War stories: TNR and Beauchamp—what’s all the breast-beating about? [Part I]
Private Beauchamp’s war dispatches to The New Republic have created a storm of attention and criticism (here’s a roundup, if you’d like to catch up on what the furor’s all about).
The Army says Beauchamp lied, whereas TNR says his story is corroborated (by anonymous sources) except for a little detail that turns out to be a big detail: one of his major tales purporting to show the dehumanizing effects of war on soldiers relates an incident that occurred before he ever went to war—not after, as he alleged (if in fact it happened at all; the jury’s still out on that).
Beauchamp wasn’t some typical grunt, either; he’s married to a TNR reporter. Hmmm. And it turns out that, according to his own admission, he actually went to war in order to write a book. Double hmmm.
What interests me most about this story are two questions: even if true, why was it considered worth telling in the first place (Part I)? And if false, what was the motivation for the lie (Part II)?
After all, Beauchamp’s allegations are hardly on a par with those of My Lai, or even Abu Ghraib. The former was an extensive war crime with a group of perpetrators, well documented even before the story broke in the press, and already the subject of an army investigation (and whitewash) at that point. The latter involved mistreatment of prisoners by a group of guards, and was complete with corroborating photos, and an army investigation that was already underway when the press made it public.
Beauchamp’s war stories, even if true, involve something else. They are mostly anecdotes of pranks that are in abominable taste: (a) the mess hall mocking of a burned woman (soldier or contractor) (b) playing around with a dug-up skull fragment (c) the deliberate killing of dogs with a Bradley vehicle. The first is a story about hurt feelings, the second about desecration of human remains (rather than live human beings), and the third about animal abuse.
None of these are commendable and all are deeply objectionable, but they do not rise to the level of true atrocities. The first involves two perpetrators (and one is Beauchamp himself), the second and third each involve a single perpetrator, with any group participation alleged to be limited to either laughing or winking at the offense.
What is Beauchamp trying to say here? His theme is “war is degrading”—especially psychologically degrading. In fact, in his words, “war degrades every part of you.”
Is this is a valid antiwar argument? The answer would depend on how important the war is; whether what it’s fighting against is more degrading than the amount of damage it does to those who fight it; how many people actually are degraded by it, and to what extent; and how permanent that damage is. Beauchamp’s article, which recounts a few isolated incidents of relatively minor seriousness, provides very little that would address those questions, although that doesn’t stop him from making sweeping allegations about the answers.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that war often can be desensitizing (which is very different than degrading), especially while the soldier is in the thick of it, and that gallows humor plays (and has always played, and always will play) a role in dealing with its stresses. I also don’t doubt that wars can be degrading to some people who fight them—although to what extent that’s true, and what the prewar personalities of those people might be, are unknown.
None of this is news, though, and in the context of the Iraq war it would appear that one of the goals of Beauchamp’s article may have been the discrediting of the US military—and perhaps of the war itself—for the actions of a few.
In much the same way that doctors must learn not to fall apart at every patient’s death, those in the military must steel themselves to look at very hard things without falling apart psychologically or physically. How to do this without becoming dehumanized is something our military seems to be relatively good at—compared to other countries, and compared to the past. The incidence of true atrocities in this war appears to have been very small considering the number of people who are in active service, and the pressures they are under.
But just as in earlier wars correspondents told tales of heroes and used them as object lessons to illustrate a thesis—“our fighting men are brave and noble”—Beauchamp uses himself and a few buddies as object lessons (in stories either true or false) to a different purpose: that of flagellation, both of country and of self.
But that’s the subject of Part II, coming tomorrow.
A war zone is a strange place. Normal interactions between co-workers (fellow soldiers) and friends (buddies, your squad, etc) all go on as before — before entering the danger area. But, there is a twist.
Normal behaviors cannot help but be changed by the element of danger, without even considering actual combat operations. Soldiers will say and do strange things. Combat soldiers (of which the Iraq War has far more than even Vietnam) are capable of conduct that seems outrageous, if viewed out of context and by people who have zero understanding of that context.
Yet, as a Vietnam vet who is a military history nut and who has kept up with the changes in our military over the last 40 years, I agree with my compatriots — the stories related in TNR ring false.
