Reading this Pit thread brought to mind a question I’ve been turning over in my mind for a while now. I don’t think I’m alone in seeing, in our post-9/11 US, a conspicuous rise in “we support our troops”-type stories and messages in the media. There’s the emotional reunions between servicemen/-women and their families that are staged for TV, and discussed in the above thread; our summer is bookended by holidays recognizing those who served; and I’m noticing ever-more-frequent invocations of “the troops” in places you never used to see them, especially in ads for car dealerships and other local businesses.
You would expect an uptick in this sort of thing in the ramp-up to the invasion of Iraq, say. But we’re out of Iraq (minus those few hundred new advisors), and we’re winding down in Afghanistan. So where does all this come from? How widespread is this attitude outside the US (not including heavily militarized states like North Korea)? Is this a matter of the US simply fielding a lot more troops than any other country, so naturally, we talk about them more? Or is there really some aspect of our culture that sets us apart in this way?
Since the end of conscription, French people mostly ignore their military. They need to get at least killed, preferably a number of them to raise some small interest. And even then, it doesn’t cause much emotion. They certainly aren’t revered, and there’s no “we support the troop”. As I said, ignored, mostly.
There’s the same basic idea in Canada, to be sure. It doesn’t permeate life to the same degree, but it’s certainly there, especially now that we have a lot of fresh combat veterans to “support,” a term I use with some skepticism because the extent of most people’s “support” is in saying they do, be it through Facebook posts or bumper stickers or what have you.
My guess is this is a counter reaction to the Vietnam era treatment of vets returning home.
That group of vets was ignored, spit upon and worse by many that opposed the war. I witnessed a lot of this at the time happening to my older brother when he came back.
Well, I always find it a bit humourous when someone with a support your troops car magnet either cut me off or act in another jerking manner when I am in uniform.
We get a lot of support here, I have lost count of how many people walk up to thank me, but it’s more of a polite “thank you” than parades.
Basically this. You have to keep it in perspective, OP. Sure, there are a lot of news stories about soldiers coming home, but there aren’t a whole lot of volunteers at the VA hospitals and charities for vets aren’t exactly overflowing with cash.
Soldiers might march in national holiday parades, but they don’t have marches just to glorify themselves for no reason. It’s hardly veneration.
That is my take on it as well. The general phenomenon didn’t really take shape in its present form until Gulf War I in 1990 - 1991. The most recent actual, large combat missions that U.S. troops engaged in before that was Vietnam in the late 1960’s - early 1970’s. There was the omnipresent Cold War that lasted from the 1950’s until the early 1990’s but it involved very little actual combat by definition.
The treatment of returning troops from Vietnam left a really bad impression in the nation’s collective consciousness. Hippies versus wounded, drafted soldiers doesn’t make for very inspirational message. I am sure some of it was exaggerated but the stories of the atrocities committed by the hippies against honorable young soldiers became a source of national shame over time (I am just repeating what the standard claim came to be, not taking a position on it myself).
The public response as soon as Gulf War I flared up was to head the demonstrators off at the pass and give such an overwhelming and public show of support to the troops themselves that any contrary opinions would be overwhelmed and probably denounced as near treason. That strategy worked and you can still see the legacy of it today. Gulf War I was when it became not only socially acceptable but sometimes expected to display things like ribbon campaigns and bumper stickers supporting the troops. It also became common to give public thanks to service members and for businesses to extend courtesies like pre-boarding for military members on airline flights.
All of those things existed in some forms and places before then but they really took off during Gulf War I and have remained a fad/tradition in the U.S. since then.
Well, American culture is noted for its particular embrace of the myth of redemptive violence, and veneration of the troops could be part of that.
But, yes, it’s largely symbolic. Bumper stickers and TV moments, fine. But the Bush administration reckoned that Americans would not tolerate tax increases to pay for the Iraq war and substantial downstream costs of providing benefits to veterans, so they financed the whole thing by borrowing instead. Evidently they felt there was a limit to the degree of practical support that the American people were willing to offer.
I’ve noticed that ones proximity to a military base* to be a major factor in a regions attitude towards troops. With 2 military installations close by, any troop movement becomes headlines news. An hour or so north and most people could care less what soldiers are doing.
actually, it’s the number of families in the area with people in the military, but …
I’ve noticed this too, its heavily lip service. Veteran unemployment is high, if an emotionally disturbed vet commits a crime all the empathy stops. Benefits for health care are being cut, stop gap happened, etc.
