “One is devoted to one’s country above devotion to anything else other than your family: country above the notion of humanity; country above the notion of what’s right or wrong or true or beautiful.” When a nation’s civil religion becomes increasingly defined and incarnated by war, the consequences are dire.[1]

Andrew Bacevich and his wife personally experienced those consequences in the most tragic way when they lost their son Andrew Bacevich, Jr., who was killed in the Sunni triangle north of Bagdad on Mother's Day 2007. A few weeks later, on May 21, his family buried him in a cemetery in Walpole, Massachusetts. Thousands of people lined the streets of the town to witness the funeral procession—a gesture that “profoundly moved” the Bacevichs. Andrew Jr.’s death was the first casualty of the Iraq War for Walpole. Andrew Sr. supported his son's decision to enlist in the military, but continued to write critically about the war and President Bush’s prosecution of it.

Was this a disjunction? Bacevich ruminated on it, especially after receiving two messages contending “that my son’s death came as direct result of my antiwar writings.” Bacevich reasoned that such a charge, while seemingly vile, forced him to consider “what exactly is a father’s duty when his son is sent into harm’s way?” He answered that like his son’s service to the nation as a soldier, he, as a critic of the war in which his son fought, was doing his duty as well. But both father and son saw the tragedy of war: for Bacevich he lost his son to the war he opposed and lost hope that speaking out against war would make a difference. Bacevich remarked ruefully, “Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.’s life is priceless. Don’t believe it.” The cost of the war was in fact the point, he argued. It was about money—money to buy influence, money spent on the war that sank the economy, and money that was given to the family of a fallen soldier to pay them for the sacrifice they made for the nation. “I know my so did his best to serve our country,” Bacevich concluded. “Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.”[2]

Bacevich’s profound sense of loss came in the two areas that matter most: the personal and the mythical. He lost his son to a war that had done a great deal to undermine the mythical nature of the nation he loves. Through his work, Bacevich has expressed his agape for America—his love for the nation that has been hard-earned through suffering and extensive reflection. He is not merely a cold-water critic, dousing the hopes of Americans—he chose not to dash the wishes of his son when he wanted to serve his nation. He wrote in Limits of Power, “ironically Iraq may yet prove to be the source of our salvation. For the United States, the ongoing war makes plain the imperative of putting America’s house in order. Iraq has revealed the futility of counting on military power to sustain our habits of profligacy. The day of reckoning approaches. Expending the lives of more American soldiers in hopes of deferring that day is profoundly wrong.”[3]

Can Bacevich find something in the fact that he was right?

[1] Wendy Murray, “U.S. delusions: An army man changes his mind,” The Christian Century Magazine, August 11, 2009, accessed at:

[2] Andrew Bacevich, “I Lost My Son to a War I oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty,” Washington Post, May 27, 2007).

[3] Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 12-13.

The patriot and the priest

As is probably clear from our recent blog posts, many of us find the culture wars endlessly fascinating. Yet one of the most difficult questions I get from students when we discuss the culture wars is how do we identify what is at stake in these debates? Two very recent news stories provide cases in point. The first comes from a blog post about the recent Medal of Honor recipient; the second about the election of the Catholic Bishop who will direct the United States Conference of Bishops.

Yesterday, President Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta for actions in Korangal Valley, Afghanistan. According to the citation for valor, Giunta placed himself in the line of fire to try to save his fellow squadmates and comfort a wounded American soldier. There have been four recipients of this award for the Afghanistan war; Giunta is the only living recipient.

News of the ceremony sparked an interesting and apparently short-lived debate at the New York Times blog, The Caucus: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/medal-of-honor-for-bravery-in-afghanistan/. I find the comments section of any blog to be quite revealing (of course), and this post did not disappointment. Within the first few comments, “Charles B. Tiffany” from Kissimmee, Florida fired a zinger, choosing to denigrate those of a certain persuasion—readers of the New Republic, graduates of the Ivy League, fans of Rachel Maddow. The upshot of this post was that if Giunta partook in any of these pursuits (thus making him liberal) he would not have been in Afghanistan to rescue his comrades; in fact he would not have been in the military at all. Somewhat incredibly, the Times removed this comment. You can pick up the gist of the original comment from others who refer to it. Many people wrote in to decry the idea that liberals are not patriots or that members of certain educated class do not serve. Perhaps most interesting in terms of the culture wars was that many who contributed to this debate believed that the topic of a contemporary war was not an appropriate venue for brawling over our politics. Real wars trump culture wars.

