On November 11^th at 11 Am and 11 seconds of 2011, I was meeting with a group of 6^th graders as part of a Veterans Day event at an excellent middle school in a small town frequently characterized as affluent, but much more economically diverse than this term suggests.

I was impressed by the program. It was organized and run by the students at the town’s middle school with the help of school personnel. I gave some brief remarks about the Vietnam War, shared some remembrances of my service with them, and answered as many of their questions as I could.

At the beginning of my portion of the program, I was presented a thoughtful certificate of appreciation by one of the students who escorted me to the library where I met with other students.  I think that a couple of dozen other veterans participated in the program. Each had his own story to tell.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs explains that Veterans Day is observed on November 11^th regardless of what day of the week on which it falls.

“The restoration of the observance of Veterans Day to November 11 not only preserves the historical significance of the date, but helps focus attention on the important purpose of Veterans Day: A celebration to honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.”

The origins of Veterans Day (previously known as Armistice Day, and in some parts of the world as Remembrance Day) is traceable back towards the end of World War I when on November 11, 1918 at 11 AM a temporary cessation of hostilities between the Allied Nations and Germany went into effect. The “Great War,” actually ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. It was the hopeful thinking at the time to think that World War I would be “the war to end all wars.”

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the commemoration as Armistice Day. As originally conceived, the commemoration was to be observed through a variety means, including public gatherings, parades and a suspension of business at 11 AM on November 11^th. Wilson positioned it as follows:

“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations …”

A series of legislative actions established Armistice Day and then changed it to Veterans Day, ultimately returning its observance to November 11^th. The official focal point of it nationally is a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Ceremony at 11 AM on November 11^th conducted by a color guard which represents all of the United States military services. A “present arms” ceremony is conducted, typically a presidential wreath is laid at the tomb, and “taps” (an emotionally charged musical expression) is played by a bugler. President Obama participated at the ceremony this year, and made brief remarks. Other elements of the ceremony take place in the amphitheater near the tomb.

Throughout America, other ceremonial gatherings and commemorations occurred. These are occasions and places for remembrance and means of bringing communities together. While I was at the middle school, a town level commemoration was held in a small area in town, its symbolic center. A newspaper article reported that a keynote speaker, a veteran, discussed the contributions of community members during major conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the present. It was a relatively small gathering, with a bit more than 100 people.

I was impressed by the event at the middle school. It showed me how within an institutional framework, people can be brought together, young and old, to share experiences as a community. There was a coming together of school personnel, students, and veterans. Through discussions and remembrances age gaps were breached and great and small issues were discussed in an organized and thoughtful manner. From the moment I arrived to the moment I left, I felt warmly welcomed.

Students listened politely to my brief remarks, but they were eager to ask their own questions about small issues and large. I welcomed them all and tried to answer respectfully and thoughtfully.

Preparing to meet with the students led me to re-remember some of my own experiences. Many were just snippets of what I experienced ranging from the bigger philosophical, moral and ethical issues to elemental phenomenological occurrences. I recalled odd bits of thoughts such as an old, Asian and African folk saying, “When elephants dance, the grass gets trampled.”

While there is a timeless quality to this expression, during the Vietnam War, its meaning was quite specific: when troops fight, noncombatants are hurt (wounded and killed, with property destroyed). The numbers bear that out. Between November 1, 1955 and May 15, 1975, approximately 58,272 U. S. personnel were either killed or subsequently died as a result of the war; and 303,644 were wounded of which 153,303 required hospital care. Estimates of casualties for the Vietnamese and Cambodians are much larger: between 216, 000 and 316,000 South Vietnamese military forces were killed; and according to one estimate provided by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, more than 1,011,000 North Vietnamese and Vietcong were killed, and about 4,000,000 civilians were casualties, split equally between the North and South. In post war political violence, casualty estimates range from a low of 400,000 to approximately 2,500,000. Between 1975 and 1979 in the Cambodian genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, 1,700,000 civilians died.

After the French were ousted from Vietnam in 1954, at least two separate but related wars were waged, a civil war between nationalist interests; and a proxy war, which aligned North Vietnam with the Soviet Bloc, and South Vietnam, which was aligned with the United States and its allies. It was a hot spot in the Cold War, with much grass trampled.

In my research, I work with military veterans who served in Iraq. For them, this Veterans Day was not a day for parades, but for political action and protests. It may be that many service members find themselves questioning the strategies and tactics of Pentagon privately, but these veterans represent the minority of active duty and former service members who publicly criticize the military.

Protesting in this way has caused them difficulties. Speaking against the military is taboo. Breaking the “code of silence” to talk about abuse and brutality among their fellow service members is a betrayal.

Thinking about the polarizing discourse around the military, I wonder how discussions about means and ends in war can ever achieve any depth. Our portrayal of those who serve in the military remains split between, on the one hand, blanket condemnation of the savagery of men who glorify killing and domination, and, on the other, unqualified, unabashed reverence for the honor and sacrifice of those who serve.

The veterans who I work with struggle between these two extremes. In the US, national discourse has taken an uncomfortable swing toward the latter depiction – any criticism of service members is impolitic, for the left and the right.

But the idealization of soldiers denies the much more ambiguous experience of the men and women who serve.

We should not confuse the economic and personal need that leads many men and women to enlist with the idealism of sacrifice. We should not forget that service members are flawed, just like the rest of us.

That sometimes they act bravely, and other times they act out of fear; sometimes with compassion and other times with cruelty; that they, like anyone, operate in an arena of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Somehow we never fail to be astounded by the My Lais and the Abu Ghraibs, and we insist that they result from bad apples, since it is easier to believe that there are clearly friends and enemies, the good and the bad, right and wrong.

