
Two Decades of War Have Eroded the Morale of America’s Troops - johnny313
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/left-behind/556844/?single_page=true
======
nickik
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded,
because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent
of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and
taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of
the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended;
its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied;
and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the
force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced
in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of
a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by
both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

—James Madison

Pretty much exactly what happened. Pretty smart these guys.

~~~
brobdingnagians
Every time I read things by the founding fathers and the era immediately after
them, I am always surprised by how many extremely insightful people the time
period produced and that they actually got into positions of power where they
could organize things according to constitutional principles. Pretty amazing
group of people in one place and at one time in a culture and circumstances
that could have a large impact.

~~~
graphitezepp
Founding father fetishizing (or whatever you want to call it) is very taboo in
lefty circles because of how much conservatives do it. But that doesn't stop
me personally from thinking that that group of people had the best ideas and
developed the best framework for government the world has ever seen. It's just
a shame it didn't work out to their intentions in practice.

~~~
Delmania
No, they didn't. They had some good ideas inspired by the Enlightenment and by
Romanticism, but quite a few expressed the idea that the Constitution should
be reviewed regularly and updated and adjusted for changing conditions. The
issue is that many "conservatives" believe the Constitution was perfect from
the get go.

~~~
noarchy
You have a point there, in that the Constitution was designed to be
changeable. It was not supposed to be easy to change, but _possible_. But
there has been just one new amendment since 1971, and none since 1992 _.

_[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-
seventh_Amendment_to_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-
seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

~~~
Spooky23
Why would you need to change the constitution anymore? Now we just twist into
a pretzel to reinterpret the meaning of things.

------
geofft
If you really supported the troops, you would do everything possible to keep
them out of combat zones and safe at home as far as possible. You would only
ask them to make the ultimate sacrifice when their country's freedom is truly
at stake and when their death would have a meaning.

In the words of National Security Advisor John Bolton, "I confess I had no
desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam
already lost."

~~~
meritt
If you're quoting John Bolton as someone who wants to avoid war, you probably
should do a bit of research on John Bolton.

[https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2005/04/28/boltons-
conservati...](https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2005/04/28/boltons-conservative-
ideology-has-roots-in-yale-experience/)

John Bolton was extremely supportive of the war in Vietnam. He simply utilized
his privilege to avoid being drafted so _he_ didn't have to go to war.

~~~
geofft
Yes, I'm quite aware of his attitudes to war itself—he's certainly not someone
who wants to avoid it. I'm simply quoting him as someone who understands, very
clearly, what's good for individual soldiers. No one better understands how
America slaughters its own people than the man making sure he's on the other
side of the knife.

------
Nokinside
Isn't this the constant feature of long lasting, low intensity conflicts and
occupations?

The morale of occupying force starts to decline under constant resistance.
This has been true in the Latin America, Africa, Caucasus, Asia etc.
Eventually you end up with high crime, corruption and death squads.

------
jseliger
There's an interesting book by Tom Ricks, _The Generals_ , that's also
congruent with this article: [https://jakeseliger.com/2012/12/18/the-generals-
tom-ricks](https://jakeseliger.com/2012/12/18/the-generals-tom-ricks). Ricks
points out that there's a distinct differences between incentives /
consequences for front-line troops and generals. Since the Korean War, we've
basically insulated generals from consequences for failure; they get fat
paydays, admiration, and cushy consulting gigs after retirement regardless of
performance. Which is _not_ true for front-line troops. In other words, high-
level commanders have no skin in the game:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/042528462X](https://www.amazon.com/dp/042528462X).

~~~
nickik
Absolutly Petraeus and his whole crew are total failures but everybody makes
him out to be some military genius. Absolutly absurd. The guy failed
everywhere they sent him.

------
gaius
Western militaries were and are designed for high-intensity armoured warfare
in mitteleuropa against a near-tech-equivalent opponent. That capability
cannot be sacrificed incase it is really needed - but an Army designed for
that isn’t good for the ongoing Middle East and Afghan situation. It isn’t
trained or equipped for it and hasn’t recruited for it.