A dog might get run over by a Bradley, but the cause would most likely be that the driver never saw the animal. Anyone remotely familiar with the vision available from the driving position of a Bradley, and most other armored vehicles, would know that. The editors at TNR obviously don’t have a clue about such things. And they evidently feel that investigating military stories might soil their delicate psyches in some fashion.
The misuse of skeletal remains is hardly conceivable, given the importance of mass graves to the overall picture of the Iraq War. Possible, but not likely.
I’ll be interested to see part II of your take on this affair.
Jim
This POS, Beauchamp, gives every indication of being a true “Astroturf”.
An Astroturf is someone who joined up during this war for the purpose of gaining credibility in later attacks against the military.
This is the new version of “Winter Soldier”. Beauchamp is a lower order than some but is playing his part in using deceit and dishonorable conduct to discredit the military.
The memes are familiar. All soldiers are victims. All soldiers are natural born thugs. All soldiers are dysfunctional.
There is nothing honest, honorable or integrity driven about this guy.
Nice post! I just think that antiwar types – even those in the miltary like this guy (strange?) – can’t stand anything about the military, and given the mentality of everything going on on the left, any news that discredits the reputation of those in uniform serves the essential purpose: Lose in Iraq, and turn the activity back toward the domestic revolution.
In the sixties it was “American troops are baby-killers for the fascist war machine”. Now it’s “Bush duped low-IQ American boys into becoming soldiers, and war turned them into baby-killers. So we support the troops by demanding retreat.”
Beauchamp joined the Army with the belief that war dehumanizes everybody. This is virtually a matter of faith among liberals, but that doesn’t make it true.
Here are some thoughts from writer and Korean War veteran Gene Wolfe:
“War stories written by people who know nothing of wars and even less of the men and women who fight them often tell us at great length that those men and women are dehumanized, and try their damnedest to show them like that. Soldiers are often tired enough to drop, and people tired enough to drop are seldom as quick with a quip as the cast of M*A*S*H. But if that level of fatigue dehumanizes them, then we can forget about the next guy who gets lost in the woods for three days. After the second day he is no longer human, so why should we care?
“I have known one man, a fellow soldier long ago, whom I considered dehumanized. He grasped his rifle tightly just about all the time, and although we tried to keep ammunition away from him, it was impossible where we were…
“The point of all this is that this one soldier was unlike anyone else in our company, and was in fact certifiably and dangerously psychotic. And that he was a lone exception among the hundreds of soldiers I found behind, beside, and now and then in front of. Ken Clough was perhaps the sanest man I have known. I watched him one day when he was caught in a mortar barrage; and just when I felt certain that he had been killed, he rolled onto his back and lit a cigarette. Lieutenant Wilcox, who killed thirteen enemy in one day with a thirty-eight, was thoroughly human and as fine an officer as I ever saw.
“I have been telling you all this, because I know that some of you will not know it. I would not tell David Drake the same thing because I know that he knows it already. You will find it here, in every story he writes. Men and women do not stop being women and men because they are out where the metal flies, and that is the wonderful, the truly miraculous, thing about them. Now and then the experience even knocks a bit of the pretence and pettiness out of them, and that is the glorious thing about a real shooting war, otherwise such a mess of pain and waste.
“I sat in on a late-night party once in which the subject of friendship came up, and I listened in dumbstruck incredulity as one man explained that his friends had to like the same things he did–that they must not only read the same books and magazines he did, and listen to the same music, but pretty much share his opinions of all those things. he was followed by an attractive young woman who insisted that her friends had to be of her social and economic class. At this point I made them all shut up while I explained that a friend is someone who will give you a drink from his canteen and watch while you sleep.”
–from the introduction to “The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Volume. 1” by David Drake
If one measures dehumanization by acts of gratuitous nastiness and cruelty, I would have to say that based on the people I have personally met, there are far more dehumanized people in academia than in the military. The soldiers I have known have tended to be among the most courteous and respectful, whereas the “progressive intellectuals” have tended to be among the least.
Question TNR’s fact checking and credibility?
