Andrew Bacevich
On a recent Veterans Day, merchants in my corner of New England offered vets an abundance of good deals: free coffee, free doughnuts, free pizza, free car washes, and as much as 30 percent off assorted retail purchases. Here was “thank you for your service” as something more than an empty sentiment.
I got my car washed and took a pass on the rest.
I confess that this gaudy display of generosity—mostly from franchise outlets rather than mom-and-pop stores—annoyed me. Was I witnessing an authentic display of heartfelt gratitude? Or had Veterans Day become yet one more pretext for corporate virtue-signaling?
Or consider this third possibility: in our era of “forever wars,” Veterans Day may well combine elements of each. It is both contrived and genuine, cynical yet also sincere, deeply fraudulent and simultaneously expressing an important truth.
Despite such incongruities, or perhaps because of them, Veterans Day serves an essential civic purpose. The goodies and giveaways that impart a celebratory air help to mask a contradiction lodged at the very heart of the American military system: in a nation insistent upon remaining the dominant power on the planet, only those actively seeking to serve actually do so. Meanwhile, the vast majority of citizens remain content to stay on the sidelines—and to distribute gratuities like doughnuts and pizza once a year.
When it comes to providing for what the Constitution refers to as the common defense, no collective obligation exists. On this point, governing authorities and most Americans are of one mind: together they have agreed to dissolve any link between citizenship and national security, thereby waiving the principle of equality on which the republic was ostensibly founded and to which American democracy today is ostensibly devoted. For earlier generations of Americans, war entailed widely shared sacrifice. Certainly, this was true of the conflicts that Americans have enshrined as formative: the Civil War and World War II. Today, however, well-established mechanisms insulate the people from wars waged in their name.
So those who serve do so voluntarily. The motives prompting them to join up vary. Among them are family tradition, ambition, the urge for adventure, the prospect of a steady job with benefits, the possibility of personal betterment, and, yes, perhaps even patriotism. Prior to Vietnam, it was also not uncommon to hear military service described as a way to “make something of oneself” or even to “become a man.” In any number of pulp novels and B movies, this transformation figured as an overarching theme: time spent in uniform, especially during wartime, offering a pathway to manhood along with tutelage in the meaning of courage and honor. On this score, to don a uniform was to encounter, emulate, and ultimately exemplify masculine virtue.
I do not know whether the contributors to this volume ever subscribed to that last notion, with all its gendered baggage. I suspect that few if any of them do so today. Yet however much their actual experiences may have differed from what books and movies once led recruits to expect, they did offer a form of edification.
General Sherman’s famous dictum that “war is hell” is accurate as far as it goes. Yet though essentially true, it turns out in practice to be insufficient. To participate in war is to submit to an involuntary education, one that demolishes preconceived notions, both superficial and profound, about matters ranging from one’s self to the meaning of human existence. War burns away naïveté. In at least some participants, very much including the contributors to this volume, it leaves a residue of wisdom.
“You did not return from hell with empty hands.” So wrote a French intellectual to an American journalist who had served as a Soviet agent during the 1930s. Even allowing for Gallic hyperbole, a similar judgment pertains to the writers whose essays appear in Paths of Dissent. They have not returned to civilian life with empty hands. In sharing what they experienced in uniform and in charting their individual journeys to dissent, they offer their fellow citizens an invaluable opportunity to learn from and reflect on the last twenty years of disastrous military misadventures.
What we Americans owe vets is not free pizza but the decency to hear them out and ponder what they have learned. There is value in their testimony. To listen attentively is the least the rest of us can do. It just may be that as citizens we do have an obligation after all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project would never have come to fruition without the timely support of the Lannan Foundation. On behalf of Danny Sjursen and myself, I want to thank Lannan, and especially Sarah Knopp, director of Lannan’s Cultural Freedom Program, for providing the wherewithal that made Paths of Dissent possible. This is not the first instance in which Danny and I have individually benefited from the Lannan Foundation’s generosity. It is one of America’s underappreciated treasures.
Thanks also to John Wright, my estimable agent; to Sara Bershtel, the esteemed publisher of Metropolitan Books; and especially to Grigory Tovbis, senior editor at Metropolitan, who skillfully transformed a pile of essays into a book in which Danny and I take real pride.
Danny and I owe a special debt to all those who contributed to this collection. We appreciate the patience and good humor of those who worked with us through multiple revisions. We hope that they can join us in finding satisfaction in the result.
I will conclude on a personal note. Danny and I have worked together on this project from conception to completion. It has been a most gratifying partnership. I am honored to call him my friend.
Andrew Bacevich
Walpole, Massachusetts
December 2021