What the West should have done is designated another force for that. Something
like (but not exactly) keeping the Army as it was and transforming the Marines
into a desert-fighting force. Or taking elements of the Army and Marines and
making an entirely new force. Or something like the French Foreign Legion.

~~~
yborg
Armies in general are not good at fighting insurgencies, especially those
supported by a 3rd party that can itself not be engaged in full scale war. But
your statement in general is incorrect at least as far as the US military,
which has literally been engaged in continuous warfare against insurgencies
and banana republics for more than 25 years. If they aren't designed for this
yet, I don't know how many centuries it would take. The fact of the matter is
that the US now has ballooned what it euphemistically designates as Special
Operations forces to over 70,000 men - 10x the size of the Foreign Legion.

If they had 700,000 men deployed in SOCOM they would still lose. The Roman
Empire showed how you defeat an insurgency militarily - by
exterminating/recruiting the population of the target nation. You do this by
establishing and expanding colonies along with large military garrisons to
protect them. This takes generations, though, and requires either finding
enough volunteers to colonize, or forcibly shipping people to these colonies,
which tends to not have the desired effect. The Romans accomplished this
mostly by giving land in conquered territories to ex-soldiers, along with
members of the conquered population as slaves. These strategems are largely
taboo now, so the "mowing the grass" strategy of continual armed sweeps is
what's left and just like with your lawn, it will never end.

~~~
nickik
The insane thing about the US is that they have some polices that are
practically impossible but they will not change them because it would be
politically tricky.

To both have a real country in Afganistan where a group of minorites, that
don't get often get along, that make up 60% of the population supress the
largest minority of 40% is totally insane in a country like Afganistan.

The Pashtun tribes have dominated the their region and beyond for a long time,
and they are essentially a warrior culutre that will never give up. At least
not with the level of violance the west is willing to employ.

The problem is that the local allies that the US uses in Afganistan also don't
know the area they are fighting in and they don't know the language of the
people they are fighting. This makes the 'local' support far less useful then
theory says it should be.

~~~
gaius
_not with the level of violance the west is willing to employ._

Not even with the level of violence the Soviets were willing to employ

------
tejohnso
"The Founders of the republic originally wanted to force Congress to vote
every two years just to keep a standing Army; these days Congress won’t even
permit a vote to replace an Authorization for the Use of Military Force that
was passed prior to the Iraq War and that we are now using to justify fighting
against groups that didn’t even exist back then."

This sounds like it would be in violation of a parent statute of some kind. Or
maybe the Authorization was deliberately left open ended. Which should also be
illegal.

------
ry4n413
What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
larkeith
As someone fairly disassociated from the US armed forces, I wonder how much
impact the confirmation that all WMD-related rationale for the Iraq war was
fabricated had on troop morale and faith in stated goals.

~~~
scotty79
I'd guess none. Lying is ok when it's done by the good guys. Especially to
harm bad guys. Holywood taught us that.

------
mnm1
> I’ve often heard veterans wish for a draft, for something that would drag
> more Americans into orbit around the dark star that is the country’s
> constant exercise of military power.

Just when I think I cannot support our stupid wars and troops less, something
like this comes along and does the job. I'd rather break my own leg or spend
years in the hell that is American prison than take up arms for what America
has seen fit to go to war to in every conflict since WWII. Maybe if we didn't
have this seemingly never-ending record of fighting wars for idiotic reasons,
losing almost every single one, our soldiers' and public's morale wouldn't be
so low. What else can one possibly expect when fighting wars that aren't meant
to end, against enemies that have never harmed us, for no fucking reason
anyone can possibly explain or comprehend? To be fair, the American people
have not even had a choice of a candidate that didn't support such wars from
either party at least since 9/11 and for the most part even before then. The
troops finally realizing how idiotic and purposeless conflicts like the one in
Iraq are could be a great thing for America. If enough of them speak out or
even refuse to serve, maybe we won't be involved in such crimes against
humanity. But let's face it, the politicians who don't have to go to war or
send their children to war seemingly will never get the message. Possibly the
only thing that might change their minds is seeing their own children bleeding
out in the middle of a highway and coming back in coffins. I guess this is
what happens when we have a military like the US has and no actual enemies. In
the meantime, actual enemies rising are generally ignored, and by the current
administration even encouraged to become more powerful. At this point, I'm
quite certain the idea of "winning" any of the conflicts we're currently in or
will be in the near future is mere fantasy and quite delusional. So is the
idea that a draft will ever be supported or come back successfully. The
internet exists so at this point, I can't imagine anyone but the poorest, the
dumbest, and the most violent can even twist their minds enough to not be
disgusted enough by our past actions to support any war the US is or might be
in. That's probably why we're enlisting klansmen and other similar lowlifes--
no one else is insane or stupid enough to enroll of their own free will.

