Read Online Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country by Andrew J. Bacevich - Free Book Online Page B

doubtful, willing but less than enthusiastic, not terribly competent but capable in extremis of rising to the occasion. “The U. S. fighting man” sent to Korea, observed Time , “was not civilization’s crusader, but destiny’s draftee.” Having no particular desire to fight, he viewed the war itself as “a terrifying affront.” The GI was a bundle of contradictions: “soft and tough, resourceful and unskilled, unbelievably brave and unbelievably timid, thoroughly disciplined and scornful of discipline.” Time freely acknowledged the GI’s shortcomings. “His defects were many, serious—and understandable.” Not least among them was an inadequate level of training, for which commanders compensated through a lavish reliance on matériel. As “the most comfort-loving creature who had ever walked the earth,” the American soldier “went forth into battle, brandishing his chocolate bars [and] his beer cans.” 3
    Still, Time concluded, “he had proved himself able to endure the thrusts of a brave and well-led enemy.” 4 Illustrating the article and bearing persuasive witness to that judgment were sixteen small black-and-white photos, each hardly larger than a postage stamp. Battlefield portraits taken by famous Time-Life photographers like David Douglas Duncan and Carl Mydans, most showed drawn and haggard foot soldiers who had seemingly found little glory in war. By no means masters of all they surveyed, they could at least claim to have survived.
    Time’s first-of-year issue for 2004 took a decidedly different tack. To judge from the images in its pages , a reader in 1951 might conclude that the army in Korea consisted entirely of white males. A half century later, the magazine proudly designated U.S. forces “the most diverse military in our history,” depicting U.S. forces in Iraq as a harmonious blend of black, brown, and white, male and female. Better still, they were “all volunteers, in contrast to most nations.” 5
    Gone were the grainy black-and-white snapshots. Florid, large-format images showed neatly groomed, well-turned-out, and remarkably well-fed young people, both on the job and off-duty. On operations, they carried (or were encased in) high-tech gear that emphasized their technological sophistication. No one appeared haggard, hungry, or in need of a shower.
    In one photograph, an armed American searches an Iraqi family’s “sleeping quarters for guns or suspicious stores of cash” while the “residents watch warily.” In another, an army captain “listens as an Iraqi woman begs for the release of her son, who has been taken into custody.” In a palace once belonging to Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son, a battalion commander and his staff peer at overhead images of Baghdad as they “plan a move against insurgents.” Together, observed Time , these troops “are the face of America, its might and goodwill, in a region unused to democracy.” 6
    Declaring the Iraq War “an expression of American idealism in all its arrogant generosity,” Time depicted those troops as the agents of that idealism and generosity, without any of the arrogance. “They are the bright sharp instrument of a blunt policy.” Not too blunt, however, Time assuring its readers that “the campaign of shock and awe was always aimed at mind and heart.” 7
    An essay by the distinguished military historian John Keegan provided the cherry atop Time ’s coverage. Although carrying the title “The Making of the American G. I.,” the piece actually described the GI’s demise, explaining how the citizen-soldier had given way to the warrior-professional, a development that Keegan heartily endorsed. “There is something Kiplingesque about the modern American warrior,” he began. “He is a volunteer and a professional, as the long-serving regular of Rudyard Kipling’s day was.” In that regard, he was an apt successor to “Kipling’s archetypal soldier, Tommy Atkins.” Like Tommy, the American warrior feels a