Document created: 2 September 04
Air University Review, November-December 1971

Antimilitarism in the Age of Aquarius

The “Age of Aquarius”—this time of protest and dissent—augurs badly for American military men. To a small but vocal young minority, disenchanted with the state of our nation, antimilitarism is a basic tenet of faith. And given this condition of disaffection, the ability of the military to survive as a viable, proud, and disciplined organization is in jeopardy.

It will be the purpose of this article to explore the implications which youthful antimilitarism holds for the future of America and then to offer suggestions for continued military vitality.

Whither America today?

To the youths of the Now Generation, this nation is falling apart. America is split over its Vietnam adventure; uneasy about its domestic economy; and wary of its blacks. The end result is a polarization between these young people and older generations. As analyst Samuel Lubell sees it, feelings run so high that we have become a shrill society, with moderation and compromise seriously out of fashion.¹

Staff writer Richard Harwood comments in the Washington Post that the military has become a devil to be exorcised for all national ills. As Harwood explains it, flower children in the streets see the uniform as symbolizing some sort of “corruption” in the American blood and a distortion of national priorities. Somehow, the military exemplifies “darker impulses” festering deep in the American soul.²

And so the military faces a crucial time. In colleges and high schools, so-called “heroes” arise to preach draft resistance. Politicians decry “militarism.” Priests, lawyers, and baby doctors counsel draft evasion. Recruiters face hostile college campuses. Some 5000 young men virtually renounce citizenship to seek sanctuary in other nations and dodge the draft. Students bomb ROTC buildings, and ROTC units are disbanded at such colleges as Colgate, Kenyon, Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Tufts, Stanford, Union, Trinity, Princeton, and New York University.³ Near military bases, underground antimilitary newspapers and so-called “GI Coffeehouses” proliferate.

It is evident that antimilitarism troubles thinking at the highest echelon of Air Force leadership. Thus, speaking at the 1969 Worldwide Personnel Conference, General John C. Meyer said:

We have never, since the Battle of Bull Run, been caught up in a social revolution at a time of simultaneous economic affluence and economic stress, while debating foreign policy and, at the same time, fighting an unpopular war. The total impact of this novel environment has been a tremendous and generally unfavorable effect on attitudes toward the military services, particularly the attitudes of young people.⁴

For many, the ills of America go deep into the gut of this country. In his thought-provoking book The Crisis of Confidence, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., reasons that though millions were out of work in the worst days of the Great Depression, one could safely walk the city streets. In the 1930’s America’s dissidents endured by remaining inside the fabric of society. Despite the economic situation, people still respected traditional stability. Nobody killed our leaders; no state went communist; no gangs murdered business men; looting was virtually unknown.⁵

The fact remains that in the 1930s most people did not challenge the American system itself! Yet apparently this is happening today. As Herbert Marcuse, philosopher of the New Left, asserts: the system itself—with its “aggression, domination, exploitation, ugliness, hypocrisy or dehumanization, routine performance” —is under cross-examination.⁶

So it is that some of the young—who have seen three of their champions murdered in America (the two Kennedys and Dr. King)—literally seek to revolutionize our nation. Meanwhile, says Mr. Schlesinger, middle-class Americans are so frightened and polarized that a recent gun registration ordinance in Chicago turned up 357,598 guns—probably more equipment than that possessed by many active armies.⁷

Amplifying my earlier reference to American dissident youth blaming much of this trouble on the military, the New Republic, in a lead editorial, “A Restoration of Confidence,” said:

Those who protest and march and those who don’t cannot comprehend how the hungry can be fed, cities made livable, rivers and air purified, the uneducated properly schooled—so long as the President and Congress commit most of our national budget to the military.⁸

Yet most military men fail to understand why they should be scapegoats for every possible shortcoming in America today. In this position, they join the overwhelming majority of Americans over thirty who disagree strenuously with “mod” youth. For older Americans, these young people are engaging in an untenable refusal to “play by the rules”:

They had to work to achieve the social position they presently occupy, but other groups in American society are demanding these positions as a matter of right. Their children had to pass entrance exams to get into college; other men’s children (they think) do not. Their fathers had to work long hours to support their families; other men’s fathers seemingly did not. They fought bravely to defend America in World War II and in the Korean War, and now it is alleged that those who fight and die in wars are immoral or foolish. They lived according to the American ethic of sobriety and respectability, and now they see on TV the spectacle of the drug smoking hippie at a rock festiva1.⁹

So today’s middle-class American is told the old ways no longer apply; others can take by handout what he sweated to achieve. Yet what of the rules of hard work, belief in God, and patriotism which “made America great”?

