{"id":28711,"date":"2017-04-06T06:19:33","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T14:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=28711"},"modified":"2017-04-06T06:19:33","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T14:19:33","slug":"the-us-militarys-ethos-of-busy-work-sweaty-suffering-white-wall-haircuts-beribboned-uniforms-and-warrior-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/06\/the-us-militarys-ethos-of-busy-work-sweaty-suffering-white-wall-haircuts-beribboned-uniforms-and-warrior-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Military’s Ethos: Of Busy-work, Sweaty Suffering, White Wall Haircuts, Beribboned Uniforms, and Warrior Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why does the U.S. military invest so much pride in working to the point of tedium, if not exhaustion? A friend of mine, an Army major, worked at the Pentagon. He worked hard during his normal shift, after which he did what sensible people do \u2013 he went home. His co-workers, noses to the grindstone, would hassle him about leaving \u201cearly.\u201d He\u2019d reply, I can leave on-time because I don\u2019t waste hours at the coffee maker or in the gym.<\/p>\n

A caffeinated emphasis on work and fitness, another friend suggested, may be a post-Vietnam War reaction to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara\u2019s \u201cmanagerial culture\u201d of the 1960s. As he put it, \u201cOne easy way of showing one has the \u2018right stuff\u2019 [in the US military] is to be an exercise nut, and the penumbras of that mindset have really distorted the allocation of effort in our military.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two recent examples of work- and fitness-mania are Army Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal. The US media extolled them as ascetic-warriors<\/a>, yet both flamed out due to serious errors in judgment (Petraeus for an affair with his biographer, with whom he illegally shared<\/a> highly classified information, and McChrystal for tolerating a climate that undermined<\/a> his civilian chain of command). Asceticism and sweaty fitness routines, after all, are no substitute for sound judgment and a disciplined mind.<\/p>\n

Busy-work<\/a> within the military is related to Parkinson\u2019s Law<\/a>, the idea that work expands to fill the time allotted to it. In this case, with America\u2019s wars on terror being open-ended, or \u201cmulti-generational<\/a>\u201d as the US military puts it, the \u201cwork\u201d on these wars will continue to expand to fill this time, with the added benefit of \u201cvalidating\u201d the extra money ($54 billion in 2017 alone) being shoveled to the Pentagon by President Trump.<\/p>\n

Along with busy-work are the virtues of suffering, as related by a societal celebration<\/a> of Navy SEALs and similar special forces (\u201c100 men will test today\/but only three win the Green Beret<\/a>\u201d). I\u2019ve lost count of the times I\u2019ve read articles and seen films featuring these \u201csupermen\u201d and their arduous training. The meme of “sweet–and public–suffering” is related to the whole \u201cwarrior\u201d ideal (more on this later) within the US military. There\u2019s a self-righteous shininess here, a triumph of image over substance, or image as substance. (Being physically tough is of course an asset in close quarters combat, but it\u2019s no guarantor of strategic sense or even of common sense.)<\/p>\n

In the past, some of America\u2019s finest military leaders had no shame in appearing common, most famously the \u201cshabby\u201d Ulysses S. Grant during the US Civil War.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Grant at Cold Harbor, 1864<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

Civil War officers \u2013 true citizen-soldiers, most of them \u2013 often had unruly hair and unkempt beards, but they sure as hell fought hard and got the job done. Nowadays, as another reader put it, \u201cthere appears to be a whole lot of Army officers who think a white sidewall haircut proves you\u2019re a great officer. It actually is a homage to the Prussian Army that shaved its soldiers\u2019 heads to prevent lice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking again of image, let\u2019s take a close look at the beribboned uniforms<\/a> of today\u2019s military officers. General Joseph Votel, presently US Centcom commander, is only the most recent example of an excess of ribbons, badges, and other devices:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Contrast Votel’s image to that of General George C. Marshall<\/a>, who defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Marshall in 1946<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

How did Marshall manage such military feats with so few ribbons? Nowadays, US generals sport more bling than the Kardashians.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s return to the notion of US troops as \u201cwarriors\u201d and \u201cwarfighters.\u201d I\u2019ve written extensively<\/a> on this subject. I see today\u2019s “warrior” conceit as a way of eliminating our democratic citizen-soldier ideal<\/a>, making the US military a thoroughly professional force, subservient to the government and divorced from the people.<\/p>\n

However, there\u2019s another aspect to this \u201cwarrior\u201d mythology, a powerful psychological one: the duping of the “warriors” themselves, distracting them from a bitter reality they may be little more than cannon fodder for greed-war<\/a>.*<\/a> The US military today is awash with warrior creeds that to me are antithetical to the citizen-soldier ideal of America.<\/p>\n

To sum up the US military\u2019s current ethos, then: We have a lot of guys who take great pride in constant busy-work and excessive physical exertion, sporting high and tight haircuts, their uniforms festooned with bewildering displays of ribbons and medals and badges, extolling a warrior code in the service of a government that tells them that multi-generational wars are unavoidable.<\/p>\n

And so it shall prove, if these shadows remain unaltered.<\/a><\/p>\n

*Thanks to Michael Murry for bringing my attention to how the semiotics of \u201cwarrior\u201d are dramatically changed if we substitute \u201cgladiator\u201d for \u201cwarrior,\u201d followed by less grandiose terms such as \u201cthose about to die,\u201d i.e. as scapegoats to the king\u2019s ambition, an insight he gleaned from reading Umberto Eco.<\/p>\n

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views<\/a>. He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu<\/a>. Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author’s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why does the U.S. military invest so much pride in working to the point of tedium, if not exhaustion? A friend of mine, an Army major, worked at the Pentagon. He worked hard during his normal shift, after which he did what sensible people do \u2013 he went home. His co-workers, noses to the grindstone, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_social_image_id":0,"_social_image_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-28711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","_social_image_id":false,"subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28711"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28715,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28711\/revisions\/28715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28711"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}