James Fallows On The 'Tragedy Of The American Military'

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

In an article in "The Atlantic," James Fallows writes about what he calls the tragedy of the American military. We have the best, most expensive military in the world. But Fallows writes, repeatedly, this force has been defeated by less modern, worse-equipped, barely funded foes. And what's more, he argues, because the professional military is cut off from the rest of American society, we don't take its problems seriously. We applaud our fighting men and women. We ignore the real problems the military faces. Those are James Fallows' conclusions in a nutshell. And he joins us now. Welcome to the program.

JAMES FALLOWS: Hello, Robert. Thank you for having me.

SIEGEL: First, no one would deny the power and the discipline of today's U.S. military. But when you speak of the military being defeated, you would regard Iraq and Afghanistan as defeats?

FALLOWS: I would. And I think if any historian looks back on this era and assessed the last dozen years of warfare, I think they would argue that enormous human cost, financial cost, diplomatic rancor and all the rest - the United States has gone no distance toward realizing its long-term strategic ends through its efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan with, I would argue, the exception of killing Osama bin Laden.

SIEGEL: And when you argue that, are you talking about political decisions that were made that the military then made the best of, or do you believe there could have been a different result if the military had gone about its business in a different manner or if there had been a more public discussion of its not doing so?

FALLOWS: I think very much the last of the options you were saying. At the tactical level, there has been a fair amount discussion within the military and some of the press sort of week by week about whether this operation in Fallujah or that one in certain parts of Afghanistan accomplished its aim. But in the largest sense, big things the public does collectively that cost our public money, that affect us - whether it's health care systems or education or environmental controls, we have, as a public, some sense of whether they're working or not. That sense may be flawed. But over time, people are involved. It seems to me that if what has been going on with the use of the military over the last dozen years - of being sent essentially on unwinnable missions and having less than 1 percent of the population sent again and again and again on these literally doomed causes, we'd be having a more engaged and broad debate about whether we should do that, should we do it differently, at what cost if more people were affected?

SIEGEL: Why do you think there has not been a - well, a military reform movement of the sort that did actually develop after the Vietnam War, discussing how could the military go about its business a lot better?

FALLOWS: It's worth remembering how after the Vietnam War, which was such a dark time for the military, the nation in many ways, there was a sort of nascent golden age in military reform where you had Democrats led by Gary Hart and Republicans led by, yes, Newt Gingrich and, yes, Dick Cheney, who were trying to move beyond just political arguments on spending more versus spending less to how you train people to succeed better in environments like that of Vietnam - how you use money more effectively. I think it hasn't happened because just not enough people are affected.

SIEGEL: You invoke another measure of how seriously we take military performance, and that is how often generals have been fired in the past couple of wars for not doing a good job. And the answer is they haven't been.

FALLOWS: It's true. And it's surprising to people who are of, say, the post-baby boomer generation to recognize that the current mood of discourse about the military - which is essentially reverence. We have salutes to the heroes at football games. We have early boarding at airports and all the rest - how that has supplanted the previous era's mixture of respect but criticism. Dwight Eisenhower was tough on generals. Harry Truman was tough on generals. Abraham Lincoln was famously tough on generals. The idea in previous parts of our life was that the military, like other major American institutions, from politics to the press to medicine to education, was important but flawed.

SIEGEL: And you would argue that the difference there is that in the not-too-recent history, way back in the Eisenhower years or the Truman years, most Americans would think, my son might be commanded by that guy - by that general. And that General had better do well by our troops. And today, very, very few American families would think that.

FALLOWS: Exactly. And so it's a combination of that sense of my family has literally skin in the game and also I personally know something about this institution. Anybody listening to this broadcast - almost anybody - if you say something about American schools or American medicine, that listener will have some first-hand experience as a ballast to judge any kind of new accusation or new claim. Whereas when it comes to the military, again it's a tiny fraction of the public that has any first-hand knowledge. One interesting benchmark is we know how few people are American farmers anymore, but there are about twice as many of them who live on American farms as all active duty and reserve forces put together. So the burden of this major part of American statecraft and effect on the world and treasure is borne by a tiny little group of people so the rest of us don't have the stake we do in other issues of making sure this force is used carefully.

SIEGEL: James Fallows, thanks for talking with us.

FALLOWS: Thank you, Robert.

SIEGEL: James Fallows is author of "The Atlantic" magazine's latest cover story, "The Tragedy Of The American Military." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.