------
dustfinger
Won't this thread just degrade into politics? Maybe this article should be
flagged for not being in the spirit of HN?

~~~
MajorSauce
I personally found the article very interesting, but I'm with you that it will
entice political comments.

~~~
dustfinger
I am not judging the article in its own right, only its suitability for HN
given the guidelines.

------
wz1000
"Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but what's
worse I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about
how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.

America making a movie about what Vietnam did to their soldiers is like a
serial killer telling you what stopping suddenly for hitchhikers did to his
clutch."

\- Frankie Boyle

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwuTI-V8SI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwuTI-V8SI)

~~~
adventured
Is there a category for a serial killer that's trying to prevent another
dramatically worse serial killer from killing and enslaving a nation for
generations?

The US didn't try to conquer North Vietnam. It didn't try to annex the nation.
It got involved in an existing civil war - on the premise of fighting
Communism's spread - and tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South
Vietnam for exactly the same reason it acted to keep North Korea from
conquering South Korea. The US left Vietnam, the North went on with its
conquering anyway.

The US killed vast numbers of North Koreans in the Korean War as well, in the
defense of the South. Why isn't that treated exactly the same way that the
Vietnam War is? A curious inconsistentcy of popular sentiment: it's because to
either wish the US had failed in Korea, or never got involved at all, is to be
ok with the idea that South Korea would very likely look like North Korea
today and that the South's people would have had the same horrific history the
past six decades.

Let's see how things turned out.

South Korea: GDP per capita of Spain & Italy, ~$30,000.

Vietnam: GDP per capita of East Timor & the Solomon Islands, ~$2,300.

~~~
imbokodo
> tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam

That is not what US internal diplomatic notes said at the time, not in modern
interviews if McNamara, Clark Clifford etc.

The Vichy French colonialists, then the non-Vichy French, then the Americans
fought to retain the Vietnamese colony in the south. The fight was against the
National Liberation Front in the south - Buddhist monks, Paris educated
professionals, peasants etc. The north had little involvement until mid-1968.
Also French Indochina was one country until 1954, and the ceasefire lines were
supposed to be temporary barring national elections, which the US opposed.
There never was a "South Vietnam".

> The South's people would have the same horrific history

US policy during the Korean War was to fire on civilians, as happened at No
Gun Ri. South Korea was under a series of dictatorships with a more horrific
history than anything happening up north until the late 1970s up until the
Gwangju massacre in 1980 in South Korea. The northern economy eclipsed the
southern one as well. Things began changing in both countries in the 1980s and
1990s for a variety of internal and external reasons.

~~~
Paradigma11
"The north had little involvement until mid-1968."

That's neither the position of vietnam nor the US. Even during the separation
the North left 10 000 vietcongs in the south to sow discord and guerrila
activities. The different opposition organisations were soon under direct
control from the north.

At least that is what the "People's Army of Vietnam" is saying which can be
read here: [https://www.amazon.com/Victory-Vietnam-Official-
History-1954...](https://www.amazon.com/Victory-Vietnam-Official-
History-1954-1975/dp/0700621873)

------
anonu
War is necessary to fuel the military industrial complex. Without war there is
no ultimate purpose in developing weapons, pouring money into r&d, exporting
arms and ammunition to the rest of the world.

This is a cynical view but I see America as sticking to it fairly consistently
over the last two centuries.

------
quantumofmalice
The founders were against a standing army, preferring citizen-based militias.
Looking at the behavior of Imperial America, one sees the wisdom.

I suppose one bright spot in this otherwise dismal time is that both the left
and the right mostly agree that we shouldn't be dropping bombs on people.

~~~
sneak
If the american left and american right agreed on that, we probably wouldn’t
have been at war for the last 17 years, sadly.

~~~
quantumofmalice
The american left and right (and the maligned center) _do_ agree on it, you
can look at the polls on the syrian intervention. That's the insanity. Our
foreign policy is controlled by people who do not care what we think.

