The Cult of the Military and the Decline of Democratic Values
CounterPunch, CA From Support the Troops to Condemning MoveOn
By DONNA SAGGIA
Alarm bells should be ringing louder than ever in progressive circles as Congress, not content with forfeiting its powers to the unitary executive, has now decided to let the military plan foreign policy. Bush’s interminable and ubiquitous “war on terror” has achieved in six years what almost half a century of the “communist scare” could not: the military is becoming the “fourth branch” of government in America.
In some ways the Petraeus hearings were just another scene in the pro-war theater of the absurd, recalling Colin Powell’s smash hit at the UN and George Tenet’s “slam-dunk” exuberance, and playing to those herds of Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and plaster yellow ribbons on their SUVs and Hummers.
But the hearings were also something else. They were ritual”ritual as in an act or verbal expression performed in deference to a higher authority, in this case, the authority of the military.
In a world where most western nations attempt to maintain some balance between military and social spending, Americans alone are the “true believers” in the cult of the military. For over half a century we have fed the military god more than his share of their GDP while watching our infrastructure crumble, and have allowed that god to rampage through much of the world, leaving behind more than 700 overseas temples, from Germany to South Korea, dedicated to militarism.
The roots of our deference to military authority are deep, but more important are the ongoing rituals that entrench the cult of the military firmly within the American psyche. Of these, the most potent and insidious is the incantation, “support the troops.” These three words may seem to be a simple statement of support for the men and women in uniform. In reality, they say more about the embedment in the American psyche of the cult of the military than could any presidential war speech or Pentagon defense budget.
In fact, in the absence of a legitimate causis belli, “support the troops” has become the glue that binds the American people to the war, and it is no coincidence that, until recently, the dominant cry from the American public has been “support the troops” rather than “stop the war.” [more]