The United States presidential election: celebrating wars and the people who fought in them

A recent series of photographs, a medium which is close to my heart, published in the United States illustrates the ways in which the military, militarism and war have become central and defining features of the imagery surrounding the 2008 presidential elections. One of my absolute favourite blogs, BagnewsNotes, (which, incidentally, renders my own analyses of political imagery in photography quite useless), draws attention to the militaristic images that seem to have enveloped the two candidates from the two biggest parties in the country – John McCain and Barack Obama.

This centrality of militarism is, of course, not an isolated incident, nor is it unique to the 2008 election. In the 2004 race there was a dispute over the military record of John Kerry – a veteran of the Vietnam War and the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate at the time – which contributed the term “Swiftboating” to the lexicon of electoral politics in the US. The term was derived from a group of war veterans who initially called themselves “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” and who eventually contributed to the failure of Kerry’s run for the presidency.

It is, indeed, one of the sad ironies of the modern world that military figures – soldiers and commanding officers who killed others, or may themselves have been killed – are quite often celebrated as heroes or as symbols of great achievement and national pride. Whether you’re in Bamako, Harare, London, Washington or Pyongyang it is almost inevitable that you will come across statues, monuments or memorials as a reminder of wars past and/or of people who died in battle, or who killed others in battle. Invariably, almost everyone who fought on one side or another is considered by “their people” to be a liberator, a saviour, a hero, or “lion-hearted” – as Richard, the King of England (1189-99) was known.

This militarism is probably the most pervasive in the US. From the country’s national anthem to a specially designated national public holiday (Memorial Day), one of the most important measures of true patriotism in the US is complete and uncritical loyalty to the military. In fact, any criticism of “the troops” may be considered as unpatriotic or even treasonous. This blind-loyalty and hero-worship of soldiers, regardless of their actions was best summed up by The Independent, in Britain last year.

In a report on a story published by The Nation in the US, Leonard Doyle of The Independent wrote: “It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.”

In the original report US veterans of the Iraqi war were quoted as having said: “A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi … You know, so what?”

The horrors of war are not alien to people in US; there is a deeper irony, here. It was, in fact, General William Tecumseh Sherman of the North (during the Civil War), “a fierce – some would say tyrannical – military leader,” who made famous the term “war is hell”. It did not, however, prevent him from ordering that the city of Atlanta be burned to the ground in September 1864, despite appeals from the citizens of Atlanta and reminders that there were elderly and pregnant women whom it would be difficult and even perilous to move.

Sherman explained his view of war more fully in the following way: “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”

This notwithstanding, all around the world we keep celebrating and “remembering” our military leaders as symbols of great achievement and national pride. Almost every tourist to London will probably pass through Trafalgar Square and/or by Nelson’s Column, probably oblivious to the Battle of Trafalgar. In fact, Britain has an estimated 100 000 war memorials.
Of course not all memorials celebrate military achievements; notable exceptions include the memorial to pacifists at Arcachon, France, and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

Nonetheless, soldiers generally represent important symbols of national pride in countries around the world. For example, among the very many war memorials in Japan, there are some dedicated specifically to suicide bombers – the special Kamikaze attack force members who died in suicide attacks during World War II. On one such memorial – the Izumi Tokko Jinja in Izumi City, Kagoshima, Japan – an inscription reads as if it could have been written, today, to remember suicide bombers who have taken their battles around the world, from New York to the Middle East and South Asia:

“During World War II in order to protect our country Japan, over 100 brave young men who were training as part of the Izumi Second Naval Air Group met heroic deaths at Izumi Naval Air Base on April 17 and 18, 1945. Praying that they will rest in eternal peace, we build this monument and inscribe here the names of the known war dead.”

The US has perhaps fought more wars on foreign soil than any other country and probably has a memorial for each invasion, occupation or attack against foreigners. Whether the US has “won” or “lost” a war, whether an invasion or occupation of a foreign country was illegal, or “sanctioned” the people who led the war and who fought the war are elevated as heroes. Perhaps most prominent among these is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC – one of the wars which the US did, in fact, “lose”. (I use quotation marks because I am not really sure when and how wars are won or lost)

In the current climate of fear and loathing in the US, where a veritable siege mentality appears to be taking hold of society, it seems that the presidential candidate that has the best military credentials has a better chance of winning the presidency. McCain is a decorated veteran and hero of the Vietnam war which a colleague, Tedd Rall explains, was not an honourable escapade.

A Reuters/Zogby poll published this week shows that Obama was losing ground to McCain who leads Obama by a 46% to 41% margin. A deciding factor in McCain’s surge is his tough-talk on war. Specifically, McCain accused Obama of being willing to lose in Iraq in order to win the election. Also, while Obama was on vacation last week, McCain took the spotlight, talking tough about Russia’s military action against the Republic of Georgia, Reuters reports. The old warrior is using his military credentials to the fullest. All of this is naught for the comfort of the people on the other side of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The French existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once wrote that “if war brings out the best in men (sic) – their courage, their willingness to defend an ideal, their generosity in laying down their lives for a cause – it brings out these qualities at a time when the worst in life is triumphing.”

It is fair to say that for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan the worst in life is triumphing…