“I know you think the war was a mistake, but aren’t you at least proud of your service?” I have been asked this question probably a dozen times and it is never easy to respond to, because within this question are several assumptions that are uniquely American. And they can’t easily be corrected with fact or reason.
First, our invasion and occupation of Iraq was not a mistake — it was a crime. Second, I did not serve our country, because Iraq was never a threat to us. Our national security was never at stake. All the violence I helped dish out in Iraq served someone; but it wasn’t the American people, and it certainly wasn’t the Iraqi people. Finally, it would be wildly inappropriate for any soldier who helped wage a war of aggression to feel pride.
But when I try to explain this, it doesn’t lead to understanding or even polite disagreement. Usually, my rejection of the assumptions in this question provokes anger, indignation, even disgust. Because it’s not just a matter of conflicting understandings of American history, which could potentially be corrected through study. There’s no amount of mythbusting that will make the cherished beliefs at the heart of this question easier to abandon. As a nation we struggle to have an honest, evidence-based conversation about our wars, because most Americans feel a religious commitment to the sanctity of our wars and the honor of our soldiers.
I don’t just mean that the way Americans think and talk about war is a little churchy. I’m not talking about a civic religion. The problem is much greater than a smattering of religious symbols over our foreign policy discourse or a culture of reverence for our soldiers and veterans. I am arguing that a full-on religion with tenets, saints, and a promise of salvation is preventing ordinary Americans from understanding our wars.
What I’m calling the American Church of War is a peculiar form of irrationalism that grew out of WWII victory culture and the post-Vietnam imperative to support the troops. It is rule bound and structured, yet dynamic. And for those of us who advocate for a foreign policy that is strictly defensive, understanding the contours of the Church is essential to reaching those in the grips of its dogma.
In Iraq, my battalion was one of six that participated in the Second Siege of Fallujah, which was one of the most propagandized operations of the entire invasion and occupation. So when I got involved in antiwar activism, I focused on raising awareness about how much we had been lied to about Fallujah. I thought my friends from my old unit would be outraged to find out that the city hadn’t been taken over by al-Qaeda, as we were told; that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, wasn’t even in Fallujah, as we were told; that far from liberating the city, as they told us we had, we actually killed between 4,000 and 6,000 civilians; that our weapons had poisoned the city to such an extent it had created the worst crisis of birth defects ever recorded in human history; that far from being terrorists at all, the rebels were just ordinary people with reasonable goals, like ending a foreign occupation and reclaiming their national sovereignty; and that everything we were told we were fighting and dying for was a lie.
To my surprise, they weren’t angry with our political and military leaders who had lied to us. They were angry with me, furious even, for poking holes in their claim to have fought for a noble cause. They said I was spitting on the graves of the guys we lost by attacking their status as martyrs. They said I was a traitor for having acknowledged the legitimacy of the Iraqi resistance. It didn’t matter that the information I provided as evidence was well vetted and publicly available. That information led to a conclusion they couldn’t entertain. In their grief and trauma, they needed to believe that our suffering and the friends we lost were all for a cause greater than ourselves. And that’s when I began to realize that evidence alone would not be enough for my activism to have an impact; because I wasn’t just confronting false belief, but a full on church.
Why is it a church? Because it deals in faith rather than fact. The 2003 Anglo-American Invasion of Iraq was unequivocally a war crime — the crime of aggression — but that fact never mattered.
It’s a church because it offers deliverance. The American Church of War promises a paradise on earth, opulent and plentiful, built from capitalism and American global security.
It’s a church because we are indoctrinated into it. Nobody chooses to join the Church as an intellectual commitment; we are raised in it. From a young age we are not taught to think critically about the church’s tenets, but only to worship its symbols.
It’s a church because disagreement with the tenants is treated as heresy, not debate.
So how should we characterize a system of beliefs that is cloistered, salvationist, and hostile to debate? It is straightforwardly a church. It filters reality, it lends a false sense of purpose and meaning to our wars, and it justifies a generational blood sacrifice. It is the reason why most Americans can’t even tell the difference between offensive and defensive military action anymore; because according to the Church, the distinction doesn’t even matter.
And that is the first tenet of the American Church of War: Our wars are always just.
There are two more core tenets. First, all our soldiers are heroes and all our fallen are martyrs, no matter the war and no matter the circumstances of their death. Second, our freedoms and privileges are precarious, constantly under threat by barbarians at the gate, and they only survive due to the sacrifices of our soldiers. Together these three tenets alone provide an impenetrable affective armor around all the Church’s doings and sayings: the justness of our wars, the sacredness of our soldiers’ sacrifice, and the necessity of it all.
Where the rest of the world evaluates war in terms of the ethical frameworks set out by the Geneva Conventions, the Just War tradition, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Church has no need. The very idea of a war of choice only applies to others, because our wars are always necessary and always just. And since the necessity and justness of our wars are taken for granted, the only thing left to decide is whether the objective is worth the expense in tax dollars and American lives. And therein lies the power of the Church: it makes a foreign policy dedicated to the pursuit of power and profit look like global altruism. It can reframe a paragon of a war of choice like the 2003 invasion of Iraq as “unilateralism.” And it can disguise over 700 over-seas American bases as “global security,” rather than imperialism.
However, to most the Church isn’t easily recognizable as an interpretive device, because it doesn’t rely solely on rigid dogma or jingoistic slogans. It can accommodate a range of attitudes and beliefs, giving the appearance of open debate; but only as long as that debate remains tethered to the three tenets. For example, many criticized the Bush administration for not having a post-invasion plan in Iraq. Many criticized our bungling efforts at counterinsurgency, too. However, these criticisms were limited in scope to the war’s conduct—ways in which it could have been fought more judiciously. Only those outside the Church could recognize the invasion of a sovereign nation without just cause as a war crime.
