The American Spectator : Brothers at War

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Brothers at War

By James Bowman on 3.27.09 @ 6:02AM

In the age of herolessness, why do men fight?

Writing in the Times of London, Ben Macintyre notices that "One of the more extraordinary aspects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is the almost total absence of great names and great heroes to have emerged from the conflicts." Actually, it's not extraordinary at all but extremely ordinary, as you would have to put Vietnam and all the other American wars since then into the same category of herolessness, at least so far as the media are concerned. The reason is not far to seek, and it concerns the difficulty our post-honor society has in understanding what the men who fight in such places are doing there in the first place. If you think that war is madness, which our official culture pretty much does these days, it hardly makes sense to pick out a few of the lunatics and make heroes of them.

Victims are another matter, of course, and the victim-hero who is a major part of the popular cultural legacy of the Vietnam war is still going strong. Brothers at War, a documentary by Jake Rademacher mostly about his two younger brothers who are or have been soldiers in Iraq, doesn't quite avoid the victim-hero syndrome, even though it is better in this respect than most movies about war that have made in the last 40 years. Yet the film's very premise seems to reassert the official view of war-as-madness, since Mr. Rademacher approaches his project like an anthropological expedition. "These guys were laying their lives on the line and I had to find out why," he tells his own camera. So he sets out for the war zone himself in order to find out what could make men do such a crazy thing as volunteer for service in a war zone.

Well, once we didn't have to ask. That was back in the days of Mr. Macintyre's "great names and great heroes." What were those guys doing in their wars? Why, what else but becoming great names and great heroes? Wasn't that reason enough? Men once thought they had something to prove by going to war. Jake Rademacher also has something to prove by going to war. He acknowledges as much near the end of the film when he says that some of his reasons in going were personal. "I wanted to see if I could do it, handle it," he says, recalling that he, too, had "wanted to be a soldier when I was a kid." And then he adds that, even after having gone on combat missions, though toting a camera rather than a rifle, "I don't know if I deserved a place at the table with Joe," his younger brother who did two tours in Iraq and was about to go back for a third. "But I walked a mile in my brother's shoes."

Here's a sentence from a review of the film by Dan Zak in the Washington Post. "Jake rolls into Mosul and the first thing he says to Isaac is 'I told you I'd [bleeping] make it,' as if being in Iraq proves that he's as much of a 'man' as his brothers." Those quotation marks around "man" tell you all you need to know about the cultural presuppositions that Mr. Rademacher is up against -- and also the victim of -- in this movie. Like Dan Zak's, Jake Rademacher's set of cultural presuppositions won't allow him to assume that being brave has anything to do with being a man -- though at some level he continues, as other men continue, to believe that it does. Otherwise he would not have gone to Iraq in the first place. But those anti-honor assumptions are what force him, in the mise-en-scène, to create the character for himself of the clueless detective trying to find out the very thing he already knows.

But then maybe that's how he had to approach the subject to achieve any resonance with a civilian audience in today's America. I'm just an ordinary, peace-loving guy like you, he is saying, in effect, so that's why I'm trying to find why my crazy brothers are so crazy. You have to bear this in mind as you watch the scene where, on a Long Range Surveillance mission near the Syrian border, Jake asks some of the guys he's with what they're doing there. They must know that the question is not a real one. Every man, at some level of consciousness or unconsciousness, knows very well what they're doing there, and Jake Rademacher is lucky he doesn't get any more frivolous answer than, "When I figure out why I do it, I'll let you know."

To me, it's obvious that those words, from a soldier named Ben Fischer, are what the British would call a wind-up: another way of saying the question is so stupid I'm going to pretend to be as dumb as you're pretending to be and not answer it. It's also another way of willingly accepting as a badge of honor the film's implied description of the grunts in Iraq as madmen. There has long been a certain kind of honor for military men in being thought mad by civilians -- or each other. It sets them apart just as bravery does, and it has an obvious relation to bravery. "Those guys are crazy," often has an admiring subtext in military circles. It means they're braver than the non-crazy guys. And being brave is still, as it has been throughout the ages, the bedrock foundation of honor. Jake ends up proving, at least to his own satisfaction, that he was brave enough to hang on to at least some limited degree of equality with his little brothers, though the degree to which this is an edifying spectacle for a movie audience is at least equally limited.

