I've been doing a lot of thinking this weekend about the hubbub over the Murtha and Hunter resolutions. (If you haven't checked out this post by Kagro at Next Hurrah about the
parliamentary distinctions between the two, I think it's worth a read.) I've especially been thinking about the pushback against war critics, what Armando's been calling the new McCarthyism. There's an incident that I came across in my thesis research about Jane Addams, one of the founders of Hull House and a leading reformer of the Progressive era, that relates how public opinion can turn (and be turned) against critics of war. Jean Elshtain discusses it in detail in her book
Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy, and I thought it was worth sharing here.
On July 9, 1915, Addams gave a speech at Carnegie Hall, relating her experiences abroad as a member of a delegation of women urging a peaceful resolution to the World War. She expressed her frustration that while every country insisted it was fighting only for its own self-defense, it could not be the first to broach the subject of peace because that would project weakness and weaken the war effort. In an effort to convey how much war runs counter to basic human impulses, she talked about soldiers willing to kill themselves rather than go back to the front to kill others. In her final paragraph, she mentioned that soldiers of every nationality need some kind of intoxicant to be able to handle the gruesome responsibility of carrying out a bayonet charge: "They all have to give them the `dope' before the bayonet charge is possible . . . But in the end human nature must reassert itself. The old elements of human understanding and human kindness must come to the fore."
Addams was trying to argue that soldiers needed to dull the horror of killing others. But many interpreted her comments as a charge that the soldiers on the front lines lacked the courage to fight without artificial stimulation. A letter to the editor of the New York Times appeared less than a week later castigating Addams, and her efforts to clarify her remarks fell on deaf ears. Neither her criticism of the war, nor public criticism of her pacifism, ceased. In June 1917, the Supreme Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, a longtime friend, appeared at an Addams speech to publicly denounce her antiwar efforts. In August 1917, some members of the University of Chicago faculty questioned a decision to honor Addams at a reception; even though the University president was not inclined to cancel the invitation, he made remarks suggesting that peace activists were giving "aid and comfort to the enemy."
Even in 1919, at which time Addams was working on behalf of Herbert Hoover's food drives, an invitation to appear before a group of influential Chicago women caused a controversy that reached the local papers. After the war, the Daughters of the American Revolution argued that Addams was a force trying to destabilize the very foundations of the country - even though Addams herself was also a member of the DAR.
I often wonder why these kinds of attacks are so effective - why the general population listens to them so often. It is almost as if the task of morally justifying warfare is so strenuous that for many, it must be done by appealing to the basic moral goodness of their society. We are good people, the thinking goes, so if we are doing this horrible thing, it must be because we had a good reason and were forced to do so. Since many people still think in terms of binary, Either-Or dualisms, to depict some aspect of society as not good - or even not as good as it could or should be - is to categorize that aspect, and society at large, as bad. And that provokes a visceral response.
There is a certain logic to this perception, especially from the pragmatic democratic perspective which I support. If one functions best when one has a clear understanding of the purposes of one's actions, when one's mind and body are fully engaged in those actions, and when one has faith in the collective effort of which one is a part, then positive morale and faith in the government and chain of command should make a tangible difference in the effectiveness of those fighting a war. So if critics and reformers do things that appear to reduce that morale and faith, they appear at first glance to be causing a direct negative effect on the country's fortunes. Fortunately this is not an impossible problem for the pragmatic war opponent to overcome. Open discourse and deliberation on a course of action is fundamental to democracy. To completely stifle such discourse would be to defend democracy by abrogating it. Beyond this apparent contradiction is a further practical defense - a war fought for poor reasons, or executed poorly, will eventually run into significant failures that also cause significant loss of morale and faith. I'll turn one more time to Next Hurrah, to a post from DemFromCT who suggests that this is what's happening now. So while open discourse and criticism of mobilization may appear to do short term damage to society, in the long term it is clearly necessary and beneficial. I just wish we didn't have to keep re-learning this lesson.
(A variation of this story was posted at my blog, This Is Not News.)