31 January 2008

The Two Hundred Days


Bronze Troops at the Korean War Memorial, Washington, DC

I think it must have started in the Vietnam Era, at least the modern version. It is appropriate to take a moment on it, since it is the anniversary of the Tet Offensive, the tactical disaster for the Viet Cong that became the instrument of strategic victory for North Vietnamese Regulars. It is all in the message, after all.

There had been draft riots and ways around it since the institution was invented. The way the Draft worked allowed most of the wealthier members of American society to find a way around the Draft.

The easiest way was the student deferment, which provided a means to sit things out and see what was going to happen. I did Vietnam that way, and the luck of the timing was such that it was mostly over by the time I was eligible to be called.

There were other, more elaborate ways to spin the student status, which is how former President Clinton did it. Our current President was able to secure a more ideologically convenient means, landing commissions in Guard or Reserve units that were unlikely to be called up.

In 1968, we all marveled at my college roommate's foresight in enlisting in the Coast Guard Reserves, where he spent two weeks every summer painting light-houses. He was serene that he was not going to be liable for the draft when our college days were done.

He looked great in his bell-bottom dungarees with the Petty Officer's crow on the sleeve of his blue work-shirt, thoroughly alien to the campus environment.

That was how the vets ceased to be the kids next door to the people who work at the New York Times, and became a separate species. The general unpopularity of the Vietnam conflict was thus much more easy to be transferred to those who had to execute it, and when we lost interest and pulled out, the draft went with it.

The volunteer force that replaced the wartime levee was an entirely different sort of institution. I was looking through a Cruise Book from a Vietnam-era destroyer, and marveled at the shifty look of the crew; scruffy hair, haphazard uniforms, and the general look of a pirate crew.

Of course, they were at war, and there the standards are different.

The kids who signed up in the flush of patriotism after 9/11 have shifted the balance. I have met some of them recently, and have come away consistently impressed by their intelligence, commitment and energy.

While some standards have been relaxed to round out the actual combat units, on the whole, morale is high and re-enlistment rates are equally so. Those from the mostly peacetime force that labored through DESERT STORM, Somalia and the Balkans have been shaken out; the men and women who are fighting now have no illusions about what they are doing or how they are doing it.

They are the most combat experienced professional force that has every existed under arms in this Republic, and I for one, stand in awe of them.

That is why the New York Times is at war with them. The current force is counter-intuitive to everything they know and feel. There must be something wrong with them, and there is a three-part story called “War Torn,” that will be completed this Sunday. It is an impressive set of linked articles and multimedia features about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.

The underlying thesis of the story is a sort of Rambo redux, remixing the Vietnam legend and asserting that returning vets are bringing home with them, “a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak” across the nation.

It makes sense, if you are pre-disposed to consider the troops a different and more brutish species. After all, less than one percent of the population is actually in uniform- 1.4 million, give or take a few. Of the quarter million American who ever served, over a third of them are veterans of WW II.   

If you are expecting me to launch off on a tirade about service and flag and country, we can do that over a Gray Goose martini some time. The current percentage (always watch the percentages!) is in line with the way things have always been in peacetime. The percentage of surge is commensurate with times of conflict.

The Civil War and World War II stand as great aberrations in the way things have always been in the Republic, and it is possible to argue that the great demobilization that made the Volunteer Force possible after Vietnam marked the real end of World War II. It was delayed by Korea and Vietnam, which were in effect long echoes of the main conflict.

So, it is only to be expected that the reporters and editors of the Times don't have much of a clue about the people who are doing the fighting in the war on terror. I came away from the first installment of “War Torn” saddened and angry. We have been through this before, after all, and while the re-integration of those who have borne wars burden has always had problems, it was normally done with a certain amount of compassion and respect.

Before Vietnam, that is. Before you did not have to go.

I did not get mad about the Times until another veteran did the math. The Times claims that one hundred and twenty one killings were associated with the returning Rambos; while the numbers are approximations, if you work through the number of men and women who served in the wars, and spread it over the six years sampled by the reporters, the actual murder rate is much lower for military personnel than it is for the equivalent civilian population.

Much lower.

It is like Mr. Gore's inconvenient truth. It does not fit the right world image, anymore than the unspoken reality that it is more dangerous to be a young man in parts of Washington or Baltimore than it is to be anywhere in Iraq.

There are some interesting things that are happening to the small number of Americans who are in this war, and that is worth consideration. The new England Journal of Medicine is reporting that temporary brain traumas like concussion can contribute to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder, which is real enough and more than inconvenient.

Symptoms related to concussions include irritability, sleep problems and flashbacks, and are paralleled in civilian life with things like car crashes. The symptoms can linger for months, though they do not necessarily turn you into Rambo.

That might explain something else as well, the “rule of two hundred.” Since there has been no mobilization to support the wars in Iraq (my apologies to the reservists I know who have been selectively called up) the volunteer force has never had so many troops with so many days of combat.
In none of our modern wars have this sort of exposure been so sustained.

My Great Grandfather did three years in the Civil War without a break, 1861 to 1864, and then took his leave without authorization and went home. There is no report in the family archives about how he slept, or whether his temper was short.

In World War II, the War Department found that two hundred days was the average combat exposure period that it took to bring on post-traumatic stress. The major Allied ground fighting in Europe lasted about ten months, from D-Day to the fall of Berlin.

The Pacific war was episodic, with the horror of one island campaigns separated by months of training and preparation for the next. Vietnam was served mostly in one-year tours, and few units were in constant contact with the enemy, though in that fight it was noted that many of those who were in combat for two hundred or more days tended to get a little disoriented.

In Iraq, ground troops are often getting their two hundred days of combat in a single deployment, and the blast of roadside IEDs are so severe that concussion is one of the most common injuries, even for those not otherwise touched.

Some of the units are now going back for their third tours. The Times wrings it editorial hands over the rate of alcoholism and drug use, as if these were not endemic in the ranks of reporters, too.

What I would like to see from the Times is an apology to the kids who have served. I know we won't be seeing one. It would amount to a repudiation of preconceived and self-satisfying notions. The real question should not be about how many people returning veterans have killed; it should be rather how they keep living, given the situation.

Meanwhile, we will all just have to soldier on through the blather, and there is indeed a sea of it, great waves crashing on the national consciousness. There are only two hundred and six days until the Democrats have their convention in Denver, and two hundred and eleven until the Republicans have theirs in Minneapolis.

Not there is any realistic analogy, right?

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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