WASHINGTON, 25 December 2004 — One morning in 1966, when I was an eighth-grader at Gen. George S. Patton Jr. Junior High School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., we were mustered onto the playground in a formation of huge block letters that spelled: WE BACK YOU. A helicopter appeared overhead, and a photographer leaned from the cockpit. The subsequent photograph, published in a newspaper, was meant to inspirit the troops in Vietnam.
As the sons and daughters of professional army officers, our impulse was to close ranks and stand where we were told to stand. For us the affirmation was not political, it was personal. We tried not to confuse the warriors with the war.
Yet over the years as the war dragged on, the dead stacked up and the country splintered, that distinction became harder to sustain. The suspicion that our soldiers were risking their lives in a bad, lost cause soon became so searing that many of us insisted the war was righteous and winnable. To admit otherwise felt like a betrayal of those we loved; it also implied that we had been duped. We closed ranks with the policy as well as with the troops. We conflated the warriors and the war. So did the country, in ways that became toxic.
Today the equivalent of “We back you’’ slogans can be found on military posts across America, expressed in yellow ribbons and lapel pins and yard signs supporting the troops in Iraq. In a relatively small, volunteer army, the agony of 1,300 dead and 10,000 wounded sears some communities more than others, and none more than the extended family that is the professional military.
Many feel a profound disquiet: At the hard truth that the central provocations for invading Iraq proved spurious; at the stress fractures appearing within the army and Marine Corps — great armies are hard to build and easy to break; at the dearth of meaningful allied support in a robust coalition of the capable rather than a thin amalgam of the willing; and at the risk of another rift opening between the military and our larger republic.
Soldiers and their families also know, viscerally, that war is corrupting, even a justifiable or inevitable war. Eventually combat does bad things to good soldiers. Not that it makes them capable of atrocity — the overwhelming majority today are too balanced, too professional, too well led for that, although the rash of soldiers and Marines court-martialed or under investigation for various depredations in Iraq is unnerving. But war is corrosive of decency and nobility; it tarnishes the spirit. Perhaps the best example is Wilfred Owen, the great English poet who commanded a platoon in World War I. Shortly before his death near the end of that war, Owen described sorting through incoming mail to his soldiers who had just been killed. “My senses are charred,’’ he wrote. “I don’t take the cigarette out of my mouth when I write Deceased over their letters.’’
Since before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, military communities in both the active and reserve forces have closed ranks. For them, their core affirmation is again personal, not political, although they instinctively and legally follow the military hierarchy and the commander in chief. The senior officers among them, by tradition and training, offer their best advice on tactics and strategy, then hew to the decisions of their superiors.
But as this war grinds on, as these dead stack up, soldiers and their families are faced with the appalling suspicion that their troops are risking their lives in a cause that is uncertain at best and illegitimate at worst.
While some voice private doubts, others insist — often with increasing stridency — that the war is justified, that the insurgency can be crushed and that naysaying undermines both national will and troop morale. I admire their steadfast faith, even as I recognize the dilemma.
To disbelieve seems too much like betrayal. Skepticism and dissent appear inimical to service and sacrifice.
Keeping the warriors and the war untangled is extraordinarily difficult, intellectually and emotionally. All that most of us can do is to mean precisely what we say: We back you.
Rick Atkinson, a former staff writer for The Washington Post, is the author of “An Army at Dawn’’ and “In the Company of Soldiers.’’
