The Reaper
04-24-2015, 21:19
Excellent reprise of an older work.
Solid gold.
TR
Americans, even when they are proud of them, do not like their legions
A T.R. Fehrenbach Remix
https://medium.com/@The_Agoge/americans-even-when-they-are-proud-of-them-do-not-like-their-legions-ecc802d56df0
Americans, denying from moral grounds that war can ever be a part of politics, inevitably tend to think in terms of holy war - against militarism, against fascism, against bolshevism. In the postwar age, uneasy, disliking and fearing the unholiness of Communism, they have prepared for jihad. If their leaders blow the trumpet, or if their homeland is attacked, their millions are agreed to be better dead than Red. Any kind of war short of jihad was, is, and will be unpopular with the people. Because such wars are fought with legions, and Americans, even when they are proud of them, do not like their legions. They do not like to serve in them, nor even to allow them to be what they must.
For legions have no ideological or spiritual home in the liberal society. The liberal society has no use or need for legions - as its prophets have long proclaimed.
Except that in this world are tigers.
Before 1939 the United States Army was small, but it was professional. Its tiny officers corps was parochial, but true. Its members devoted their time to the study of war, caring little what went on in the larger society around them. They were centurions, and the society around them not their concern.
When so ordered, they went to war. Spreading themselves thinner still, they commanded and trained civilians who heeded the trumpet's call. The civilians did the fighting, of course - but they did it the Army's way.
The volunteers came and went, and the Army changed not at all.
In 1861, and 1917, the Army acted upon the civilian, changing him. But in 1945 something new happened. Suddenly, without precedent, perhaps because of changes in the emerging managerial society, professional soldiers of high rank had become genuinely popular with the public. In 1861, and in 1917, the public gave the generals small credit, talked instead of the gallant militia. Suddenly, at the end of World War II, society embraced the generals. And here it ruined them.
They had lived their lives in semi-bitter alienation from their own culture ('What's the matter, Colonel; can't you make it on the outside?') but now they were sought after, offered jobs in business, government, on college campuses
.
Humanly, the generals liked the acclaim. Humanly, they wanted it to continue. And when, as usual after all our wars, there came a great civilian clamor to change all the things in the Army the civilians hadn't liked, humanly, the generals could not find it in their hearts to tell the public to go to hell.
It was perfectly understandable that large numbers of men who served didn't like the service. There was no reason why they should. They served only because there had been a dirty job that had to be done. Admittedly, the service was not perfect; no human institution having power over men can ever be. But many of the abuses the civilians complained about had come not from true professionals but from men with quickie diplomas, whose brass was much more apt to go to their heads than to those of men who had waited twenty years for leaves and eagles. In 1945, somehow confusing the plumbers with the men who pulled the chain, the public demanded that the Army be changed to conform with decent, liberal society.
The generals could have told them to go to hell and made it stick. A few heads would have rolled, a few stars would have been lost. But without acquiescence Congress could no more emasculate the Army than it could alter the nature of the State Department. It could have abolished it, or weakened it even more than it did - but it could not have changed its nature.
But the generals could not have retained their new popularity by antagonizing the public, and suddenly popularity was very important to them. Men such as Doolittle, Eisenhower, and Marshall rationalized, America, with postwar duties around the world, would need a bigger peacetime Army than ever before. Therefore, it needed to be popular with the people. And it should be made pleasant, so that more men would enlist.
________________________________________
In a truly liberal society, centurions have no place. For centurions, when they put on the soldier, do not retain the citizen. They are never citizens to begin with.
There was and is no danger of military domination of the nation. The Constitution gave Congress the power of life or death over the military, and they have always accepted the fact. The danger has been the other way around - the liberal society, in its heart, wants not only domination of the military, but acquiescence of the military toward the liberal view of life.
Domination and control society should have. The record of military rule, from the burnished and lazy Praetorians to the juntas of Latin America, to the attempted fiasco of the Legion Etrangere, are pages of history singularly foul in odor.
But acquiescence society may not have, if it wants an army worth a damn. By the very nature of its mission, the military must maintain a hard and illiberal view of life and the world. Society's purpose is to live; the military's is to stand ready, if need be, to die.