More interesting -- though not much more interesting -- are the parts of the film that return to the home front and allow us to see the effects of their deployments on Isaac's wife Jennifer, who was also a West Pointer, and their child, and also on Joe's fiancée Danelle, who is a weepy and emotionally fragile sort who seems scarcely able to stand up to the pressure of Joe's third deployment. In this part of the film, however, we feel the author creeping back towards victimology, not least through the family's discussion of another brother, Thad, who died -- most likely of a drug overdose -- in 2001. Thad is discussed by his surviving brothers almost as if he had been killed in action, and the warriors seem to sense some kind of vague connection between their brother's death and their own decision to go to war. Jake feels it too when, in his summing up, he says of the brothers whose mysterious taste for danger and hardship he has been chronicling: "If we get to know them better, they can never be gone from us." I don't think it's quite true, but it is a good note to end on.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (14) | Leave a comment

rr| 3.27.09 @ 11:42AM

Just because the leftist press, academia, and Hollywood hate heroes does not mean the rest of us do. A hero is one who accomplishes a difficult task in spite of extraordinary difficulty. A warrior is the epitome of the hero. Why do you think that most of us no longer respect that?
P.S. There are still millions of young men in America who relish the thought of being an American war hero.

Stuart Koehl| 3.28.09 @ 10:53AM

I would submit that counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations have actually restored the heroic to warfare. To be brutally honest, modern mechanized warfare was highly depersonalized and in many respects, anti-heroic. As reviews of almost all first person memoirs since World War II show, combatants rarely saw the enemy, or engaged him at close quarters; most killing was done in a random, impersonal way by artillery and mortars. Whether one lived or died was very often a matter of chance, and under the brutal pounding, all men came up against their limits.

In contrast, as we now conduct and understand it, both counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency have an intrinsically heroic orientation, beginning with the main objective in both cases: protection of innocent civilians is placed ahead of force protection; i.e., the soldier is posited as the defender of the weak and defenseless, even to the point of sacrificing his own life. That's heroic, inspirational, even--and the men performing the job in Iraq and Afghanistan instinctively understand this, which is why support for the war is so strong among the troops fighting it, and why retention rates have been so high.

Second, counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency are intensely personal. Long-range fires from artillery, aircraft and armored vehicles count for little. Most of the fighting is at close range, with small arms--and sometimes hand-to-hand. This is a necessary concomitant of placing the protection of civilians ahead of protection of soldiers: knowing that terrorists are hiding out in a building, it would be easier and safer by far to blow it to bits with a 500-lb bomb, but that could kill or injure civilians inside the building, and in the surrounding neighborhood. Therefore, the correct approach is the most dangerous and difficult--to enter the building and clear it room by room, whenever possible using "less than lethal" means, such as stun grenades. It doesn't get more heroic than that.

Finally, in both counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency warfare, soldiers live amongst the people whom they are protecting and form close bonds with them, which provides a tangible sense of accomplishment, a source of manly pride.

Paradoxically, then, the war on terror has regenerated the warrior ethos among American troops in a way that a prolonged conventional war would not. The heroic stature of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines has reached such proportions that even jaded intellectuals cannot deny it, and indeed, if exposed to the military for any length of time, become seduced by it. And that may be why so many academics and intellectuals will go to any length to avoid exposure the the heroes in our midst.

Karen Caldwell| 10.11.10 @ 2:19AM

I have watched 2 of my sons deploy to Iraq. One 4 times and the other 3. I cried each time after they left, but I am very proud of them. They are my heroes. My family and I support they in all they do and pray for all the soldiers deployed every where. I also pray for the families of these soldiers. What they do isn't easy , they miss their families ,homes and the lives they leave behind .
They have a strong sense of duty and a bond with their brothers and sisters in arms.They love America. They are the best of us.God bless each and every one of them.

Bronson| 3.29.09 @ 7:08AM

Outstanding analysis by Stuart. What do you call a man that volunteers to do something dangerous, that he doesn't have to do? Brave, heroic, in my book. While just 1% of our population joins the military, the least the rest of us could do is show our respect and support.
The heroes don't make movies, don't play sports for a living and aren't in Washington, DC.
They come from big and small towns all over the USA.... They are the best citizens we have.
Socrates said as much a long time ago.

God bless our Troops.

Stuart Koehl| 3.29.09 @ 9:18AM

"While just 1% of our population joins the military, the least the rest of us could do is show our respect and support."

It is true that just 1% join the military, but the top line is set by Congress each year, based on what the military says it needs. I am sure that, were more men needed, they would be forthcoming.

