Military cohesion, social discord

By Julian Delasantellis

In the spirit of American hair restoration, impresario/pop culture icon Sy Sperling, who used to hold up pictures of his previously bald pate while claiming "I'm not just the president of the Hair Club for Men, I'm a client as well," I can truthfully say, "I'm not just a writer for ATol, I'm a reader as well."

As such, I've lately been spending a lot of time reading and rereading, and even more time thinking about Brian M Downing's January 9 ATol article, All together now, US troops stand firm. All of you should now go back and read this article for yourselves, but, for the sake of convention, I'll briefly summarize its main points.

Very much in contrast to the American experience in the Vietnam War, and quite in contravention to the predictions of many of the Iraq War's critics, units of the American ground forces prosecuting the war, the 20 or so US Army and Marine Corps brigades, about 160,000 troops, now shuttling in and out of the country have managed to maintain a large degree of "unit cohesion".

Unit cohesion was defined by former US Army chief of staff (1979-1983) Edward Meyer as "the bonding together of soldiers in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the unit, and mission accomplishment, despite combat or mission stress".

Many times it has been said that soldiers do not give their lives for their country, but they do for their unit, the fellow soldiers in their company, platoon, or other relatively small discreet military formation. Specific political motivations for a war may come and go, may morph and be stated anew, but it really doesn't matter. For the (usually) men under combat, a bond of friendship and loyalty so intense and formidable, frequently far more intense than filial or sibling bonds, develops that the soldiers are willing, indeed, they frequently volunteer to, sacrifice their very lives to maintain the greater unit's continued survival.

Basically speaking, when you are reading war stories or watching war movies, from Homer's Iliad to Steven Spielberg's 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan, the bravery and heroism displayed are examples of successful unit cohesion.

Human-like creatures have been battling other humans since at least the Battle of the Monolith in Arthur C Clarke's 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and, even before the creation of military sociology as a sub-discipline of military science in the middle of the 20th century, the wise commander always, even if on an instinctual basis, realized the importance of unit cohesion for his military mission.

But, somehow, the corporate sector bureaucrats and slide-rule toting mini-max acolytes who assumed control of the US Pentagon with Robert McNamara's ascendency as secretary of defense in 1961 had new ideas as to how armies in wartime operated with maximum efficiency.

According to Downing, after about 1967 or so, the personnel policies of the Pentagon related to the troops fighting in Vietnam were diametrically antithetical to what you would have expected had maximum unit cohesion been your goal. "As casualties rose and tours ended, units seemed to have revolving doors and continuity suffered. Every month, 8.5% of soldiers finished their tours and headed home. (Short-timers were usually cut some slack and allowed to finish their last month or so on a base or at least a relatively secure firebase.)

"Furthermore, every month another 10%, if not more, left because of transfer to another company, rest and recreation, compassionate leave, being deemed unfit for combat, illness, and of course wounds and death. It all added up to high and problematic turnovers - 50% in three months or so. Eager to increase the numbers of young infantry officers, the army rotated platoon and company commanders every six months or so, exacerbating continuity problems at the company level."

There was no way that unit cohesion could develop under these circumstances; soldiers were continually individually entering and exiting their units with such rapidity that no one really ever got to know, at a level sufficient to be willing to die for them, any one of their fellow comrades. By the end of the war, the Pentagon started to realize that you couldn't treat soldiers like metal stamping machines on one of McNamara's Ford Motor Company factory floors - easily movable and interchangeable with all the rest. Machines will not, and are not expected to, voluntarily give their lives for other machines.

In the 1980s, as the US Army and Marines Corps started to look at what went so disastrously wrong in Vietnam, it was realized that one of the first things that had to be changed was the above-described personnel replacement policy. From then forward, the military has opted for what is called unit replacement, whereby entire units, frequently up to the brigade (3,000-5,000) level, are brought into Iraq together, then, after their tour of combat, taken out together. The soldiers contained within these units get to know, trust, rely, eventually, to be willing to die for, the comrades with whom they are fighting shoulder-to-shoulder.

If the unit cohesion success story in Iraq was limited only to the recognition of the importance of unit replacement, then all we would be dealing with was a fairly beneficent application of the social sciences to military personnel management. However, there is another aspect to the unit cohesion story, one that suggests that the gains in military unit cohesion in Iraq may be being accomplished at the costs of less societal cohesion at home in America.

The military America sent to Iraq is far different from the one it sent to Vietnam. The Vietnam-era military was primarily populated through conscription, the draft, whether directly or by the threat of conscription driving enlistees to the navy or air force, thinking that by voluntarily entering those services one could cut down on the chances of being involuntarily assigned to jungle combat on the ground.