Many military men will be quick to agree that America, faced with a chronic distaste for the old ways, is in a crisis. Today, we have alien creeds and a loss of traditional religious belief; hippie dirt in place of discipline; class war; ungovernable cities; mannish women; nudity flaunted; a chaotic society. The changing standards and lack of social stability are reflected in our X-rated and R-rated movies, which present areas of experience and behavior that would have been deemed unworthy of our neighborhood movie screens as recently as a decade ago.

With the present milieu, then, it is easy to see why Mr. Harwood’s investigation for the Washington Post found military men confused by present-day American mores. As one West Point major put it, “Does society care for us? Does it respect us and believe in what we are doing? How are we to function in a hostile society?”

America in decline?

We must go one step deeper with this problem. A physician cannot hope to halt a deep infection by treating only the skin surface. In the same way, any commentary on contemporary American antimilitarism must move to the ultimate question: Could it be, simply stated, that the youth reject traditional ideas of patriotism because this nation is in a sickening decline?

It is said that the oldest known piece of writing is a stone tablet dated many centuries before Christ. Upon this tablet are written words which translate as follows: “Alas, times are not what they used to be; children no longer honor their parents.” In the days of Plato, also, men complained that children were not respectful of their elders. Obviously, bemoaning the decadence of the younger generation is nothing new.

Nonetheless, there is a genuine feeling among many of America’s concerned thinkers that something is disastrously wrong. As support for this thesis, consider one leading intellectual magazine, Horizon, reputed to have its finger on the pulse of current thought. Recent articles have compared the Fall of Rome to present-day America; commented on “The Flight from Reason”; and compared the United States to the fragile, haunted Weimar Republic.

The intellectual historians see a general aversion being voiced by the young against the old mores and a rejection of traditional values. More important, as Professor Edmund Stillman wrote in Horizon, in his intriguing article, “Before the Fall,” there appears to be a failure of national nerve by both old and young.¹⁰

Stillman posits—and many would agree—that  amazing parallels exist between the Fall of Rome and our own time and people. Comparisons are easily made: In both Rome and present-day America, “the kids have it too easy,” and the severe frontier ways no longer gain honor; in both worlds, “old religions” receive lip service—but a young Christian willing to die for his faith is today, arguably, as hard to come by as a Roman youth in A.D. 250 willing to die for, say, belief in the god Jupiter. In both times and places, parents indulge their children by overpermissiveness. In both, morals are lax; a breakdown in law and order appears imminent; words like “chastity,” “altruism,” “patriotism, “esprit de corps,” or “nationalism” are considered outdated and funny. As with Rome, America’s best men seem drained off to fight. In both, tradesmen do shoddy work; manual labor is thought demeaning; dehumanizing practices gain wider acceptance; discipline is in short supply; and the economy—geared to war and deficit spending—decays.

Are these parallels between Rome and America accurate? At least since the time of Gibbon, historians have been fascinated with unraveling the riddle of why Rome fell. Through this discovery, they hope to avoid failure in their own society.

Is there validity in the comparison of the two nations? Unfortunately, history does not yield its lessons easily. But what happened in Rome following its permissiveness must give us pause for our own times. In Rome, the last of the old stoic virtues remained in but one class: the military. There, also, military emperors eventually took control, and the nation remained more or less a military dictatorship for centuries.

some tentative suggestions

Admittedly, these matters are disturbing. In light of what has been written, we come full circle to the point of origin: Given today’s social and intellectual attitude of “Do your own thing,” is there any place for a disciplined military force? To put it more simply, How does the military survive, faced with the hippie generation?

For the military to remain a proud organization, it must demonstrate that no conflict exists between today’s creative participation and the more traditional concepts of duty, honor, country. In searching for ways by which the military might best achieve success in this purpose, I have arrived at five suggested areas for exploration:

• We must enrich the sphere open to ambitious younger officers and airmen. The Air Force must reweigh the role of the military and consider whether that task might become more far-reaching. It might include domestic civic action programs accelerating social, racial, and economic growth; exchange programs with colleges and local governments; and dialogue to bridge the gap between military and civilian citizens.

• We must recognize that today’s bright young man wants to do his best, and we must offer the greatest of participative management possible, consistent with discipline and mission. Autocratic management leaves little place, of course, for job satisfaction or creativity. Some would go farther and question whether certain traditional practices are necessary for carrying out the mission. In today’s “soft core” force, for example, Air Force enlisted personnel are distinctive from those of the other services in that they rarely engage in battle. Though the mission may be to fly and fight, must the NCO in civil engineering, the JAG paralegal technician, or the personnel manager also be fighters? Perhaps not.

