The Long & Dubious War

I found the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, in my son’s room, sandwiched between a biology textbook and a sheaf of math notes. I first read All Quiet when I was 18 or 19, a few years older than my son is now; at the time I was stationed at Yokota Air Base in Japan, and by happenstance I found the novel in the base library and checked it out because I had heard it was a classic.

My son was assigned All Quiet in his English class, and perhaps for that reason he found the novel “boring” and “tedious” though I give him credit for having the sense not to call it “irrelevant”, a term he often uses to describe his sophomore classes. Having no more need of it, he gladly loaned me the copy, and so, putting aside a volume of essays by Christopher Hitchens, I began reading All Quiet for the second time in my life.

The United States has been “at war” continuously for the past eleven years, in several countries, all of them Muslim. Afghanistan came first, of course, and then Iraq, and then, in no particular order -- Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya. The results have been sketchy at best, the objectives ever changing, and the milestones and timelines for exit elusive.

It’s astonishing to realize that the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan twice as long as World War I lasted. Obviously, the death toll in Afghanistan – on both sides – pales in comparison to the nine million or so human beings slaughtered in World War I. As any reader of All Quiet knows, slaughter is the correct word. Heavy artillery, poison gas, machine guns, grenades, tanks, bayonets; rain, snow, mud, disease, malnutrition; attack and counter-attack; and death, death, death, on all sides.

The civilian population during World War I also suffered, and this stands as a central difference between warfare in 1914 – 1918 and today. Food was often scarce in the countries at war in 1914, as were other everyday comforts. Able-bodied men were conscripted and sent to the front. Few civilians escaped some form of sacrifice for the war effort, and few emerged at the end of hostilities without suffering loss in one form or another.

Contrast that with modern, American-style warfare. Over the last eleven years, Americans have not been asked to sacrifice at all, and except for the constant tributes to our “brave men and women in uniform”, our “valiant warriors”, one could hardly guess we are a nation at war at all. Collective suffering is avoided because our wars are fought by an all-volunteer military – a professional standing army – backed by a multitude of contractors for hire. If the draft had been in effect in 2001 and 2003, it’s unlikely we would have invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq so cavalierly because there would have been a tangible cost, and undoubtedly a popular backlash against open-ended conflicts with a tactic rather than an enemy.

The war in Afghanistan drags on and on because the politicians and generals cannot devise a way to extract our troops without admitting failure. They assure us progress is being made, that the Afghans are nearly ready to assume responsibility for their own security, and that the Taliban is on the run. (After eleven years and billions of dollars expended, not to mention lives on both sides, wouldn’t you expect to see concrete results?) Of course our political and military leaders cannot admit the whole thing was a wretched mistake born of hubris and desire for revenge after 9/11, because to speak the hard, unvarnished truth would undermine many of our sacred beliefs and institutions. Imagine a government spokesperson informing a mother or sister or wife that her son, brother or husband died needlessly. “We regret to inform you that your son was killed because our nation’s politicians are cowardly and stupid.” No, the politicians and generals must make us believe the cause is noble even if it isn’t, just as they sell us the fantasy that in only one more year – or eighteen months at most -- the Afghans will be ready to defend themselves, allowing us to depart with honor.

The lads in Paul Baumer’s company had no beef against their French or Russian counterparts, not as individuals anyway. Soldiers were pretty much the same, regardless of the flag they fought for; they were called up, they went, they fought, they experienced terror and relief, saw comrades mutilated and killed, and each of them desperately wanted to survive to return to the life they had once known. The truth was that prime ministers, presidents, monarchs, industrialists and generals instigated wars and dispatched young men to fight and die in them.

As one of Paul’s comrades said, “There must be some people to whom the war is useful.”

World War I was never out of sight or mind; the same can’t be said for America’s long and dubious war against Muslim terrorists.