This morning, we learned that Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop who runs the New York Archdiocese, had been elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Reportedly, Dolan was somewhat of a surprise choice because he was selected over Bishop Gerald Kincanas of Arizona who had served as vice president of the Conference and was seen as the natural successor to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. The key factor in this election, according to Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times, was that Dolan is a moderate conservative who represents a wing of the American Catholic Church that has come out in opposition to the new healthcare act and takes strong public positions on same-sex unions. Kincanas represents another wing of the church that focuses on issues of social justice such as immigration, workers’ rights, poverty, and peace. Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown observed that the election of Dolan was “a signal that the conference wants to be a leader in the culture wars.” Indeed, the article included remarks from Robert P. George of Princeton and a leading figure in the contemporary culture wars who pointed out that Dolan had been the host of meetings that produced the “Manhattan Declaration,” a flagship contribution to the culture wars from religious conservatives.

So, on the one hand we have a defense of liberals as patriots sparked by honoring a soldier for his valor in an utterly tragic situation and war; and on the other hand, we have the election of an American Catholic Bishop based on his ability to coordinate attacks against the healthcare act and same-sex unions. I know that we have debated whether liberals have won or are winning the culture wars, but what is one to make of situations in which Americans try to defend a liberal position as nothing less than patriotic and when the largest single religious denomination chooses to highlight opposition to healthcare and same-sex unions rather than peace, immigration, and poverty ?

The patriot and the priest

As is probably clear from our recent blog posts, many of us find the culture wars endlessly fascinating. Yet one of the most difficult questions I get from students when we discuss the culture wars is how do we identify what is at stake in these debates? Two very recent news stories provide cases in point. The first comes from a blog post about the recent Medal of Honor recipient; the second about the election of the Catholic Bishop who will direct the United States Conference of Bishops.

Yesterday, President Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta for actions in Korangal Valley, Afghanistan. According to the citation for valor, Giunta placed himself in the line of fire to try to save his fellow squadmates and comfort a wounded American soldier. There have been four recipients of this award for the Afghanistan war; Giunta is the only living recipient.

News of the ceremony sparked an interesting and apparently short-lived debate at the New York Times blog, The Caucus: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/medal-of-honor-for-bravery-in-afghanistan/. I find the comments section of any blog to be quite revealing (of course), and this post did not disappointment. Within the first few comments, “Charles B. Tiffany” from Kissimmee, Florida fired a zinger, choosing to denigrate those of a certain persuasion—readers of the New Republic, graduates of the Ivy League, fans of Rachel Maddow. The upshot of this post was that if Giunta partook in any of these pursuits (thus making him liberal) he would not have been in Afghanistan to rescue his comrades; in fact he would not have been in the military at all. Somewhat incredibly, the Times removed this comment. You can pick up the gist of the original comment from others who refer to it. Many people wrote in to decry the idea that liberals are not patriots or that members of certain educated class do not serve. Perhaps most interesting in terms of the culture wars was that many who contributed to this debate believed that the topic of a contemporary war was not an appropriate venue for brawling over our politics. Real wars trump culture wars.

This morning, we learned that Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop who runs the New York Archdiocese, had been elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Reportedly, Dolan was somewhat of a surprise choice because he was selected over Bishop Gerald Kincanas of Arizona who had served as vice president of the Conference and was seen as the natural successor to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. The key factor in this election, according to Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times, was that Dolan is a moderate conservative who represents a wing of the American Catholic Church that has come out in opposition to the new healthcare act and takes strong public positions on same-sex unions. Kincanas represents another wing of the church that focuses on issues of social justice such as immigration, workers’ rights, poverty, and peace. Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown observed that the election of Dolan was “a signal that the conference wants to be a leader in the culture wars.” Indeed, the article included remarks from Robert P. George of Princeton and a leading figure in the contemporary culture wars who pointed out that Dolan had been the host of meetings that produced the “Manhattan Declaration,” a flagship contribution to the culture wars from religious conservatives.

So, on the one hand we have a defense of liberals as patriots sparked by honoring a soldier for his valor in an utterly tragic situation and war; and on the other hand, we have the election of an American Catholic Bishop based on his ability to coordinate attacks against the healthcare act and same-sex unions. I know that we have debated whether liberals have won or are winning the culture wars, but what is one to make of situations in which Americans try to defend a liberal position as nothing less than patriotic and when the largest single religious denomination chooses to highlight opposition to healthcare and same-sex unions rather than peace, immigration, and poverty ?