The Vietnam-era draft worked fairly simply - a young American man turned 18, reported to his draft board (in my small town it was in the local YMCA, the Young Men's Christian Association social organization), and got himself signed up; unless you could find a way to successfully game the system and get a deferment, a few weeks later you were in basic training. For all the stories about potential draftees winking at draft board officials to be granted a homosexuality deferment, the vast majority of deferments were achieved by having the young man enrolled in college, getting an educational deferment.

It may be hard to believe these days, with colleges competing for students by providing everything from libraries with cappuccino services to Olympic-quality gymnasiums in the dormitories, but in the Vietnam era it was hard to get into college. Because it was such a ready method to avoid Vietnam, the competition for admission to reasonably priced public colleges was fierce, and many young men just couldn't afford the expensive tuition at private colleges.

If you couldn't get a deferment, you most likely were destined for the military and Vietnam. In this way, the Vietnam-era draft worked much like a giant vacuum cleaner poised over America, sucking up any young man not bolted down by a deferment privilege. You could be a ghetto kid from Chicago's South Side, or the son of struggling farmers from Kansas, but if you couldn't buy your way into a deferment, there you'd be with your brothers of the middle and lower middle classes in Vietnam, slogging your way through the lethal rice paddies and jungles of a failed counter-insurgency.

American popular legend is that this manner of military personnel policy worked fine during World War II, with combat platoons, at least in the movies, all composed of Italian Americans, Polish Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, the entire American melting pot, all successfully and harmoniously led by America's mid-century governing aristocracy, its white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).

Of course, during World War II, this peaceful vision of American inter-ethnic harmony was never put to the ultimate test by racially integrating individual combat units. The US military still allowed racial segregation by law up until president Harry Truman's Executive Order 9981, in July 1948, with bureaucratic ennui keeping most of the military segregated during the Korean conflict of the early 1950s.

That left Vietnam for America's first attempt at fighting a war with a military attempting to be reflective of the society for which it was fighting. According to Downing, "Conscription in the 1960s brought together urban and rural, black and white, poor and middle class. There were even a few from the upper crust where noblesse oblige had not yet perished. The youth of a greatly and rather suddenly changed nation came into swift and close collision for the first time."

In the years following Vietnam, the all-volunteer force that succeeded the draft in 1973 seemed to go a long way in actually fulfilling the American dream of successful racial (if not class or economic) integration. Up to 25% of the post-Vietnam army and marines were African American, and during the first Gulf War of 1990-91, the successful integration of the armed forces seemed well symbolized in the personage of General Colin Powell, the first ( and so far only) African-American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But it is in today's Iraq War that can be seen the outline of the devil's bargain the war's supporters have acceded to in order to achieve the unit cohesion not seen in Vietnam. The military fighting in Iraq now is far different to the troops sent to either Vietnam or the first Gulf War.

For one thing, it's a lot less racially diverse than the military of the 1980s and 1990s. Since 2001, the percentage of African-Americans in the pool of US Army recruits has declined from 23% to 13% in 2006; similar declines for the marines saw the percentages of their African-American recruits fall from 12% to 8%. One of the many failures of the Iraq anti-war movement to connect with the American people was New York Congressman Charles Rangel's argument that a new draft should be initiated, to take the fighting and dying burden off soldiers and marines who were primarily the poor and the black.

It was plain for America to see, in the news footage of the soldiers fighting the war, and in the pictures accompanying the newspaper obituaries of those who had fallen in the war, that, at least for the Vietnam-era shibboleth that blacks were massively over-represented among those suffering casualties, a new reality had emerged as to who was fighting America's current war.

So who actually is in the US military in Iraq? A 2007 article in the Financial Times of London described the new dynamic of military demographics in the Iraq War:

The Pentagon does not disclose the socio-economic background of the 25,000 US soldiers who have been killed or wounded in Iraq. But a breakdown of their ethnicity and states of origins shows they are overwhelmingly white and from small towns in the interior states of mid-America and the South. For example, the ratio of killed to the state's population is 221% for South Dakota, 178% for Nebraska and 163% for Louisiana.

In contrast, the District of Columbia, which is home to Washington, the US capital, has a ratio of just 52%, while Connecticut is 66% and New Jersey is 60%. Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, says the divorce between the social origins of most US army personnel and the character of the population as a whole is greater than ever.

Without the statistics, Downing makes a similar point.

