Read Online Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country by Andrew J. Bacevich - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrew J. Bacevich
Tags: United States, General, History, Military, Political Science, American Government, 21st Century
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Vietnam) retained its utility up to and beyond the era of Gerald Ford (who presided over the liquidation of that commitment). For decades, containment endowed U.S. policy with at least a modicum of coherence.
With the passing of the Cold War, the last vestiges of coherence vanished. Granted, considered in isolation, efforts by U.S. troops to rescue the downtrodden, overthrow dictators, or fight terrorists possessed a cursory plausibility. After all, back in 1992, Somalis really were starving. Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein really were bona fide bad guys. Prior to 9/11, the Taliban had provided sanctuary to Al Qaeda. Yet taken together, these episodes, along with all the other military misadventures of recent decades, do not even remotely amount to a strategy worthy of the name. When it comes to basic policy, there may be threads, but there is no fabric.
Reflecting on the mind-set in 1960s Washington that gave rise to Vietnam, the literary critic Alfred Kazin once wrote, “Power beyond reason created a lasting irrationality.” 21 Kazin’s observation applies in spades to the period following the Cold War. With the collapse of communism, Washington convinced itself that the United States possessed power such as the world had never seen. Democrats and Republicans alike professed their eagerness to exploit that power to the fullest. A sustained bout of strategic irrationality ensued, magnified and reinforced by the events of 9/11. Sadly, the principal achievement of President Obama, who came to office promising something better, has been to perpetuate that irrationality.
12
AMERICAN CHARACTERS
Toward the beginning of his book After Virtue , the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre introduces the concept of characters and reflects on their importance. “Characters,” he writes, “are the masks worn by moral philosophies.” They describe “those social roles which provide a culture with its moral definition.” Characters by no means command universal assent. Yet those who celebrate and those who despise a particular character “unwittingly collaborate as a chorus in the theatre of the present.” Through characters, “moral and metaphysical ideas and theories assume … an embodied existence in the social world.” 1
Writing in 1981, MacIntyre identified the reigning characters in Western, and especially American, culture as the Rich Aesthete, the Manager, and the Therapist. In the United States, the passage of time has diminished the centrality of all three. A new trio has emerged in their stead: the Celebrity, the Geek, and the Warrior. These figures provide contemporary American society with at least a simulacrum of moral definition. Of the three, the warrior has the lowest profile but may well exercise the greatest importance, imputing a sense of purposefulness to an increasingly disordered society.
Who doesn’t love celebrities? After all, they provide vicarious escape from an everyday existence that social critics and ad agency copywriters join hands in depicting as confining and banal. As an antidote to anomie, nothing beats glamour. If not endowing life with meaning, glamour at least infuses it with sizzle. Celebrities exude and define glamour, no matter how fleeting and ephemeral. The most important social function of celebrities is simply to appear, presenting themselves to be discovered, admired, adored, gossiped about, criticized, ridiculed, and ultimately pitied (often in precisely that sequence). They satisfy our itch for fantasy and our appetite for schadenfreude. We worship them when they are on their way up and follow them no less avidly when they crash and burn—when Britney Spears, head shaven, beats a car with a baseball bat; a bleary-eyed Lindsay Lohan gets hauled into court for the umpteenth time; or Katie leaves Tom standing high and dry. And we love them (yet again) if they manage to drag themselves out of the mire to appear “clean and sober” on the red carpet or gorgeously
With the passing of the Cold War, the last vestiges of coherence vanished. Granted, considered in isolation, efforts by U.S. troops to rescue the downtrodden, overthrow dictators, or fight terrorists possessed a cursory plausibility. After all, back in 1992, Somalis really were starving. Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein really were bona fide bad guys. Prior to 9/11, the Taliban had provided sanctuary to Al Qaeda. Yet taken together, these episodes, along with all the other military misadventures of recent decades, do not even remotely amount to a strategy worthy of the name. When it comes to basic policy, there may be threads, but there is no fabric.
Reflecting on the mind-set in 1960s Washington that gave rise to Vietnam, the literary critic Alfred Kazin once wrote, “Power beyond reason created a lasting irrationality.” 21 Kazin’s observation applies in spades to the period following the Cold War. With the collapse of communism, Washington convinced itself that the United States possessed power such as the world had never seen. Democrats and Republicans alike professed their eagerness to exploit that power to the fullest. A sustained bout of strategic irrationality ensued, magnified and reinforced by the events of 9/11. Sadly, the principal achievement of President Obama, who came to office promising something better, has been to perpetuate that irrationality.
12
AMERICAN CHARACTERS
Toward the beginning of his book After Virtue , the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre introduces the concept of characters and reflects on their importance. “Characters,” he writes, “are the masks worn by moral philosophies.” They describe “those social roles which provide a culture with its moral definition.” Characters by no means command universal assent. Yet those who celebrate and those who despise a particular character “unwittingly collaborate as a chorus in the theatre of the present.” Through characters, “moral and metaphysical ideas and theories assume … an embodied existence in the social world.” 1
Writing in 1981, MacIntyre identified the reigning characters in Western, and especially American, culture as the Rich Aesthete, the Manager, and the Therapist. In the United States, the passage of time has diminished the centrality of all three. A new trio has emerged in their stead: the Celebrity, the Geek, and the Warrior. These figures provide contemporary American society with at least a simulacrum of moral definition. Of the three, the warrior has the lowest profile but may well exercise the greatest importance, imputing a sense of purposefulness to an increasingly disordered society.
Who doesn’t love celebrities? After all, they provide vicarious escape from an everyday existence that social critics and ad agency copywriters join hands in depicting as confining and banal. As an antidote to anomie, nothing beats glamour. If not endowing life with meaning, glamour at least infuses it with sizzle. Celebrities exude and define glamour, no matter how fleeting and ephemeral. The most important social function of celebrities is simply to appear, presenting themselves to be discovered, admired, adored, gossiped about, criticized, ridiculed, and ultimately pitied (often in precisely that sequence). They satisfy our itch for fantasy and our appetite for schadenfreude. We worship them when they are on their way up and follow them no less avidly when they crash and burn—when Britney Spears, head shaven, beats a car with a baseball bat; a bleary-eyed Lindsay Lohan gets hauled into court for the umpteenth time; or Katie leaves Tom standing high and dry. And we love them (yet again) if they manage to drag themselves out of the mire to appear “clean and sober” on the red carpet or gorgeously
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