Boomers: The Iraq War and Your Second Chance to Save our Democracy

"I've been thinking so much about this lately, while I stand on the corner -- dressed in black during rush hour -- protesting the Iraq war. I was part of the generation that tore our government down, but never took the time to put something back in its place" This from the mouth of a sixty-something grandmother in Wisconsin. I was there last summer helping run a dialogue session between community leaders and veterans. Our theme? the role of the military in US democracy.

This effort at dialogue is just a microcosm of the kind of conversation that we need to have about our nation, how our government is organized to deal with threats, how we appear to the outside world and what plan we can offer to the incoming administration so they can hit the ground running with a distinctly different direction.

The following quotations are from a mid-1990's curriculum for US government staff working in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

"We must address the role that security plays in the development of a democratic state. Our ability to develop and to advance a diverse governance program depends in part on who in the state controls the armed institutions" Today, this sentence could also apply to the United States of America.

Here's another. "Among the key challenges for states undergoing a transition from authoritarian forms of government to more open, transparent systems is how to get defense right after years of military rule"

While the Bush administration has demonstrated many authoritarian tendencies, the twist for America in this description is that our military actually values democratic government, the constitution and our transparent system a good deal more than our elected leaders have for the past 17 years. It is the civilians who, discarding their oversight role -- have allowed so much responsibility to fall to the armed services. It is our civilian elected leaders who have made the topic of the American military forbidden and unavailable for advancing democratic dialogue. Our current president, his cronies and their well oiled echo chamber stop any introspective or even interesting conversation right at the doorway with a shot to the heart. They do this by waving the bloody flag, insinuating disloyalty, weakness, carelessness. This was preceded by a decade of crickets chirping on Capitol Hill -- having worked there during the 1990s, engaging in serious debate about the defense budget was easily avoided because it belonged to that subversive pile of urgent issues that smoldered but never blew up. It lay there along with other forbidden topics like Palestinian human rights and climate change. This is how dialogue becomes subversive and the linchpin of democratic government decays. And this is how we missed our chance -- throughout the 1990s at the end of the Cold War and when the conservatives owned Congress -- to talk about new roles and missions for the military. Remember, all this deliberate amnesia was on top of a clear abdication on the topic by much of the public after Vietnam. So the scary people filled the vacuum. Great.

It's not the military's job to step in and correct this huge error. Indeed, such interventions are what citizen-led democratic systems must work to prevent. George Washington knew this. So did every other former military head of state in our country. Dialogue between citizens and their military is the cornerstone of any healthy, thriving democratic system. American democracy is seen as a global model for civil military relations because the military is politically agnostic. But strict boundaries on political participation have blurred a great deal lately. Despite this, they remain vital. Its up to the rest of us to fight back the right wing talking points that seek to drag the military into the policy arena. (We need to get ready, because a zillion dollar right-wing 527 just hired the king of sketchball tactics to smear anyone who doesn't preemptively grovel for them) We must not get distracted by these pesky goons... for we'll lose sight of the restorative power of really transforming our democracy by changing the way we talk about the military, about power, about the use of force and all other attendant security issues as this war winds down. Movies like "Stop Loss" will jump start this conversation, but the rest of us need to be the echo-chamber. In so doing, we can talk in a way that is comfortable for veterans i.e. not singularly focussed on Iraq, but on what it means to serve. If we can translate this desire to our elected leaders, we will build a defense policy worthy of all the public servants who risk their lives for us, and with priorities that will actually protect us.

Here are some communication tips for progressives: garnered from years of working with friends and colleagues who are military professionals:

FIRST: Know the military oath of enlistment: As you can see, not a lot of wiggle room for independent thought and criticism, but very solidly on the side of our Constitution:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

(Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

Progressives must not allow conservatives to continually define the civil-military debate. We must jump in and redefine it, and here are a few ways to do that:

Acknowledge the crisis in civil-military relations and the progressives' part in making it so.

Show that you know the cardinal rule of civil-military relations: Civilians are in charge of policy. The more we can help to make this clear to the public, the more we are seen to stand up for public service and to align with the military.

Interrupt the conservative narrative. Turn the tables on national security by flipping their strong suit against them (they see themselves as "supporting" the troops, and we must, too). But there is a difference between supporting war and supporting our troops, which is a fundamentally flawed connection made by conservatives. Standing against war policy can be standing up for the troops. Conservatives have been very successful at putting anti-war policy speakers on the defensive. This effectively removes the military from legitimate criticism by putting a personal, soldierly face on it, thus shutting down debate. It is easy, when engaged in discussions of civil-military relations, to allow conservatives to paint you as picking a fight with the military, or being anti-military. You must not let this happen.

It is vitally important to remind people that we are spending more and more on defense, but we're getting less and less security for it. We need reform across the board.

Don't equate Afghanistan with Iraq. These are two completely separate wars, fought for different reasons. Make sure you know what you're talking about if you want to discuss these conflicts.

Don't equate war spending with defense spending. Separating them gives you much more leverage with tradeoff arguments.

If you're a veteran, or from a family of veterans, say so. If you have friends or relatives who are deployed, or in the service, say so. You can then talk about what you know of their experience.

Instead of saying "cut the military budget," talk about reform of national security. This is not about trading the safety of our troops (body armor, equipment) for some amorphous security issues. It is about both -- and we must remind people that the meaning of security has changed.

Remind others that our current policies endanger us. Certainly it cannot be argued that we have empowered a whole new generation of terrorists, and it is due to our crisis in national security leadership.

RHETORIC TO AVOID

Don't confuse commercial defense interests with public servants in the military. Lockheed Martin, for instance, is not the Air Force, no matter how hard they try to blur the lines.

Don't assume that the military is a monolith. The Pentagon is run by career service personnel and political appointees and the politicals control the policy.

Instead of saying "militarization," say "over-reliance on the military." The fact that the military has taken on so much of our foreign policy needs is a civilian leadership failure, not the usurping of power by the military. Congress completely missed the opportunity to discuss this in the 1990's when our troops were involved in non-traditional peacekeeping missions. The military understands that we need to move toward persuasion and away from coercion as our guiding principle. But they can't become the public advocates of it. That is our job.

What better opportunity to renew our democratic system, by doing the opposite of what happened in the 1970s after the Vietnam war? Boomers, here is your task: enlist veterans, other public minded citizens and individuals who care about these topics to come together and talk... just talk about the role of the military in US democracy. What we know of it, how we're related to it, how it impacts our views of public service...all of these simple queries are places to start having a vital national conversation.

There's more of these tips coming. The White House Project will soon have a dialogue handbook free and available to download on our website.