After excoriating the corruption of the political and business leadership classes, Christopher Hitchens says that the only institution worth a damn in America today is the U.S. military:
In a recent posting on The New York Times's Web site, Paul Krugman said that the United States was now reduced to the status of a banana republic with nuclear weapons. This is a variation on the old joke about the former Soviet Union ("Burkina Faso with rockets"). It's also wrong: in fact, it's the reverse of the truth. In banana republics, admittedly, very often the only efficient behavior is displayed by the army (and the secret police). But our case is rather different. In addition to exhibiting extraordinary efficiency and, most especially under the generalship of David Petraeus, performing some great feats of arms and ingenuity, the American armed forces manifest all the professionalism and integrity that our rulers and oligarchs lack. Who was it who the stricken inhabitants of New Orleans and later of the Texas coastline yearned to see? Who was it who informed the blithering and dithering idiots at fema that they could have as many troops as they could remember to ask for, even as volunteers were embarking for Afghanistan and Iraq? What is one of the main engines of integration for blacks and immigrants, as well as one of the finest providers of education and training for those whom the system had previously failed? It may be true that the government has succeeded in degrading our armed forces as well--tasking them with absurdities and atrocities like Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib--but this only makes the banana-republic point in an even more emphatic way.
He's no doubt right, but ... well, don't you get a little chill when people start speaking sotto voce about how much better things would be if the military ran the show? Because that's the clear subtext here. And things haven't gotten nearly as bad as they're going to yet.
By the way, has anybody given a thought to how military families, especially National Guard families, are making it these days, with their breadwinners overseas in Iraq, and the economy melting down at home?
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I'd certainly prefer General David Petraeus to the man soon to be our president.
Whether or not we end up with a military dictatorship, maybe we could all agree that (shock!) we Americans are subject to the forces of history, something we've denied strenuously for quite some time. Ours is a just regime for the most part, but it's not immune to corruption from within.
As Professor Deneen has noted before, the Founders made the audacious claim that we could preserve a republic with a population as large as ours. Historically, it was usually assumed that a large country would almost certainly become an empire. We seem to be an uncomfortable hybrid of republic and empire.
Historical analogies are always imprecise and somewhat of a stretch, but perhaps what we are witnessing is akin to the end of the Roman Republic. We have the demagogic champion of the people (Obama) versus the paragon of military virtue (McCain), both ranting against the excesses of the aristocracy (Wall Street). But McCain is a poor substitute for the real thing. Emperor Petraeus in 2024! It even sounds right. Mark my words...
Perhaps rather than handing the reins of the Republic over to the military, we should instill the virtues of duty, integrity, and selflessness in ourselves and in our children, as we once did. It is those values (and the ability to institutionally learn from mistakes on occasion) which recommend the military.
Re: "Perhaps rather than handing the reins of the Republic over to the military, we should instill the virtues of duty, integrity, and selflessness in ourselves and in our children, as we once did. It is those values (and the ability to institutionally learn from mistakes on occasion) which recommend the military."
That's the problem, you not only have those qualities, you think you have a monopoly on them.
That's the exceptionalism and that's what is dangerous. Not dangerous as a threat to the political system, but dangerous in the hands of a reckless president who doesn't know better.
P.S. And I've been around enough military guys to observe what a homogenoeus culture it is and how the exceptionalism is tribally reinforced.
Re: "Perhaps rather than handing the reins of the Republic over to the military, we should instill the virtues of duty, integrity, and selflessness in ourselves and in our children, as we once did. It is those values (and the ability to institutionally learn from mistakes on occasion) which recommend the military."
That's the problem. You not only have those qualities, you think you have a monopoly on them.
That's the exceptionalism and that's what is dangerous. Not dangerous as a threat to the political system, but dangerous in the hands of a reckless president who doesn't know better.
P.S. And I've been around enough military guys to observe what a homogeneous culture it is and how the exceptionalism is tribally reinforced.
Got knocked offline for ten days, so I doubt you'll see this, SteveM. The military does not have a monopoly on the character traits of duty, integrity, or selflessness. But as you yourself pointed out, these qualities are "tribally reinforced" in the military. I'm not sure that this is a problem, precisely.
Do you mean American exceptionalism? Or military exceptionalism? I'm not real clear on that. I certainly make no claims that duty or selflessness are more common to Americans than others. On the contrary, it is the Southeast Asians, I think, who most emphasize and cultivate those values. As far as integrity, I can't think of very many shining examples of it, as far as national character goes. We and Europe are certainly better than South America and the Arab countries. But that's not to say we're great, either.
Military exceptionalism? Dangerous? If you are considering handing over the reigns of the Republic to the DoD, yes, that would be dangerous. Military servicemembers have few rights. They are basically the right to sustenance, basic shelter if available, mail, religious observation when not a detriment to military mission, and the legal protections of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (a rather short document which entails as many responsibilities as protections.) They do not include the freedom of speech, freedom of movement, right to assembly, right to petition the government, or most of the other liberties to which U.S. citizens are accustomed. A military service member is obligated to do as he is told. He or she may not go anywhere, without permission, and is on-call, 24-7 365 days a year. He or she may be confined to post, or duty area, at any time, no justification necessary. A soldier is the last person who would really want to see the civilian populace under the same system.
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