The rank and file of the US military come disproportionately if not mainly from small towns and rural areas, culturally distinctive parts of the country that instill beliefs and outlooks conducive to vigorous community life and also to ties among soldiers. While people in many urban and suburban areas over the last few decades have become highly individualistic, those in small towns and rural areas have maintained traditions of interdependence. Respect for authority in almost all forms took a beating during Vietnam, but regained strength away from the cities, especially during the Reagan years. Further, people in these communities view themselves as composing a redoubt of morality and tradition in a country that has become far too secular and hedonistic. Pride in military service is an integral part of community life in small towns and rural areas, though it has faded if not disappeared elsewhere.

The real question here becomes just what is the price, in national social cohesion, of America populating its armed forces from such a relatively small sub-section of its population, the rural, in many cases rapidly depopulating small red-state towns and communities of its between the coasts "heartland".

Downing's article is mostly upbeat, he hails the social cohesion of the American armed forces in Iraq as a marked contrast to the chaos of Vietnam. I wonder. Many political observers and commentators have noted the ugly political and social polarization of current American public life. This phenomenon is blamed on many factors, such as the increasing economic divide between rich and poor, the decline in influence and power of the two major political parties, the rise of talk radio and bloggers, the treatment given to prospective Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas in 1987 and 1991 respectively, etc.

The yawning divide between America's rural core and its cosmopolitan coastal periphery is one of the most obvious points of political and social division and polarization. After the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, Democrats noted with despair the county by county maps of the election results, with huge swaths of the American heartland painted red, denoting a George W Bush victory, and a smaller number of much larger population areas in and surrounding most major cities painted blue, denoting areas won by Al Gore or John Kerry. (As an example of this polarization, in 2004, Bush won Garfield county in Montana 90-8%, at the same time losing much larger San Francisco County in California by a similarly lopsided 83-15%.)

But the political polarization exemplified in the election results is just a by-product of a much greater social polarization between America's rural and suburban/urban population centers. Underneath the jet planes carrying America's elite (very few of them with children in the military fighting in Iraq) from one coastal metropolitan core to another, in what is sometimes derisively called "flyover America", is a seething cauldron of anger and resentment.

Tune into any one of America's country and western radio stations, and you're likely to be bombarded with screed after screed positing that urban American values are corrupt and inauthentic, with the real values that made America great are now found only in the heartland. In 2005, country and western singer Trace Adkins expressed these sentiments in his song Metropolis.

Well, I found myself in a big high-rise with a concrete yard
It ain't safe after dark, guess this ol' boy drove too far
Met a girl, fell in love, got married and she's due in May
Says we're gonna need more space, I said I know just the place
Where we can walk down to the country store
And we won't even have to lock our door
We can still get air and water there for free
She said that sounds good to me.

Besides being safer and purer than blue-state America, red-state America also delights in proclaiming its much higher levels of patriotism. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, country singer Toby Keith expressed these sentiments as America gathered for war in Afghanistan in his song Courtesy of the Red White and Blue, with a directness and machismo few other musicians outside the genre chose to do.

Now this nation that I love
Has fallen under attack
A mighty sucker punch came flyin' in
From somewhere in the back
Soon as we could see clearly
Through our big black eye
Man, we lit up your world
Like the 4th of July
Hey Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty
Started shakin' her fist
And the eagle will fly
Man, its gonna' be hell
When you hear mother freedom
Start ringin' her bell
And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you
Brought to you courtesy of the red white and blue
Justice will be served
And the battle will rage
This big dog will fight
When you rattle his cage
And you'll be sorry that you messed with
The U S of A.
cause we'll put a boot in your ass
Its the American way.

In 2003, Daryl Worley, answering the critics of the Iraq War, sang this song connecting the war to the attacks of September 11.

I hear people sayin'. We Don't need this war.
I say there's some things worth fightin' for.
What about our freedom, and this piece of ground?
We didn't get to keep 'em by backin' down.
They say we don't realize the mess we're gettin' in
Before you start preachin' let me ask you this my friend.
Have you forgotten, how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten, when those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside goin' through a livin' hell
And you say we shouldn't worry bout Bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
You took all the footage off my TV
Said it's too disturbin' for you and me
It'll just breed anger is what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it everyday
Some say this country just out lookin' for a fight
Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say right.

Thus, even though the September 11 attacks were directed at the cores of blue-state power and culture, it is red-state culture that most deeply feels the outrage, that is seeking vengeance.

