Page 2 of 2 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Military cohesion,
social discord By Julian
Delasantellis
polarization, in 2004, Bush
won Garfield county in Montana 90-8%, at the same
time losing much larger San Francisco County in
California by a similarly lopsided 83-15%.)
But the political polarization exemplified
in the election results is just a by-product of a
much greater social polarization between America's
rural and suburban/urban population centers.
Underneath the jet planes carrying America's elite
(very few of
them
with children in the military fighting in Iraq)
from one coastal metropolitan core to another, in
what is sometimes derisively called "flyover
America", is a seething cauldron of anger and
resentment.
Tune into any one of America's
country and western radio stations, and you're
likely to be bombarded with screed after screed
positing that urban American values are corrupt
and inauthentic, with the real values that made
America great are now found only in the heartland.
In 2005, country and western singer Trace Adkins
expressed these sentiments in his song
Metropolis.
Well, I found myself in a big
high-rise with a concrete yard It ain't safe
after dark, guess this ol' boy drove too
far Met a girl, fell in love, got married and
she's due in May Says we're gonna need more
space, I said I know just the place Where we
can walk down to the country store And we
won't even have to lock our door We can still
get air and water there for free She said
that sounds good to me.
Besides
being safer and purer than blue-state America,
red-state America also delights in proclaiming its
much higher levels of patriotism. Shortly after
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
country singer Toby Keith expressed these
sentiments as America gathered for war in
Afghanistan in his song Courtesy of the Red
White and Blue, with a directness and machismo
few other musicians outside the genre chose to do.
Now this nation that I love
Has fallen under attack A mighty sucker
punch came flyin' in From somewhere in the
back Soon as we could see clearly Through
our big black eye Man, we lit up your
world Like the 4th of July Hey Uncle
Sam Put your name at the top of his
list And the Statue of Liberty Started
shakin' her fist And the eagle will
fly Man, its gonna' be hell When you hear
mother freedom Start ringin' her bell And
it feels like the whole wide world is raining
down on you Brought to you courtesy of the
red white and blue Justice will be
served And the battle will rage This big
dog will fight When you rattle his
cage And you'll be sorry that you messed
with The U S of A. cause we'll put a boot
in your ass Its the
American way.
In 2003, Daryl Worley,
answering the critics of the Iraq War, sang this
song connecting the war to the attacks of
September 11.
I hear people sayin'. We Don't
need this war. I say there's some things
worth fightin' for. What about our freedom,
and this piece of ground? We didn't get to
keep 'em by backin' down. They say we don't
realize the mess we're gettin' in Before you
start preachin' let me ask you this my
friend. Have you forgotten, how it felt that
day? To see your homeland under fire And
her people blown away Have you forgotten,
when those towers fell We had neighbors still
inside goin' through a livin' hell And you
say we shouldn't worry bout Bin Laden Have
you forgotten? You took all the footage off
my TV Said it's too disturbin' for you and
me It'll just breed anger is what the experts
say If it was up to me I'd show it
everyday Some say this country just out
lookin' for a fight Well after 9/11 man I'd
have to say right.
Thus, even
though the September 11 attacks were directed at
the cores of blue-state power and culture, it is
red-state culture that most deeply feels the
outrage, that is seeking vengeance.
As for
some criticism of the Iraq War, the country and
western trio The Dixie Chicks, once one of the
genre's most popular acts, saw their careers
basically evaporate, with both their music and
performances boycotted on red-state radio and
concert venues, after lead singer Natalie Maines
criticized Bush in London shortly before the start
of the war.
And in the ultimate display of
patriotism, pride and support for the Iraq War,
red-state rural America sent their sons and
daughters to fight and die in it.
Why? Was
it that red-state America possessed some special
insight or wisdom concerning the nature of the
threat, the enemy the nation faced in Iraq and the
rest of the Muslim world , what the
neo-conservatives call "Islamofascism?"
