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Where Are This War's Winter Soldiers?Why Iraq war veterans have not had much impact on the debate over the war.

By Ronald R. KrebsPosted Friday, March 7, 2008, at 7:06 AM ET

A veteran protests the war in IraqNext week, Iraq Veterans Against the War will hold "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan"—a four-day extravaganza designed to draw attention to the failures of U.S. foreign policy, the dehumanizing effects of counterinsurgency, and the inadequate provision of veterans' benefits. Yet the event, meant to recall the famous hearings of 1971 at the height of the Vietnam War, highlights how little Iraq war veterans have featured in the national political debate over the war.

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The Iraq war is shaping up, alongside the faltering economy, as one of the two pillars of the upcoming presidential election. That election will feature a decorated veteran of Vietnam, in the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, who is devoted to seeing the war through to "victory," against a nonveteran, be it Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, who wants to scale back the U.S. presence in Iraq. Still, while their predecessors who served in Vietnam lent themselves to iconic images of wartime protest, Iraq war veterans have so far been consigned to the margins—and seem likely to remain there. The U.S. military and U.S. society have changed a great deal since Vietnam, and IVAW has consequently found itself on the sidelines.

At its height, Vietnam Veterans Against the War boasted more than 30,000 members, and it had an articulate and recognizable spokesman in John Kerry. Its 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation, and especially the subsequent Senate hearings, rightly figure prominently in any historical account of the war and its domestic politics. Veterans were crucial in undercutting the war's legitimacy, and the Nixon administration was acutely sensitive to their presence at anti-war rallies.

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If Iraq war veterans have had less political impact, it's certainly not for lack of trying. Formed in 2004, the IVAW has produced no latter-day Kerry, and as of late February it had only 800 members, despite the modern communications that have made it easier to contact potential members. Only some 2,100 active-duty soldiers, Reserve members, and guardsmen have signed its petition for withdrawal from Iraq. And it has received little press coverage, even as public opinion has turned against the war: A search of Lexis-Nexis turned up a mere 128 references to "Iraq Veterans Against the War" in "Major U.S. and World Publications" in the three and a half years since its founding. This is partly related to the struggles and missteps of the anti-war movement as a whole, but there are also reasons distinctive to today's anti-war veterans.

We might have expected veterans to matter even more to the domestic debate over the Iraq war than to that over Vietnam. The Vietnam-era military was widely seen as suffering from a severe crisis of discipline. Especially in rear areas, the armed forces could not escape America's deep divides over race and class. Fragging—attacks on superior officers, often by fragmentation hand grenades but also commonly by means that might be mistaken for "friendly fire"—reached unprecedented levels, with hundreds of incidents between 1968 and 1972. Drug use and addiction were rampant among U.S. forces stationed in Vietnam and elsewhere. Yet Vietnam veterans, witnesses to the war's misdeeds and folly, remained voices of moral authority.

By the mid-1980s, the U.S. military had again become the most respected institution in the land. According to a March 2007 Harris Poll, nearly 50 percent of Americans had "a great deal of confidence" in military leaders; the heads of "organized religion" and Supreme Court justices clocked in at under 30 percent, the White House at just over 20 percent, the press at only 12 percent, and Congress at a mere 10 percent. In contrast to Vietnam, where the war's falling fortunes were paralleled in public opinion toward the military, historically sky-high numbers of Americans have steadfastly clung to "very favorable" views of the armed forces. This is partly because, despite lapses, especially the regular Army has proved fairly disciplined in-theater and at home, and because politicians, no matter their stand on the war, have universally paid tribute to the troops. Were veterans to come forward in large numbers, they might enjoy unusual credibility with the U.S. public, and impugning their patriotism would be difficult.

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Ronald R. Krebs is assistant professor and McKnight Land-Grant Professor in the department of political science at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Fighting for Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship.

Photograph of protest by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Notes from the Fray Editor

Arlington's post, below, sparked an excellent thread. Ravenfrog gives a military wife's view here, while Melvyl, below, also wonders if an increase in domestic violence might be a long-term result of the conflict in Iraq. A post by morganb called "or they just don't agree with you" led to a long, long argument here. And here's an idea for Fray DNA: a line with that "You could reconstruct the whole thread from this sentence" feel--Pherdnut's "you do realize 'swiftboating' is a derogatory term now, right?"

Comments from the Fray

The lesson we learned from Vietnam is to not allow ourselves to think too much. We invaded a small, weak nation on a flimsy pretext supported by phony evidence. We destroyed the infrastructure and killed hundreds of thousands of people. We tilted our domestic economy so far toward propping up our military occupation that we're incapable of dealing with something like disaster relief in the wake of a hurricane. We are--literally, not figuratively--more committed to rescuing and rebuilding a foreign nation on the other side of the world than we are to rebuilding one of our own cities.

As a nation, we are remarkably uncritical of ourselves about all this. We feel perfectly justified rampaging around the world, invading other countries, telling others what to do, and reconfiguring the government so that we work for the military instead of the other way around.

It will be interesting to see how much longer this lasts. The Soviet Union kept it up for over 50 years. We're starting at a more advantageous place, but the effects of globalization may accelerate our decline. Whether the end comes slowly or quickly, it will come. One day we'll run out of money and the business of making war will go bust.

--Arlington

(To reply, click here)

The real issue here is conscription. Maintaining the kind of force levels our occupation will need to be effective will require a draft. Privatizing the war is a non-starter, as the Blackwater scandals have shown us. While you might not be able to use draftees for nation-building, you can't use mercs either. If McCain wins and commits to a draft (about the only way he could continue the war as he says he finds necessary) the whole culture of our engagement and also of the veteran community will change, and the longer we stay in, the more it changes. If we stay in Iraq as long as we stayed in Vietnam, the damage to the military will be the same or worse, and that veterans' antiwar movement that Slate's designated expert finds so puzzlingly absent will be quite present.

--Melvyl

(To reply, click here)

(3/11)

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