The "Warrior Ethos"?

Can we please redefine strength?

One of my earliest political memories is from 1984, when I was 10. It comes back to me often as I seek context for our current world. We were watching something as a family on our old color TV. I don’t remember the program, but I remember the commercial. A grizzly bear in the woods. And a man with a pleasant, almost soothing voice saying words that I found confusing:

There is a bear in the woods. For some people, the bear is easy to see. Others don’t see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it’s vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who’s right, isn’t it smart to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear.

And then at the end of the footage of the bear there was a picture I knew well of President Ronald Reagan in front of an American flag, accompanied by the words “President Reagan Prepared For Peace.”

We loved going to the woods as a family. And I liked bears. I knew my parents didn’t like the president much, although we read about him in our Weekly Reader newspapers in my fourth-grade classroom. I asked my parents what the bear commercial meant. They said it was for President Reagan’s campaign for re-election, and that the bear signified the “Russian bear.”

I was aware of the Soviet Union and the threat of nuclear war. It was something we talked about in school. The television movie The Day After, about the aftermath of a nuclear armageddon, had aired a year earlier. I remember hearing what my parents were saying and trying to process the idea of a metaphor, even though it would be a few years before I learned about metaphors in school. It was like I both understood the message and remained perplexed. But it made a lasting impression

Fast forward 20 years to another set of ads in a presidential campaign. It was 2004, and John Kerry was running against President George W. Bush. I was now a journalist who had majored in American history and literature in college. I was well versed in the language of politics and metaphor. I also, sadly, knew about smear campaigns and the shadowy world of money distorting our electoral system.

The 2004 ads were not subtle or memorable for their imagery or artistry. But they proved to be very effective. They didn’t feature a picture of President Bush at the end, even though everyone knew their purpose was to tear down the Democrat, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, and re-elect Bush. The ads ended with a voice rapidly reading a list of caveats, like the ones you hear for the negative side effects in medication ads. It was accompanied by this text on screen:

Paid for by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

These were, of course, the advertisements that used lies and innuendo to slander Kerry’s military service as less than honorable. Kerry, a graduate of Yale, had enlisted in the Navy and saw vicious combat in Vietnam, commanding a “swift boat,” a small aluminum vessel used to patrol the country’s internal waterways. He was highly decorated, earning a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts before returning to become a leading critic of the war. Bush had used his connections to avoid service. Kerry had been on the front lines.

The ads, technically the work of an independent political group, were mostly funded by big-time Texas Republicans. The lies were so egregious that they gave rise to the new term “swiftboating,” which Wikipedia defines as “a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack.”

As different as the bear in the woods ad was from the swift boat ads in tone, style, and context, they reflect a common but pernicious through line that has distorted our political discourse for most of my life: when it comes to national defense, honoring our military, and protecting our country, you can’t trust Democrats. This isn’t just political marketing or spin. It is often subtly or explicitly amplified by the press. And, perhaps not surprisingly, it is reflected in public polling, which regularly shows Republicans have a significant advantage on these issues.

So here we are, with a president, and a man who likes to call himself the secretary of war, launching one of the most stupid, destructive, and dangerous military escapades in American history. They beat their chests. They strut and yell. They wrap themselves in the shallow rhetoric of dime-store patriotism. They talk about bravery and honor, and yet neither has neither.

They have weakened us through what they misdefine as strength, making us less safe and less secure by misusing the vast resources of our national defense on an idiotic war of choice they have predictably lost control of, having had no idea where it might go when they started it.

They are the grotesque outgrowth of a malignant and childish view of what it means to be tough. They are the apotheosis of a toxic conventional wisdom that equates strength and military resolve with conservative politicians and gives the benefit of the doubt on war and national defense to the Republican Party.

This war was launched without strategy or any real thought to its predictable consequences, without Congressional approval or public debate, and without any belief from this administration that it needs to be accountable to the will of the American people, our allies, or, for that matter, reality.

It is easy to blame the warmongers for this folly, and they are responsible. But we also need to remember how we got here. This is a continuation of what we have seen before, especially in previous Republican administrations, when the Beltway class, and much of the press, muted skepticism and replaced it with too much credulity at precisely the moments when the opposite was required.

Think back to that 2004 campaign with the swift boat ads. We were in the midst of another disastrous war of choice in Iraq. The long-term damage has been incalculable. But during the run-up to that war, too many who could have said or done otherwise, including Democratic politicians, did not stand up to protest a march toward insanity built on lies.

I was working at CBS News at the time, and even there you could feel an undertow that criticizing Republican leaders on the military was perilous and opened one up to accusations of being unpatriotic, or at best naive about the dangers of our world, especially after 9/11. The job of a reporter should be not to care about what others say about you, and there were some wonderful journalists doing brave work at the time. But too few.

You can look at election campaign after election campaign and see how, when it comes to the military and national defense, Democrats start off in a defensive posture, forced to fight back against accusations of weakness, naïveté, or even sympathy for our enemies, while Republicans begin with the presumption of strength.

And that is how you get to this madness, a group of bored, bloodthirsty, boisterous men who mistake firepower for strength, and bluster for wisdom. They do not understand how force and diplomacy can work in tandem to serve our national interests. They are slavish to the allure of simplistic stereotypes, where the ideal warrior is a man, usually of European descent, with bulging biceps and a sneering grin. That is why they continue to purge women and minorities from positions of leadership, why they disdain expertise in anything more complex than an explosion, why they ignore the obvious need for nuance or complexity.

Theirs is a simple, mythical world where whoever has the most and the biggest bombs is destined to win. As we are now seeing, reality does not bend to their delusions.

The civilian leadership we now have is so unfit in temperament, intelligence, experience, and achievement that they would not be hired to run any serious organization, yet they are the ones in control of the greatest military force in human history.

The American people can see that this Iran war is a disaster, just as they did with Iraq. This time, the lesson must last. This is the worst manifestation of this so-called warrior ethos, and it belongs in the history books.

Leading in this century means understanding a world that is rapidly evolving. If you want to pretend you are Napoleon or Attila the Hun, take up the board game Risk. But this is the real world. Our world. One they will never understand. It demands seasoned judgment, studied thoughtfulness, and sustained care, not hollow bravado, crude instincts, and willful ignorance.

It is time to reset how we define strength, might, and what it requires to be commander in chief.