Or
was it that red-state America's embrace of the war
was due to a much simpler causation? Was it that
it knew that much of blue-state America didn't
support the war, that, like a desperate lover
trying to prove his worth over a romantic rival,
by supporting the troops and the war, by righting
the perfidy committed by the treasonous metropolis
in not "supporting the troops" in Vietnam, ( which
I wrote about in my June 6, 2007, ATol piece, Yes, Rambo, you get to win this
time.) rural America could prove that
it was the genuine repository of the American
ethos and its values, the true home of the
American spirit?
I think that's where the
origin of red-state America's support of the war,
where the unit cohesion generated by having so
many troops sharing similar ethnocultural
backgrounds, originates. As dictators throughout
history have learned, it's remarkably easy to
unify a people behind a common cause - just give
them a common enemy to hate.
Surely, the
Karl Rove spinmeisters in the White House knew
this. To the Wall Street crowd they sold the war
on the basis of cheap oil (well, that hasn't
worked out, has it?) and lucrative defense
contracts; to the neo-conservatives, it was a
chance to dispatch an enemy of Israel and remake
the Middle East more to its liking; but for the
parents of red-state America who would send their
children to fight and die in it, this was a chance
to once again prove their patriotism, their unique
love for God's new chosen country.
As much
as Shi'ite Islam is the state religion of Iran,
for red-state America it is
fundamentalist/evangelical Protestantism that
occupies the role as the region's pre-eminent
faith. For this faith's ministers, many receiving
instruction and guidance from leaders of the
movement through regular, sometimes daily, contact
with Rove's war support team in the White House,
special arguments were made.
In the
pulpits of red-state America it was argued that
the war against Saddam Hussein was just a modern
continuation of the ancient biblical wars against
Satan's kingdoms of Gog and Magog, that victory in
the war could very well herald the coming of The
Rapture, the promised deliverance to Heaven,
without the pain of death, of God's chosen, that
will initiate the thousand-year war against Satan
that will precede Christ's second coming. (This
scenario was the basis of the wildly successful
Left Behind series of religious novels, by
authors Tim LeHaye and Jerry B Jenkins, the
highest-selling series of fiction books of all
time. )
In much the same way that
Christians have been doing since at least the
Crusades, it's easy to motivate an army, to
achieve unit cohesion, if you can convince your
soldiers that it is Satan, be he in Baghdad,
Tehran or in the lecture halls of America's east
coast Ivy League universities, who you're fighting
against.
For many of these people, a
painful disillusionment regarding the war has set
in, and that is the reason why the fundamentalist
movement, and its leaders, have fallen from their
traditional role of kingmakers in this year's
Republican party presidential nominating process.
In an October 28, 2007, feature in the New York
Times Magazine, David B Kirkpatrick elaborates on
the growing disenchantment among rank-and-file
evangelicals with the progress and duration of the
Iraq War.
Christianity Today, the
evangelical journal, has even posed the question of
whether evangelicals should "repent" for their
swift support of invading Iraq. "Even in
evangelical circles, we are tired of the war, tired of
the body bags," the Reverend David Welsh, who
took over late last year as senior pastor
of Wichita's large Central Christian Church,
told me. "I think it is to the point where they
are saying: OK, we have done as much good as we
can. Now let's just get out of there."
No
wonder there's fatigue with the war even among its
previously most ardent supporters, a war promised
to rid the world of Satan finds itself, five years
later, with Satan apparently very much existent,
much in contrast to the nearly 4,000 young
American war fatalities who no longer are.
Downing notes the growing disillusionment,
but without noting its true cause, that by
unifying an army against a foe other than the one
they are truly fighting, cynicism was bound to set
in once the blood started flowing, the flag-draped
caskets started returning, and the mournful church
bells started peeling, easily audible all across
the small little towns of red-state America.
The war may be unifying Iraq, at the price
of further polarizing America.
Israel
seems to be able to maintain unit cohesion and
national concord for its wars, perhaps because, at
least until the 2006 Lebanon war (and probably the
1982 one as well ) the wars Israel fought were for
reasons of genuine national survival. If America
wants to achieve genuine, not artificial, unit
cohesion for its next war, maybe it should try
having an actual national interest as a reason to
fight it.
Julian Delasantellis
is a management consultant, private investor and
educator in international business in the US state
of Washington. He can be reached at
juliandelasantellis@yahoo.com.
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