What do we get out of being a culture that offers lip service to veterans? I’ve always assumed the US was more jingoistic and nationalistic than most other wealthy nations, but we get off on lip service and have no real concern for the substance of the matter. I do not get it. It reminds me of Louis CK bit, how it gives one pleasure to pretend one is magnanimous and charitable without acting on it. You get all the benefit with none of the cost.
Actually, I wouldn’t assume this. What might be the case is that the US is more prone to express itss jingoism and nationalism in identification with/veneration of the armed forces than some other nations are. And I think there could be a couple of factors at work here:
Embrace of the myth of redemptive violence, as already suggested.
History. The US’s emergence as a nation with its own distinct identity was closely tied up with emergence from colonial status and the establishment of national independence. Hence American identity is closely connected with health, strength, success, independence etc of the United States. This wouldn’t be the case for other nations like Ireland, Germany, Italy, etc, whose national identity was established and secure long before political independence or a unified polity were secured.
Flowing on from that, federalism. If American identity involves identification with American government and political institutions to a greater extent than in other countries, for much of American history most people’s direct experience of the Federal government was (a) the armed forces, and (b) the post office. Most governmental functions - schools, roads, police, prisons, the bulk of taxes that - were state functions. The armed forces, small as they were for much of the history of the US, were probably the most visible, and certainly the most glamorous, aspect of the federal government’s activities that most people ever observed directly.
Well, maybe that’s not entirely fair either. Americans pay hugely in support of the armed services. The US, with 4% of the world’s population, accounts for something 40% of the world’s defence expenditure. That’s an awful lot of dollars that Americans could be spending on education, healthcare, art, music, travel or beer but that they’re spending on guns instead. To put it another way, Americans spend 4.4% of GDP on defence; the coming superpower, China, gets by with 2.1%. Comparable prosperous democracies with their own military heritage and traditions - France, 2.3%; UK, 2.5%; Australia, 1.7%; Germany, 1.4%; Italy, 1.6%. Obviously all these countries are differently situated and differently circumstanced, and they have different interests and different geopolitical ambitions. But the bottom line is that Americans pay to maintain the armed forces that they think appropriate to their situation and aspirations, and what they think appropriate is very, very expensive. I don’t get the sense that Americans resent this.
Spending on the military is higher, but that is not the same as supporting people in the military. Doing that would entail things like providing quality health care, employment assistance, diversionary courts if the traumas of war cause them readjustment problems, adequate breaks between rotations. Instead we just get off on hearing ourselves say ‘we support the troops’.
We may spend 1-2% of GDP higher than other countries, but I do not know if our active personnel as a % of the nation is much higher. It is about 0.4% which is not much different than the 0.3% you’d see in some other nations in western europe.
Most countries and their citizens “support their troops”. But, that is a shorthand for supporting the armed forces as an institution, not the individuals therein, which it seems to be the case for the US.
I will admit, I find the whole “thanking for service” rather weird and may I say it, tacky. But, then again, foreigners are weird people:D
Of course the spitting stories are not actually true, and did not start to circulate until quite a few years after the war was over. No doubt the Vietnam troops were not given a returning heroes’ welcome, and were, unfairly, made to bear the brunt of much of the anger about the war itself, but the spitting myth is part of the very reaction to the anti-war counterculture movement of the '60s that has pushed America so far to the right since then. Somehow, now, this mythical spitting is remembered better than the actual peaceful anti-war demonstrators who were shot to death by the National Guard.
I think these things come and go. Back in the 70s and 80s British soldiers were not allowed to wear their uniforms off camp for fear of attracting unwanted attention. After the Falklands, where they were much praised, and with all that shit in the Middle East, they were rehabilitated and now parades through city streets are pretty common, as are uniforms off camp.
Twas always thus as this poem by Rudyard Kipling, and written over 100 years ago, relates: (Tommy Atkins is the British equivalent of GI Joe)
“Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap.
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Tommy, 'ow’s yer soul? "
But it’s " Thin red line of 'eroes " when the drums begin to roll
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s " Thin red line of 'eroes, " when the drums begin to roll.”
Unless you can come up with a cite that this is part of the Republican Party’s current platform or ideals, this comes off as a partisan pot shot against Republicans and that sort of thing isn’t allowed in GQ.
No warning issued, but let’s keep the political jabs out of GQ.
I would again point out, though, that the same phenomenon is demonstrated in Canada, which has a relatively small armed forces and spends more in line with other Western nations.
Rudyard Kipling’s poem about Tommys shows the same thing over a century ago in Britain, and at the time nobody thought his sentiments puzzling. The propensity of people to see soldiers as saviours when they’re absolutely needed and to not see them at all when the war’s over probably goes back even longer than that.