Soldiers are rarely fit to rule - but they must be fit to fight.
The values composing civilization and the values required to protect it are normally at war. Civilization values sophistication, but in an armed force sophistication is a millstone.
Without its tough spearmen, Hellenic culture would have had nothing to give the world. It would not have lasted long enough. When Greek culture became so sophisticated that its common men would no longer fight to the death, as at Thermopylae, but became devious and clever, a horde of Roman farm boys overran them.
The time came when the descendants of Macedonians who had slaughtered Asians till they could no longer lift their arms went pale and sick at the sight of the havoc wrought by the Roman gladius Hispanicus as it carved its way toward Hellas.
The Doolittle Board of 1945-1946 met, listened to less than half a hundred complaints, and made its recommendations.
The new legions carried the old names, displayed the old, proud colors, with their gallant battle streamers. The regimental mottoes still said things like "Can Do." In their neat, fitted uniforms and new shiny boots - there was money for these - the troops looked good. Their appearance made the generals smile.
What they lacked couldn't be seen, not until the guns sounded.
There is much to military training that seems childish, stultifying, and even brutal. But one essential part of breaking men into military life is the removal of misfits - and in the service a man is a misfit who cannot obey orders, any orders, and who cannot stand immense and searing mental and physical pressure.
For his own sake and for that of those around him, a man must be prepared for the awful, shrieking moment of truth when he realizes he is all alone on a hill ten thousand miles from home, and that he may be killed in the next second.
It was not until the summer of 1950, when the legions went forth, that the generals realized what they had agreed to, and what they had wrought.
The Old Army, outcast and alien and remote from the warm bosom of society, officer and man alike, ordered into Korea, would have gone without questioning. It would have died without counting. As on Bataan, it would not have listened for the angel's trumpet or the clarion call. It would have heard the hard sound of its own bugles, and hard-bitten, cynical, wise in bitter ways, it would have kept its eyes on its sergeants.
It would have died. It would have retreated, or surrendered, only in the last extremity. In the enemy prison camps, exhausted, sick, it would have spat upon its captors, despising them to the last. It would have died, but it might have held.
(Cont.)
Solid gold.
TR
Americans, even when they are proud of them, do not like their legions
A T.R. Fehrenbach Remix
https://medium.com/@The_Agoge/americans-even-when-they-are-proud-of-them-do-not-like-their-legions-ecc802d56df0
Americans, denying from moral grounds that war can ever be a part of politics, inevitably tend to think in terms of holy war - against militarism, against fascism, against bolshevism. In the postwar age, uneasy, disliking and fearing the unholiness of Communism, they have prepared for jihad. If their leaders blow the trumpet, or if their homeland is attacked, their millions are agreed to be better dead than Red. Any kind of war short of jihad was, is, and will be unpopular with the people. Because such wars are fought with legions, and Americans, even when they are proud of them, do not like their legions. They do not like to serve in them, nor even to allow them to be what they must.
For legions have no ideological or spiritual home in the liberal society. The liberal society has no use or need for legions - as its prophets have long proclaimed.
Except that in this world are tigers.
Before 1939 the United States Army was small, but it was professional. Its tiny officers corps was parochial, but true. Its members devoted their time to the study of war, caring little what went on in the larger society around them. They were centurions, and the society around them not their concern.
When so ordered, they went to war. Spreading themselves thinner still, they commanded and trained civilians who heeded the trumpet's call. The civilians did the fighting, of course - but they did it the Army's way.
The volunteers came and went, and the Army changed not at all.
In 1861, and 1917, the Army acted upon the civilian, changing him. But in 1945 something new happened. Suddenly, without precedent, perhaps because of changes in the emerging managerial society, professional soldiers of high rank had become genuinely popular with the public. In 1861, and in 1917, the public gave the generals small credit, talked instead of the gallant militia. Suddenly, at the end of World War II, society embraced the generals. And here it ruined them.
They had lived their lives in semi-bitter alienation from their own culture ('What's the matter, Colonel; can't you make it on the outside?') but now they were sought after, offered jobs in business, government, on college campuses
.