As for some criticism of the Iraq War, the country and western trio The Dixie Chicks, once one of the genre's most popular acts, saw their careers basically evaporate, with both their music and performances boycotted on red-state radio and concert venues, after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized Bush in London shortly before the start of the war.

And in the ultimate display of patriotism, pride and support for the Iraq War, red-state rural America sent their sons and daughters to fight and die in it.

Why? Was it that red-state America possessed some special insight or wisdom concerning the nature of the threat, the enemy the nation faced in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world , what the neo-conservatives call "Islamofascism?"

Or was it that red-state America's embrace of the war was due to a much simpler causation? Was it that it knew that much of blue-state America didn't support the war, that, like a desperate lover trying to prove his worth over a romantic rival, by supporting the troops and the war, by righting the perfidy committed by the treasonous metropolis in not "supporting the troops" in Vietnam, ( which I wrote about in my June 6, 2007, ATol piece, Yes, Rambo, you get to win this time.) rural America could prove that it was the genuine repository of the American ethos and its values, the true home of the American spirit?

I think that's where the origin of red-state America's support of the war, where the unit cohesion generated by having so many troops sharing similar ethnocultural backgrounds, originates. As dictators throughout history have learned, it's remarkably easy to unify a people behind a common cause - just give them a common enemy to hate.

Surely, the Karl Rove spinmeisters in the White House knew this. To the Wall Street crowd they sold the war on the basis of cheap oil (well, that hasn't worked out, has it?) and lucrative defense contracts; to the neo-conservatives, it was a chance to dispatch an enemy of Israel and remake the Middle East more to its liking; but for the parents of red-state America who would send their children to fight and die in it, this was a chance to once again prove their patriotism, their unique love for God's new chosen country.

As much as Shi'ite Islam is the state religion of Iran, for red-state America it is fundamentalist/evangelical Protestantism that occupies the role as the region's pre-eminent faith. For this faith's ministers, many receiving instruction and guidance from leaders of the movement through regular, sometimes daily, contact with Rove's war support team in the White House, special arguments were made.

In the pulpits of red-state America it was argued that the war against Saddam Hussein was just a modern continuation of the ancient biblical wars against Satan's kingdoms of Gog and Magog, that victory in the war could very well herald the coming of The Rapture, the promised deliverance to Heaven, without the pain of death, of God's chosen, that will initiate the thousand-year war against Satan that will precede Christ's second coming. (This scenario was the basis of the wildly successful Left Behind series of religious novels, by authors Tim LeHaye and Jerry B Jenkins, the highest-selling series of fiction books of all time. )

In much the same way that Christians have been doing since at least the Crusades, it's easy to motivate an army, to achieve unit cohesion, if you can convince your soldiers that it is Satan, be he in Baghdad, Tehran or in the lecture halls of America's east coast Ivy League universities, who you're fighting against.

For many of these people, a painful disillusionment regarding the war has set in, and that is the reason why the fundamentalist movement, and its leaders, have fallen from their traditional role of kingmakers in this year's Republican party presidential nominating process. In an October 28, 2007, feature in the New York Times Magazine, David B Kirkpatrick elaborates on the growing disenchantment among rank-and-file evangelicals with the progress and duration of the Iraq War.

Christianity Today, the evangelical journal, has even posed the question of whether evangelicals should "repent" for their swift support of invading Iraq. "Even in evangelical circles, we are tired of the war, tired of the body bags," the Reverend David Welsh, who took over late last year as senior pastor of Wichita's large Central Christian Church, told me. "I think it is to the point where they are saying: OK, we have done as much good as we can. Now let's just get out of there."

No wonder there's fatigue with the war even among its previously most ardent supporters, a war promised to rid the world of Satan finds itself, five years later, with Satan apparently very much existent, much in contrast to the nearly 4,000 young American war fatalities who no longer are.

Downing notes the growing disillusionment, but without noting its true cause, that by unifying an army against a foe other than the one they are truly fighting, cynicism was bound to set in once the blood started flowing, the flag-draped caskets started returning, and the mournful church bells started peeling, easily audible all across the small little towns of red-state America.

The war may be unifying Iraq, at the price of further polarizing America.

Israel seems to be able to maintain unit cohesion and national concord for its wars, perhaps because, at least until the 2006 Lebanon war (and probably the 1982 one as well ) the wars Israel fought were for reasons of genuine national survival. If America wants to achieve genuine, not artificial, unit cohesion for its next war, maybe it should try having an actual national interest as a reason to fight it.

Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and educator in international business in the US state of Washington. He can be reached at juliandelasantellis@yahoo.com.