Read Online Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country by Andrew J. Bacevich - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Andrew J. Bacevich
Tags: United States, General, History, Military, Political Science, American Government, 21st Century
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arrayed, if carefully airbrushed, on the cover of Vogue . And for those who can’t manage full recovery, there’s always reality TV to offer a not-to-be-sniffed-at consolation prize.
Hollywood remains today, as it has been for decades, celebrity central. Yet celebrity has moved well beyond the world of entertainment. Celebrity-athletes who reprise the time-honored rise-and-fall narrative (O. J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong) rivet our attention. Rock-star politicians (Bill and Hill dominate the category) enjoy an exalted status, eliciting the same over-the-top response as rock-star musicians. Then there are the instances of cross-pollination, the merger between actress and NBA star or supermodel and NFL quarterback, elevating the celebrity quotient of both parties and feeding an even greater craving to peer into their lives. In Boston, where I teach, the leading daily newspaper routinely informs its readers (typically with accompanying photograph) when Gisele Bündchen walks her son through the Common or Tom Brady goes bike riding along the Charles River. In the city I call home, the doings of the Bündchen-Brady household qualify as newsworthy indeed.
If the celebrity offers momentary escape from the quotidian, the geek promises empowerment. As used here, geek refers to the moguls of the information age who have demonstrated a genius for converting bytes into dollars: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and their imitators. Yet it also applies to the far more numerous and largely anonymous meme queens who through blogs, forums, social networking sites, instant messaging, and video streaming drive a culture that is moored to nothing more than irreverent whimsy and jeering ridicule. The appeal of this culture lies in its very impermanence. What’s not new is by definition passé.
The geek has largely succeeded in convincing Americans, especially the young and the hip, that instantaneous access to information holds the key to personal fulfillment. In practice, the promised empowerment all too frequently translates into subservience and subordination, a compulsion to tend to the beeps, buzzes, and vibrations of objects supposedly designed to do our bidding. Whether the thickening of the electronic web that envelops us serves to increase the accumulated storehouse of wisdom remains unproven, to put it mildly, the social media fad offering a case in point.
In contrast to the celebrity or the geek, the profile of the warrior does include a prominent moral component. The warrior is the one character actually connoting character, providing assurance that America has not lost its ability to produce brave, self-sacrificing idealists.
Yet in performing that function, the warrior has become something other than a mere soldier. Indeed, the warrior has eclipsed the soldier.
To appreciate the distinction, consider two instances, separated by more than a half century, when Time magazine selected the American fighting man/person as its Man/Person of the Year. The first occurred during the early stages of the Korean War. When Time designated “G. I. Joe as Man of the Year” for 1950, developments on the battlefield were actually looking grim. Communist China had intervened, and U.S. forces were careening southward in disarray. 2 The second occasion occurred during the early stages of the Iraq War. Time ’s collective designation of U.S. troops as Person of the Year for 2003 came at a moment when that conflict, too, had taken a turn for the worse. U.S. forces were struggling to suppress a growing insurgency. The difference in Time ’s coverage speaks volumes about the evolving image and status of the Americans sent to fight our wars.
In its first-of-the-year issue for 1951, Time described U.S. forces in Korea as “the nearest approach to a professional army that the U. S. had ever sent into war.” Yet the content of Time ’s cover story belied that statement, depicting troops who were at once dutiful but
Hollywood remains today, as it has been for decades, celebrity central. Yet celebrity has moved well beyond the world of entertainment. Celebrity-athletes who reprise the time-honored rise-and-fall narrative (O. J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong) rivet our attention. Rock-star politicians (Bill and Hill dominate the category) enjoy an exalted status, eliciting the same over-the-top response as rock-star musicians. Then there are the instances of cross-pollination, the merger between actress and NBA star or supermodel and NFL quarterback, elevating the celebrity quotient of both parties and feeding an even greater craving to peer into their lives. In Boston, where I teach, the leading daily newspaper routinely informs its readers (typically with accompanying photograph) when Gisele Bündchen walks her son through the Common or Tom Brady goes bike riding along the Charles River. In the city I call home, the doings of the Bündchen-Brady household qualify as newsworthy indeed.
If the celebrity offers momentary escape from the quotidian, the geek promises empowerment. As used here, geek refers to the moguls of the information age who have demonstrated a genius for converting bytes into dollars: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and their imitators. Yet it also applies to the far more numerous and largely anonymous meme queens who through blogs, forums, social networking sites, instant messaging, and video streaming drive a culture that is moored to nothing more than irreverent whimsy and jeering ridicule. The appeal of this culture lies in its very impermanence. What’s not new is by definition passé.
The geek has largely succeeded in convincing Americans, especially the young and the hip, that instantaneous access to information holds the key to personal fulfillment. In practice, the promised empowerment all too frequently translates into subservience and subordination, a compulsion to tend to the beeps, buzzes, and vibrations of objects supposedly designed to do our bidding. Whether the thickening of the electronic web that envelops us serves to increase the accumulated storehouse of wisdom remains unproven, to put it mildly, the social media fad offering a case in point.
In contrast to the celebrity or the geek, the profile of the warrior does include a prominent moral component. The warrior is the one character actually connoting character, providing assurance that America has not lost its ability to produce brave, self-sacrificing idealists.
Yet in performing that function, the warrior has become something other than a mere soldier. Indeed, the warrior has eclipsed the soldier.
To appreciate the distinction, consider two instances, separated by more than a half century, when Time magazine selected the American fighting man/person as its Man/Person of the Year. The first occurred during the early stages of the Korean War. When Time designated “G. I. Joe as Man of the Year” for 1950, developments on the battlefield were actually looking grim. Communist China had intervened, and U.S. forces were careening southward in disarray. 2 The second occasion occurred during the early stages of the Iraq War. Time ’s collective designation of U.S. troops as Person of the Year for 2003 came at a moment when that conflict, too, had taken a turn for the worse. U.S. forces were struggling to suppress a growing insurgency. The difference in Time ’s coverage speaks volumes about the evolving image and status of the Americans sent to fight our wars.
In its first-of-the-year issue for 1951, Time described U.S. forces in Korea as “the nearest approach to a professional army that the U. S. had ever sent into war.” Yet the content of Time ’s cover story belied that statement, depicting troops who were at once dutiful but
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