Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [150]
Coalition, despite its support by a variety of doves, has never been more than a fragile front to permit us to withdraw with what the Nixon administration calls “honor,” a word used to fill the absence of any other rationale. As such it is not worth the spending of one more life. To walk out of Vietnam might still be done with dignity. Let us forgo for a little while further talk of honor.
THE CITIZEN VERSUS THE MILITARY
The relation of the civilian citizen to the military is a subject usually productive of instant emotion and very little rational thinking. Peace-minded people seem to disapprove study of the soldier, on the theory that if starved of attention he will eventually vanish. That is unlikely. Militarism is simply the organized form of natural aggression. The same people who march to protest in the afternoon will stand in line that evening to see the latest in sadistic movies and thoroughly enjoy themselves watching blood and pain, murder, torture, and rape.
To register one’s dissent from the war in Vietnam by expressing disgust for the military and turning one’s back on whatever shape the military wears is a natural impulse. But the error of that war, together with two other developments—the newly acquired permanence of the military role in our society and the shift to an all-volunteer force—are powerful, urgent reasons why more enlightened and better-educated citizens should not turn their backs and not abdicate their responsibility for controlling military policies.
Earlier in this century the French writer Julien Benda elaborated his thesis of “the treason of the intellectuals.” He accused them of betraying the life of the mind and the realm of reason by descending into the arena of political, social, and national passions. Now we have a treason of the intellectuals in reverse. While military-industrial and military-political interests penetrate all policy-making and add their weight to every political decision, the enlightened citizen refuses his participation, climbs out of the arena, and leaves control to the professionals of war.
Let us look at the facts of the case.
Contrary to the general impression, nuclear firepower, because it is too lethal to use, has reduced, not enlarged, the scope of war, with the secondary and rather sinister result that while unlimited war is out, limited war is in, not as a last resort in the old-fashioned way, but as the regular, on-going support of policy.
This development means that the military arm will be used more for political and ideological ends than in the past, and that because of chronic commitment and the self-multiplying business of deterrence and a global strategy of preparedness for two and a half wars—or whatever is this week’s figure—the technological, industrial, and governmental foundations for this enterprise have become so gigantic, extended, and pervasive that they affect every act of government and consequently all our lives.
We now maintain two thousand military bases in thirty-three countries and have Military Assistance Advisory groups functioning in fifty countries and disbursing arms and aid amounting to nearly $4 billion a year. To furnish these programs in addition to the war in Vietnam and the regular armed forces of the United States, there are defense plants or installations in 363 out of the 435 congressional districts in this country—in five-sixths of the total.
Who benefits? Who profits? Who lobbies in Congress to keep them in operation or to attract new plants where there are none? If you say it is the Pentagon, do not forget the local merchants and manufacturers, the local labor unions and employers, and the local Congressman whom we put there and whom we can recall. Who pays for our present military budget of $84 billion? The taxpayers—who also have the vote.
Traditionally, the American Army has considered itself the neutral instrument