Antiheroic Lessons

“Support the troops” is an unthinking example of jingoism. Of course support the troops, heroes, to a man, and woman. And wave that flag. Don’t read Wilfred Owen, and don’t listen to Phil Ochs: “Call it ‘peace’ or call it ‘treason,’ call it ‘love’ or call it ‘reason,’ but I ain’t a-marchin’ anymore.” Or even read carefully the poor man’s Phil Ochs: little Bobby Zuckerman:

“You masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks”

“Soldiers are heroes!” No, they are not. Soldiers are not necessarily heroes. They are employees of the state, with the dubious allowance that they may murder for pay. Support troops by reigning in governments.

Am I making a jokey point that we should mock “our” troops? No, it's a serious claim that we should be wary of equating the mere fact that an armed force is funded by the 20% lifted as PAYE each month with some kind of implied duty of blind boosterish support. I can make a well-reasoned point out of it: a soldier is a person with a job, and for that job they are remunerated, as are all of us in “gainful employ.” That you can be paid and trained to kill for Queen and Country is an interesting comment on contemporary morality and social behaviour: murderers are reviled, so why should state-sponsored killers be revered? There are no “good wars” and no “just fights” in the world of international affairs: the casus belli since time immemorial has been the gain of lucre for a minority, paid for by the blood and tears of the masses, over here, and over there...mostly over there.

As for heroism, some soldiers are heroes. One soldier carried a dead Afghan child 3 miles on foot back to his family, and was subsequently shot, and discharged to lose his family’s home. He’s a hero, in an immoral scandal of barbarism writ global at the turn of the millennium. Other soldiers debase our capacity for feeling others: you can't claim with a straight face that the guys who raped that 14 year old Iraqi girl after massacring her family fulfilled the criteria of “heroism.” Moreover, who would support the rape and slaughter of darker hewed children?

You support “the troops” by remembering a soldier is like a postman – she is employed to play a role. It’s our call whether we want to continue to pay for that role to be raping and strafing foreign villages, or something noble; or, maybe, just genuine international humanitarian interventionism shorn of the liars rhetoric covering for the geopolitical Great Game of cornering the globe’s resource hubs. By jingo, do away with jingoism: it’s the last refuge of the idiot. We all live on Earth, and it’s a small slice of the Cosmos by area. If you want to do something useful for soldiers, then read the paper and get involved with constraining the mad machinations of our “dear leaders.” Before they lead us into another war. And remember, again, what Phil said: “it’s always the old who lead us to the wars, and always the young who fall...”