Of the 1% who do serve, demographically they look very much like America as a whole, contrary to the popular liberal myth that the military is populated by society's losers, particularly poor, uneducated minorities.

According to two careful demographic analyses ("Who Bears the Burden?") conducted by AEI, the top income quintile is slightly overrepresented in the armed forces, the bottom quintile slightly under-represented, with the bulk of the troops coming from the solidly middle class.

Racially and ethnically, the armed forces remain largely white, with blacks and hispanics proportionally represented.

The main discriminator is regional: the South and Southwest are disproportionally represented in the ranks, while New England and the West Coast are underrepresented. I am sure that is a big surprise.

People who call for reinstitution of the draft to redress perceived imbalances in the burden (some would say privilege) of military service are not aware of these facts, nor do they understand that, given the large pool of 18-year old men and the relatively small size of the military, numerous exemptions and deferments would be issued, mainly to middle and upper class men, thus shifting the burden back onto the lower classes who cannot get exemptions for education, critical skills, etc.

Or, perhaps, that was the idea all along?

J.Smith| 9.6.10 @ 8:08PM

For once I would like those opposed to the war to keep their mouths shut. This movie was excellent on several levels. No need for you to read your petty analysis on something just to put down those who serve and their families. Just because you can doesn't mean you should comment.

Support and stand behind our troops and if u don't, feel free to stand in front!

Peter| 3.29.09 @ 2:09PM

Perhaps, if you have to ask the question, you would not understand the answer.
Anyone who cannot understand the concept of duty and honor might as well stay home.

Carol Ann Amelian| 3.29.09 @ 2:34PM

Out of 5 sons, second now 21 is in the US Marines; been to Iraq,scheduled to go back in less than 14days. Two of my teen boys are going in also, Ben has taken the asfap test. So out of 5 three will be soldiers. Honor runs deep!!

Jim| 3.29.09 @ 11:25PM

If you have to ask why they do it, you will never understand their answer.
Vietnam '68-70.

Lee| 3.29.09 @ 11:51PM

I was a 51 year old retired Army reservist who volunteered to go Iraq in the retired recall program.
I served in a Active duty Military Police Company doing PTT missions in east Baghdad during the surge last year.
I did it because I felt it was my duty and because I never served in a conflict my whole reserve career. Do I feel like a hero..NO, but I think I am a better person for doing it.
The author is right about the crazy part.People do think that. But some in our culture do not understand what motivates us. but I do not give it much thought. What I do think about everyday are all those wonderful young soldiers I served with. It still brings tears to my eyes.
I did come back with a renewed belief in the generosity of the American people. We were constantly resupplied with all kinds of goodies. I was just totality amazed by that.

Sheepdog 6| 4.7.09 @ 9:33AM

Most of us don't feel very brave or heroic. The dirty little secret of this and all wars is that it's mostly hard, dirty work - even boring at times. The Men and Women of TF 34 I serve with appreciate very, very much the support of the Great Americans we hear about nearly every day. Our service is not just duty and honor, rather it's a calling; a calling to protect those who are unable to protect themselves. There is no greater, more fulfilling experience. Far from feeling a victim, I feel sorry for those who have never experienced the true cameraderie and complete trust I feel from my fellow soldiers.
Sheepdog 6 - Out.

Mike Julio Jr| 4.12.09 @ 10:14AM

Hours ago I said goodbye to my son on his way to his 3rd tour in the Middle East with the 82nd. He is my hero. I spent 25 years in the Army and everyday I was surrounded by heroes.
Old Nam Vet

William Hawkins| 5.18.09 @ 6:35AM

Let me recommend the book First In the Field: Gault of the Patricias by Jeffery Williams. It is the biography of Hamilton Gault, a very wealthy businessman and high society figure in Montreal who founded Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Regiment in 1914. He didn't just spend his money raising this regiment and then donating it to the government, he went with it to France as second in command. He was badly wounded twice, in 1915 and 1916. The second time, he lost a leg, but used his influence and "hero" status to get back to the front again in 1917.
Gault was thought to be the richest man in Montreal before the war. How many of our richest men today could even imagine giving such service to their country? We know that media and academic circles promote anti-patriotic messages, but so does business these days with its emphasis on pure self-interest, materialism and rejection of any sense of responsibility or allegiance to the larger society and nation-state.
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry is still in action, fighting today in Afghanistan. Fortunately, there are still enough men left to fill its ranks, as in the all-volunteer U.S. Army and Marines, though in Amerifan the number of ground combat soldiers has not been returned to the level of the Reagan Administration.