‘Support the troops.’ What does that mean?

One of the most fascinating changes in my lifetime has been the militarization of America. It’s not just the rise of the national security state with the Cold War, extended vastly by the so-called war on terror. It’s not just the Military-Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned against, where profits drive policy, often to disastrous ends. It’s not even the necessary burdens of being a superpower, or, if we’re not careful, an imperial power.

It’s the whole "support the troops" religion that has grown up. In fact, Americans were historically suspicious of a large standing army. Support the troops? Newly commissioned, young U.S. Grant was heckled and ridiculed when he came home from West Point. It made him forever shy away from gaudy uniforms. World War II was fought by citizen-soldiers who wanted to get the job done and come home. Architects of the post-war world sought collective security with diplomacy and strength. Americans had been oppressed by a king with hired troops. They knew from ancient history that permanently militarized republics eventually became centralized tyrannies.

Do we even think about these things as we "support the troops"?

Of course we’ve become a nation of blathering slogans aimed at TV-zombied children. The remarkable thing about Sen. Obama’s speech in Philadelphia was how it was aimed at thinking adults.

Americans were rightly repelled by the reception many soldiers received coming home from Vietnam. The Democrats were tarred as a party of defeatism, even though their candidate in 1972, George McGovern, was a decorated pilot who flew some of the most dangerous missions of the war in Europe. Republicans rode a show of military strength to victory after victory, seemingly validated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. They didn’t stop to consider that military spending had helped bring on that collapse, or how much of our economy, and powerful corporate players, wanted continued military spending to stay in business.

We should honor the men and women in uniform who have done their duty. They represent the best in America. But so do the ones who work peacefully to ease hunger, disease and ignorance in inner cities and Third World hotspots. It makes me uneasy to see how casually we have moved into a love affair with all things military, rather like the fin de siecle empires on the edge of World War I. If Gen. Petraeus says it, it must be so, because he is a general.

Americans have a historic mistrust of standing armies, but like many republics throughout history, we were born of war and generals command our affection. Washington, Jackson, Taylor, Grant, Hayes, Garfield and Eisenhower all ascended to the presidency. But the Constitution was never weakened and threatened as it is today. We don’t face a military coup. We do face an unthinking embrace of the military. We are backing into imperial responsibilities without even discussing the consequences. It takes on an especially spookily Roman quality to see the bread and circuses go on at home while our legions fight far away, the duties and responsibilities of citizens increasingly forgotten.

Read about the young lives lost in Iraq. Look at the faces of the dead, lost while we continued to "consume." More prudence about such adventures, combined with a return to historic republican virtues, will really support the troops. We will need a strong military in a dangerous world. Whether we stand by while "national security" is used as an excuse to erode our liberties, while the military is used as an imperial petroleum force, while our arms merchants add to the misery of the world…where’s the bumper sticker to urge this contemplation?