• We must challenge our bright junior men and reward their excellence. Today’s youth possess great capacity to yield fresh perceptions to the Air Force. As General James Ferguson said, speaking to a Space and Missile Systems Organization group of junior officers, the men want and need recognition for genuine achievements—what General Ferguson calls “psychic income.”¹¹ Such recognition is not to be had through making a bright young man a library officer or engaging in what General John C. Meyer calls “Mickey Mouse and Bunny Rabbit programs.”¹² Perhaps this also means disabusing ourselves of what many think is a fascination for trivia—superficial aspects of tradition which today lack relevance for many. Perhaps, after all, the length of one’s hair, the presence of a “tail” showing on an airman’s fatigue uniform, or the “leveling” of books by order of height at a service academy could be re-examined for their “relevance” (to use the modern vernacular). Eliminating outdated concepts and giving real jobs to these men means demonstrating that imagination and intelligence are needed and will be nurtured; means being sensitized to legitimate gripes about the structure of the forces; means never abridging individual freedom of choice and action unnecessarily.

• We must recognize that there is no need yet to panic. Military historians have pointed out that very vocal antimilitarism is a traditional part of America. During the past 25 years we have enjoyed an unusually long period of high acceptance by society. A review of history will point out matters of pertinent interest: some 98 draft dodgers were killed in riots in the first few months of the Civil War; the first shots in the Mexican War were fired while Congress was preparing to abolish West Point; and some 67 percent of the population opted against the Korean War in late 1950. Thus, the message to be learned from history is, simply, Don’t panic. The American people seldom really “like” the military, and for the Air Force to expect love from the civilian sector is asking too much.

• Finally, we must possess a means for military men to register legitimate—even controversial—feelings without fear of censure. Otherwise, experiment and criticism will pass to “outsiders” rather than Air Force professionals who fully understand our mission and “the art of the possible.” For example, many Air Force officers today reason that the stage directors of the Vietnam conflict are civilians who have superintended that overall expedition, yet the military is blamed for the fact that the war is not “won.” Many officers privately insist that the American government never asked the military to “win” that conflict. Now, when does free expression of this view become impermissible license? Perhaps the issue needs much thoughtful probing.¹³

The crisis facing the American military today is the same as that which faced the nation over a century ago. History may or may not repeat itself—but remarkable similarities exist between the problems of our present Commander in Chief, trapped in the frustration of a foreign adventure and a radical domestic society, and another Republican President.

For Lincoln, too, there existed a brutal, bloody, unpopular conflict. In the Civil War, as now, there was little clear understanding of the national aim. Then, as now, riots caused injury or death. Then, as now, newspapers editorialized against the President, calling him a tyrant, despot, or wicked traitor. Then, as now, foreign critics second-guessed the American leader. Then, as now, “doves” in New England asked for a moratorium. Then, as now, the youth called the war sinful and unjustifiable.

Yet Lincoln remained true to the words he had spoken in 1860, while still an unknown attorney, at Cooper Union in New York. His words may offer safe harbor for the doubts which assail us today:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction. . . . Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.

JAG School,

Institute for Professional Development

 Notes

1. Samuel Lubell, The Hidden Crisis in American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), p. 24.

2. Richard Harwood, “Military Under Fire,” Washington Post, 12 July 1970.

3. “4 Schools Kill ROTC,” Air Force Times, 29 July 1970.

4. John C. Meyer, “Adjusting the Institution to Its People and the Times,” Air Force Policy Letter for Commanders, 1 October 1969.

5. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of Confidence: Ideas, Power, and Values (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969), pp. 7-9.

6. Sam Keen and John Raser, “A Conversation with Herbert Marcuse,” Psychology Today, February 1971.

7. Schlesinger, op. cit.

8. “A Restoration of Confidence,” New Republic, 20 and 27 December 1969.

9. Andrew N. Greeley, “Turning Off ‘The People’: The War and White Ethnic Groups,” New Republic, 27 June 1970, pp. 14-16.

10. Horizon, Autumn 1968, p. 5.

11. “Young Officers Offer Change,” Air Force Times, 17 June 1970.

12. Meyer, op. cit.

13. See generally Mark M. Boatner III, “Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us—First,” Army, February 1971, p. 24.

Contributor

Major Joseph W. Kastl (M.S., Troy State University; J.D., Northwestern University) is Staff Judge Advocate, Cannon AFB, N.M. He is a former instructor, Judge Advocate Staff Officer Course, Air University, where he wrote a text on dissent, protest, and civil law. He was one of the five students completing the pilot course, Air Command and Staff College seminar program, in 1970.