Humanly, the generals liked the acclaim. Humanly, they wanted it to continue. And when, as usual after all our wars, there came a great civilian clamor to change all the things in the Army the civilians hadn't liked, humanly, the generals could not find it in their hearts to tell the public to go to hell.
It was perfectly understandable that large numbers of men who served didn't like the service. There was no reason why they should. They served only because there had been a dirty job that had to be done. Admittedly, the service was not perfect; no human institution having power over men can ever be. But many of the abuses the civilians complained about had come not from true professionals but from men with quickie diplomas, whose brass was much more apt to go to their heads than to those of men who had waited twenty years for leaves and eagles. In 1945, somehow confusing the plumbers with the men who pulled the chain, the public demanded that the Army be changed to conform with decent, liberal society.
The generals could have told them to go to hell and made it stick. A few heads would have rolled, a few stars would have been lost. But without acquiescence Congress could no more emasculate the Army than it could alter the nature of the State Department. It could have abolished it, or weakened it even more than it did - but it could not have changed its nature.
But the generals could not have retained their new popularity by antagonizing the public, and suddenly popularity was very important to them. Men such as Doolittle, Eisenhower, and Marshall rationalized, America, with postwar duties around the world, would need a bigger peacetime Army than ever before. Therefore, it needed to be popular with the people. And it should be made pleasant, so that more men would enlist.
________________________________________
In a truly liberal society, centurions have no place. For centurions, when they put on the soldier, do not retain the citizen. They are never citizens to begin with.
There was and is no danger of military domination of the nation. The Constitution gave Congress the power of life or death over the military, and they have always accepted the fact. The danger has been the other way around - the liberal society, in its heart, wants not only domination of the military, but acquiescence of the military toward the liberal view of life.
Domination and control society should have. The record of military rule, from the burnished and lazy Praetorians to the juntas of Latin America, to the attempted fiasco of the Legion Etrangere, are pages of history singularly foul in odor.
But acquiescence society may not have, if it wants an army worth a damn. By the very nature of its mission, the military must maintain a hard and illiberal view of life and the world. Society's purpose is to live; the military's is to stand ready, if need be, to die.
Soldiers are rarely fit to rule - but they must be fit to fight.
The values composing civilization and the values required to protect it are normally at war. Civilization values sophistication, but in an armed force sophistication is a millstone.
Without its tough spearmen, Hellenic culture would have had nothing to give the world. It would not have lasted long enough. When Greek culture became so sophisticated that its common men would no longer fight to the death, as at Thermopylae, but became devious and clever, a horde of Roman farm boys overran them.
The time came when the descendants of Macedonians who had slaughtered Asians till they could no longer lift their arms went pale and sick at the sight of the havoc wrought by the Roman gladius Hispanicus as it carved its way toward Hellas.
The Doolittle Board of 1945-1946 met, listened to less than half a hundred complaints, and made its recommendations.
The new legions carried the old names, displayed the old, proud colors, with their gallant battle streamers. The regimental mottoes still said things like "Can Do." In their neat, fitted uniforms and new shiny boots - there was money for these - the troops looked good. Their appearance made the generals smile.
What they lacked couldn't be seen, not until the guns sounded.
There is much to military training that seems childish, stultifying, and even brutal. But one essential part of breaking men into military life is the removal of misfits - and in the service a man is a misfit who cannot obey orders, any orders, and who cannot stand immense and searing mental and physical pressure.
For his own sake and for that of those around him, a man must be prepared for the awful, shrieking moment of truth when he realizes he is all alone on a hill ten thousand miles from home, and that he may be killed in the next second.
It was not until the summer of 1950, when the legions went forth, that the generals realized what they had agreed to, and what they had wrought.
The Old Army, outcast and alien and remote from the warm bosom of society, officer and man alike, ordered into Korea, would have gone without questioning. It would have died without counting. As on Bataan, it would not have listened for the angel's trumpet or the clarion call. It would have heard the hard sound of its own bugles, and hard-bitten, cynical, wise in bitter ways, it would have kept its eyes on its sergeants.
It would have died. It would have retreated, or surrendered, only in the last extremity. In the enemy prison camps, exhausted, sick, it would have spat upon its captors, despising them to the last. It would have died, but it might have held.
(Cont.)