Even if we could admit that we waged a war unjustly, the second tenet demands that we still worship our soldiers for fighting it. No matter your feelings about a particular war, a soldier is still considered a hero for having “served” their country. Our soldiers can express doubts about the wars they fight, too; and yet we are still obligated to think of them as heroes. They can say “I didn’t fight for the President, I fought for my brothers and sisters beside me.” They can say “I’m proud of my service, but I don’t support the war,” and still we consider them heroes.
Only in America is such thinking possible. No one would accept a Russian soldier’s attempt to separate their “service” in the Ukraine from the war of aggression that it was. No one would accept a German soldier of the Wehrmacht saying they fought for their brothers to their left and right, not Hitler’s policy. Yet the kind of moral reasoning that we would grant no one else seems perfectly natural within the Church.
Similarly, most would agree with the principle that soldiers deserve no honor for fighting a war of choice. To use the example of the Italian soldiers who defeated Ethiopian forces at Eritrea — it would be uncontroversial to say the aggressors deserve no honor. But if I were to apply that same moral reasoning to, say, the Vietnam War and suggest our veterans of that war similarly deserve no honor, Americans are likely to react a little differently.
Where the Russian, German, and Italian examples above required no explanation, this one does. Because the orthodoxy of the Church clouds Americans’ judgement when it comes to our soldiers. I’m not saying these veterans deserve to be shamed; they don’t. In the case of Vietnam, these soldiers were conscripted against their will to fight an unjust war. And I think we should all still be very, very angry about that. But they don’t deserve to be honored, either. It’s not their fault; it’s not a reflection of their moral character. It’s just a fact about the nature of the war they were forced to fight.
Our veterans are not heroes, nor are they scholars for having fought our wars. Yet the Church teaches us that no one understands our wars better. This perception derives from the assumption that war can only be understood by participating in one. But that is just plain wrong.
“If you weren’t there, then you don’t know” goes the familiar refrain. But I was there. I was in the Second Siege of Fallujah, yet it gave me no useful insight into the truth of what we had done there. Contrary to popular belief, getting shot at isn’t by itself an insightful experience — it needs to be interpreted. Only, it’s not always clear who’s shooting at you, or why. It’s not like the movies where you actually see the bullets impacting all around you and then the scene cuts to reveal the villain squeezing the trigger maniacally. The combat experience by itself is meaningless without contextualizing information. And everything we thought we knew about who was shooting at us, and why I was wrong.
This was a point I sought to emphasize in my activism. Yes, I was there. Yes, I saw combat. No, I don’t understand this war any better than you. And you don’t need to worry about making me feel sad if the evidence says we were in the wrong.
This approach was different from that of my antiwar colleagues, who encouraged me to wear my uniform to marches and use the authority of my veteran voice to legitimize our antiwar politics. But even then, that approach didn’t feel right. It seemed short sighted to try and bank on the authority of my veteran voice, rather than try to undermine it.
As the religious nature of our war culture became clear to me, I eventually recalibrated my tactics as an activist. Appeals to evidence and reason weren’t going to break the public’s faith in the tenets of the Church, nor were antiwar appeals coming from a militarized voice. But I thought if veterans would renounce the Church and its tenets, maybe the public would feel empowered to break from its orthodoxy. And this has been my approach since.
In our post-truth America, we need to be especially vigilant against demagoguery and dogma in political discourse. Perhaps more than ever, the veil of religiosity around our wars needs to be torn down. And our veterans might be the only ones capable of doing it.
If we just refused to march in their parades, our children might not grow up seeking the same honor. If we politely declined attempts to thank us for our service by saying “I appreciate your good intentions, but can I tell you why this war wasn’t a service to our country?”, we might help them feel free to think differently. If we could just start by recognizing the religiosity of the Church and then refuse to participate in it, maybe a more open and responsible foreign policy discourse will be possible. If enough veterans would just say “I’m not a hero,” “They are not our enemies,” “It’s not your job to support me,” the Church would come crumbling down.
Ross hits so many nails on the head here! As a British expat in the US for 15+ years I'm still unable to get my head around the way this permeates every aspect of American life. Or I would be if I didn't know that the pentagon has a trillion dollars a year to spend on marketing. It's a way of thinking and behaving that is non-existent in any other country I've known, perhaps only found in military dictatorships. It starts with conditioning in school - pledging allegiance to the flag every morning, continues with national anthems at (domestic, not international) sports events but even stretches to weird little things like having parking spots at grocery stores reserved for veterans only. It's very deliberate and, not only normalized, almost enforced. Enforced worship of people just because they chose a particular profession, regardless of their character and actions as individuals, regardless of their achievements or their crimes. And we're taught to do the same for 'first responders'. Many other professions 'serve' others. In fact most do, but we're not taught that nurses or teachers or caregivers or cooks are better than everyone else. And, as you say, any other way of thinking is heresy.
Thank you. As someone from not America, this is something I've always struggled with. I find the concepts and contradictions in the way American society thinks about war, incredibly hard to follow. This is a very well-considered piece, and very clearly lays the problems bare. The fact it's coming from someone who was there, is important. It's incredibly brave of you to 'break ranks' and say you're not proud, that you don't think soldiers are heroes for fighting in unjustified wars. I desperately hope you can make some ground in breaking the hold the Church of War has on Americans, and pursuing peace. For all our sakes. More people need to read this.