Joe’s Intro

“Two weeks ago, as I was starting my sixth month of duty in Iraq, I was forced to return to the USA for surgery for an injury I sustained prior to my deployment. With luck, I’ll return to Iraq to finish my tour.

I left Baghdad and a war that has every indication that we are winning, to return to a demoralized country much like the one I returned to in 1971 after my tour in Vietnam. Maybe it’s because I’ll turn 60 years old in just four months, but I’m tired:”

1) Who is Joe and why should we listen to him?

In Joe’s first paragraphs, he let’s us know that he is a strong supporter of winning the war in Iraq while introducing himself as a credibly established, reasonable and trustworthy voice regarding matters of insurgent warfare. He presents us his credentials of first hand comparative experience and age-proof loyalty to service. The premise is that we should value and trust what this [militarily experienced] man has to say.

Let’s take an objective look into this premise…

Volunteering for US military service is traditionally revered and considered an honorable act of duty and sacrifice; this idea is deeply embedded in our cultural heritage. In main stream American culture, its politically incorrect suicide to challenge this notion built on the honoring the sacrifice of service members in the name of noble causes like liberty, freedom, democracy and so on.

While I agree that military and civil service can yield noble results, I also recognized that there a good and bad soldiers, commanders, strategies, rationale for war etc. which yield innocent victims, support corporate greed, destroy hope, lead to military dictatorships, traumatize survivors and so on. There are countless examples that reference the good, the bad and the ugly sides of military service.

Clearly, just by being involved in the military or civil service, does not automatically prove that Joe or anyone else is a just, noble, fair, compassionate, bad or trust worthy individual. The only way to reasonably assess Joe’s credibility as a trust worthy character would be to make a careful analysis of Joe’s actions in and out of uniform. However, that’s not a practical option so let’s focus on what we can assume about Joe, the 60 year old veteran of the army.

Joe, a career military man, probably has gone through basic training and is well indoctrinated into military culture, it’s rules and customs. The general method behind basic training in the military is to physically and psychologically break down the character of an individual and then build that person back up with a new set of principals including but not limited to; obedience, aggression, endurance, discipline, loyalty etc.. This break down to build back up methodology is similar to training some sports teams receive and it is the fundamental mechanism of torture. It’s all a, “shock and awe,” form of influence ['nurture'] to challenge human nature in order to influence human behavior – destroy it to rebuild it – the physical metaphor is war itself. I think that it is safe to assume that Joe’s world view is somewhat influenced by this experience.

Responding To Joe:

If Joe is a nice guy, not too much in my face and lets me talk without interruption, I might say to him, “I’m tired of good men and women fighting and dying for bad causes whether they believe in the cause or not.”

If Joe insisted on being an aggressive jerk, I might throw a few other things at him to call into doubt his core principals of obedience, aggression(laugh at his aggression), endurance (ptsd his age and it’s sexual side effect), discipline, and loyalty to his country, the troops, justice, truth etc…. you know, break things down a bit before you build them back up.