I hate to use the term acceptable when it comes to American soldiers killed. But at least the number needed to exceed "acceptable" has dropped with each generation. It may be that the casualty numbers are the only thing which will finally stop this insanity.
The acceptibility level for American casualties in the Iraq war is far lower than those in Vietnam, which were, in turn, fewer than those in WWII, and so on, back to the Civil War, in which casualties were truly massive. While this may seem a hopeful sign for American foreign policy, the flip side is that the destructive force of the American military is far greater and less counterbalanced by international or national restraints than it has ever been.
Stanford historian and Pulitzer Prize winner David M. Kennedy addressed these issues in a talk to the Stanford senior class at the 2005 Class Day Luncheon (The speaker at Class Day in 1999 was Condoleeza Rice, then Provost of Stanford). Kennedy's message is below the jump.
From the
Stanford Report (edited):
For millennia, the obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship were intimately linked. But today's military has many of the attributes of a mercenary army--citizens are not obliged to serve, and indeed few choose to become hired guns. That power dynamic may be lethal to political accountability, Kennedy told seniors and their families...
"... we have evolved a force that is extraordinarily lean, mean and lethal--and that has an unprecedented asymmetrical relation both to the world around us and to our own society," said Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for his 10th book, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.
"... money buys an arsenal of smart, precision weapons and the skilled operators to fire them that can lay down a coercive footprint in the world larger and more intimidating than anything history has ever seen."
"From the inauguration of the draft in 1940 through the second world war's end just 60 years ago in 1945, the United States put some 16 million men and several thousand women into uniform," said Kennedy. "What's more, it mobilized the economic, social and psychological resources of the society down to the last factory and railcar and victory garden. World War II was a 'total war.' It compelled the mass participation of all citizens, and the commitment of virtually all the society's energies to secure the ultimate victory."
Thanks largely to technological achievements, today's active-duty military is about 4 percent the size of the force that fought in World War II... Moreover, in today's $11 trillion American economy, the military budget is less than 4 percent of the gross domestic product. In World War II it was more than 40 percent--a greater than tenfold difference in the military's claim on society's overall resources.
"History's most deadly and destructive military force can now be put into the field by a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so--that force and that situation puts at risk very few of its sons and daughters, and only those who go willingly into harm's way," Kennedy said. "Our society neither asks nor requires any significant material deprivations on the part of the citizens in whose name that force is ultimately being deployed."
Kennedy said it's not healthy for a democracy to let such an important function--the application of military force--grow so far removed from popular participation and accountability. "It makes some supremely important things too easy--like dealing out death and destruction to others and seeking military solutions on the assumption they will be swifter and more cheaply bought than those that could be accomplished by the slower and more vexatious business of diplomacy."
To me, Dr. Kennedy's remarks are both enlightening and frightening.
They provide an explanation for both Rumsfeld's concept of the small army, and for Bushco's hubris in attempting to use it to take over Iraq without asking for any sacrifice on the part of the American people. Further, Kennedy adds perspective to the one-sided military equation which makes terrorism an almost inevitable response.
What is the answer to this increasingly lethal force which is increasingly turned loose by our increasingly huge economic machine and snoozing public? Kennedy's only answer was a challenge to the Stanford seniors to participate: "Put your shoulder to the wheel."
I wish it were that simple.