Two words: Stephen Glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass
I wish that I could be as eloquent as Gene Wolf.
Gallows humor is certainly not unique to the military. What seems to be unique to the military is the idea that, unlike medicine or police work, it’s the the result of deliberately stripping recruits of their humanity and compassion. In fact, I recently read the most reasonable statement possible claiming just that.
Pretty much the opposite of what the military actually tries to do with soldiers. Duty and Honor and all those things, versions of codes of Chivalry, and all the development of military discipline and tactics was never about getting soldiers to fight. That’s as easy as pointing the barbarian hoards at an enemy and promising loot. The trouble is that it’s not all that effective to have everyone out there doing their own thing and sometimes the raping and looting isn’t without long term negative consequences.
And (except for the fact that all things military are primarily about *movement*) I’ve often said that it’s not about making men kill, it’s about making them *stop*.
Personally I think this need to view soldiers as dehumanized is denial. No one need look at the darkness of their own heart if they can remove soldiers far enough from the reality of their own experiences.
The single greatest mistake that decent folk can make in issues such as this is to assume that there is any part of the betrayers that is driven by mistake, simple misunderstanding or in any form of integrity or concern.
The entire purpose of this and any other of their platform is to destroy.
The objective in stories such as these are to drive a wedge between the military and the people that the military defends.
They do this in each and every aspect of the targeted culture. Religion. Education. Government. Military. Law enforcement. Everything.
There is nothing innocent or honest about any of it from any of them.
Attempting to assign rational reason and such is just another form of denial. These people are enemy. Plain, simple, enemy. They support the enemy. They identify with the enemy. They sympathize with the enemy. Their goal is to support and assist the victory of the enemy over their own.
They are betrayers. Nothing less.
This constant drive/need to find some rational reason for their acts and actions is derived from an avoidance and refusal to own up to what must be done to survive their predations and betrayals.
This particular person is at the lowest order, below other bottom feeders of his ilk, but he is what he is. A deceiver and a betrayer. He began with a plan and played according to the script.
Nothing innocent. Nothing misguided. Malicious and intentional.
democracy-project.combc.eduThe best piece written about the whole sordid affair (besides Neo’s!) is this one:
Pvt. Beauchamp: Proud of Being Ashamed?
Written by Rev. Paul W. McNellis, S.J.
I can hardly wait for part II!
Beauchamp illustrates his own thesis, that war degrades every part of you.
EssEm – the problem was that Beauchamp concocted his fabulist narratives before he ever went to war. Douglas, thanks for the link – all I can say is “wow”!
Beauchamp’s example shows that it’s not war that dehumanizes, it’s liberalism. 😉
I have been getting ambiguous messages when I try to post.
Maybe this gets through.
Beauchamp is a liar and TNR is in so deep that the possibility that they got innocently snookered is remote.
Where, as somebody said, would John Kerry, of Winter Soldier fame, be if we’d had the net in 1971?
The problem is that, thorough as military training is, it can’t always make up for living eighteen-plus years among civilians.
I’m not even sure what “de-humanized” means. Men turn into penguins?
The men who did My Lai were just as human as the men who didn’t.
Interesting note about this whole mess in Power Line today:
“Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published a powerful column by the former Romanian intelligence officer Ion Mihai Pacepa. The subject of Pacepa’s column was the destructive effect of the left’s intemperate attacks on the president. Buried in Pacepa’s column is this intriguing paragraph:
During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.”
He lied, pure and simple. There are two separate stories coming from him – one must be a lie no matter what. As such there is no doubt that he is quite capable of telling falsehoods for personal gain.
If he lied to TNR then the worst that would happen is that the left will believe him, the right will not, and those in the middle will wring their hands over it for ages and come to no conclusion. In fact, lieing here will make him a huge hero to the left for standing up for what he believes.
If he lied to the military investigation while under oath he goes to jail.
Generally speaking I find the latter to be the most likely place to tell the truth. In one case he is *better off* by not telling the truth, in the other he goes to jail for it.
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Sources at blackfive say that the Army got Scott to sign an affidavit or sometihng that says that his allegiations were lies or based upon only pieces of truth.