“The distinctive characteristic of practical activity, one which is so inherent that it cannot be eliminated, is the uncertainty which attends it.”  This, as John Dewey wrote in The Quest for Certainty, leads us to construct a fortress of the very things that threaten us with this uncertainty. War is perhaps the most practical of activities, even if we believe it to be irrational.

For military service members today, the “rules of war,” an almost satirical attempt to impose a degree of order in the chaos that is the field of war, can no longer be defined by the strictures of battle lines and uniforms. War has come to better reflect the reality of conflict, where friend and enemy cannot be reduced to an easy dichotomy.

Yet, the desire for certainty remains strong. The film, The Hurt Locker, might have avoided the politics of war, but it brilliantly captured the intoxication of war – both in the physical rush of adrenaline and the psychological security of holding a meaningful role in the world.

It is certainly simpler to construct the world into friends and enemies, heroes and villains. Military service members are certainly not alone in this endeavor. What prevents us from seeing that we’re building the fortress of righteousness out of very wrongness that threatens us?

For me, the issue is not whether the ends justify the means, but how we might live with the uncertainty that there never is an end.

The terms “means” and “ends” bring to mind relations among self-centered nations competing with one another. “A mean to an end.” “The end is worth its means.”

It is one way of looking at the international political situation. This world looks very different from the top looking down and from the bottom looking up. For many policy makers, it involves judgments made in the name of national interests and security; and in more recent years additional concerns have been about international interests and security. From the bottom looking up, especially among combat veterans, the major concern is simply survival.

In 1927, Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political wrote, “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy … The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.”  About 100 years prior to Schmitt, Carl von Clausewitz observed, “War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with a mixture of other means.” These, the view from the top down.

A perspective from the bottom looking up is a passage by William Broyles, Jr. in his often quoted 1984 essay, “Why Men Love War,” “War is ugly, horrible, evil, and it is reasonable for men to hate all that. But I believe that most men who have been to war would have to admit, if they are honest, that somewhere inside themselves they loved it too, loved it as much as anything that has happened to them before or since.”

These perspectives pose challenges for veterans of all sorts and for those who have either antiwar or pacifist beliefs. War is a tool of politics, and it has consequences. Alternatively, the unwillingness to use war as a tool also has consequences.

Veterans Day sparked some remembrances which help make these principles more concrete. These reflections, it seems to me, have implications beyond the historic and are applicable to the current world situation.

In my memories

As an elementary school student in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I recall going through civil defense drills in which we would hide under our desks, or in hallways without windows to “protect” ourselves should a nuclear attack occur. As a managing editor for my college newspaper, I recall listening to the radio in our editorial office as the United States went to DEFCON 2. This is the highest level of military alert ever for our military forces as the United States and the Soviet Union faced each other on October 25, 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis ultimately seemed to defuse as 14 Soviet ships chose to turn around.

I recall feeling a sense of relief as both countries stepped back from nuclear annihilation. In contemporary history classes, the Cold War is being discussed along with the competition to win over unaligned nations, and find ways to stop the expansion of international Communism. This perspective ultimately contributed to the U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War. My participation in it going very much from the theoretical to the personal.

For policy makers, it was much easier to distinguish friends from enemies than it was for combat troops where identifies weren’t nearly as clear.
During the Vietnam War, combat troops consisted of volunteers and draftees. Some supported the war, and others didn’t. This is very different from the composition of the military forces today in which all members of the military have enlisted.

Yesterday, today

What these two groups of veterans share are experiences that most of the rest of the population have never experienced. Regardless of whether or not members of the military support a given war, or war at all; what is more important is their common need to distinguish friends from enemies in order to survive.  These experiences create communications gaps with other citizens that are difficult to overcome. While combat veterans today may receive more respect today than they did during the Vietnam War, their concerns are largely ignored and misunderstood by non-veterans.
Few battles of consequence, if any, were lost by the U. S. military during the Vietnam War; yet, the war was lost. U. S. forces left in 1973 and in 1975 the South Vietnamese government fell to the North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front. Ultimately, emphasis shifted from battlefield actions to nation building for which the military is not suited.

The willingness for North Vietnam to wage an endless war and suffer incalculable casualties doomed the U. S. effort from the beginning. The U. S. was not able to understand the interconnection of nationalistic and communistic beliefs by the leaders of North Vietnam.  The U. S. grew weary of involvement, withheld aid and assistance from the South Vietnamese; and walked away. For US political leaders, the ends were not worth the means required of them.

Is it possible that the same pattern is being played out in Iraq and Afghanistan: the difficulty of distinguishing friends from enemies; and the insurmountable challenge of nation building by the military? Will the U. S. tire of its involvement, and leave both countries to settle their own affairs? It has consequences. It has consequences for policy makers and for combat veterans.

There were a number of consequences after the Vietnam War. There was a mass migration of “boat people” refuges that fled Vietnam to escape repression and poverty. Many died at sea as they tried to escape. I, myself, hosted a child of a refugee Vietnamese family during his high school years. We rarely discussed Vietnam, and his family was scattered all over the world.

Today, some have returned after major reform began in 1986.

What will be the consequences of the disengagement from Iraq and Afghanistan? No one really knows. It is possible that the U. S. involvement in Vietnam may have slowed the expansion of international communism. Will the U. S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan have a lasting effect? In the end, policy makers will still distinguish friends from enemies, and combat troops will have to practically make this distinction, and find ways to survive. Means and ends are always a challenge. Means and ends have consequences, anticipated and unanticipated.