~~~
Density
Evidence of a deep state?

~~~
pmyteh
That political elites (publicly) disagree with the public doesn't mean there's
a deep state. It just means that your democracy isn't very responsive.

'Deep state' is being thrown around a lot these days. It's proper meaning is
in relation to things like Italy's Propaganda Due lodge: a tightly-connected
network of people who are in a strong sense anti-democratic, who are not
publicly known but have something of a veto over the actions of an elected
government.

 _Some_ of those features apply to the anti-Trump official world in the US,
but only in a much weaker form. And this isn't to do with it, not least
because Trump is the one pushing the button.

~~~
rdiddly
You're arguing a tautology - unresponsive democracy by definition is when the
will of the people is not responded to. Opinions or desires of the people in
that case are not correlated with the actions of the state. The state instead
responds primarily to the elites. The elites are the deep state.

~~~
pmyteh
No, I'm arguing that the concepts of unresponsive elites, and a shadowy deep
state, are distinct. The latter is a lot rarer (and, frankly, a lot more
sinister) than the former.

The idea that the actions of the state don't correlate with the desires of the
people is more-or-less deliberate in a representative (rather than direct)
democracy, incidentally. As a political scientist I find it rather offensive
that the word 'democracy' has been repurposed to mean a kind of replaceable
oligarchy rather than government-by-the-people, but that ship sailed decades
ago.

~~~
dragonwriter
> No, I'm arguing that the concepts of unresponsive elites, and a shadowy deep
> state, are distinct.

They are distinct but not disjoint; the “deep state” concept is a specific
form of unresponsive elite.

> The idea that the actions of the state don't correlate with the desires of
> the people is more-or-less deliberate in a representative (rather than
> direct) democracy

No, it's not, in general; the purpose of representative democracy is to allow
the actions of the state to give effect to the desires of the people, on the
premise that even most people with the requisite ability to effectively decide
how to give effect to their desires aren't optimally employed spending all
their time figuring out _how_ the state should do that.

It's true that the US federal model of an unusually large number of barriers
and unusually _un_ democratic selection and allocation of representation is
designed to prevent government from representing the desire of the people, but
the US system isn't the Platonic ideal of representative democracy.

~~~
pmyteh
> No, it's not, in general; the purpose of representative democracy is to
> allow the actions of the state to give effect to the desires of the people,
> on the premise that even most people with the requisite ability to
> effectively decide how to give effect to their desires aren't optimally
> employed spending all their time figuring out how the state should do that.

That's one argument for representative democracy (and, I think, the best one
for why participatory democracy is tricky) but it's not the intention behind
existing representative institutions, at least in the US and the UK (and the
countries who inherited different parts of our systems).

Edmund Burke's address to the electors of Bristol contains one of the most
famous declarations of this principle: 'Your representative owes you, not his
industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he
sacrifices it to your opinion.'

The Federalist papers show that the US model was also not designed to operate
as an efficient aggregator of citizens' opinions, but more as a means of the
public endorsing competent and honest representatives to govern on their
behalf.

The classic book-length exposition of this model (which is basically modern
elite orthodoxy) is 'Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy', by Joseph
Schumpeter. David Held's 'Models of Democracy' is a good comparative text,
though there are lots of those to chose from.

------
nickik
> This was part of the much-heralded “success” of the surge, George W. Bush’s
> decision to increase troop presence in Iraq and commit to a strategy
> grounded in the new counterinsurgency field manual General David Petraeus
> put out in 2006.

Yeah, this was the time the US military did the bidding of the Supreme Islamic
Councile and helped to ethnically cleanse Baghdad.

Givin support to people like the Badr Brigades who went around with
powerdrills and killed all non-Shia residents.

The level of violence went down because the Sunni were defeated. They are just
20% and they have no chance against the other 60% that control the government
and 100'000 marines.

The US also made deals with the Tribs in the country side. This worked as long
as America was there and giving them protection and support. Once the US left
it took a couple years and many of these tribes joined ISIS.

The narrative the this counterinsurgency thing 'worked' is utter nonsense.
When Petraeus tried the same strategy in Afganistan where there was not a
majority who was willing or able to utterly crush a small minority it failed
completly.

