KOA KAHIKO (‘WISE ANCIENT WARRIORS’):
RANDOM THOUGHTS ON MILITARISM



Reading has always been a particularly stimulating undertaking for me, since books and ideas serve as powerful catalysts that unlock and release my own reflective thoughts on this chaotic roller-coaster ride called human experience. I am usually unable to sit still and read for long, however, due to the flood of pesky little ruminative demons that are typically released inside my head at such times. Being a literary omnivore, I also read an average of about 12 books simultaneously, picking up one and putting down another to read a chapter here, a section there. Because the processing of all that information invariably overloads my cerebral circuits, I can’t handle more than a few chapters of any given book at one sitting, but this built-in limiting device is also helped along by a couple of hyperactive Siberian Huskies who seem to have a benign form of canine ADHD. No sooner am I ‘into’ a particular book than the presence of two licking, lapping, obviously excited furry muzzles thrust into odoriferous nooks and crannies becomes too evident to not escape my notice.  

Electronic media frequently serves much the same purpose for me as reading. By way of illustrating the point, I am reminded of an article appearing in yesterday’s online edition of the Honolulu Advertiser’s entertainment section. The piece was about current rap/hip-hop artist ‘L’il Wayne’, who is about to bring his concept of popular urban culcha to the islands. A picture accompanying that article displayed an upper torso-shot of this cultural misanthrope in standard ‘hood’ uniform: gangsta-style ball cap worn sideways, neck draped in gawdy bling, tattoos covering every square centimeter of his scrawny little body, and clothes hanging off said skin & bones that are obviously about 8 sizes too large. Oh yeah, and then there’s the snarly look and the gang hand-signs, too. Charming stuff…if you have the mind of an arrested adolescent.

To me, a poi-dog descendent mostly of Euro haole ancestry (of the Celtish and Norman persuasion), this picture is just about as archetypal an image of studied ignorance as I can think of. As the more astute among you are well aware, despite all our more cerebral exemplars of literary achievement, we Celts have more than our share of ignorance lurking within our genes and need further exposure to it about as much as Bosnia-Herzegovnia required ethnic cleansing. Thus, with the nihilist image of ‘L’il Wayne’ taking up valuable space among the thinning ranks of my remaining brain cells, I sat down to read yesterday and picked up one of those dozens of books stacked about me, to plunge off on yet another tangent of frenetic reflection. The book I randomly selected was one titled America’s Military Today: The Challenge of Militarism (by one Tod Ensign, 2004, The New Press, ISBN 1-56584-883-7). Like some of today’s other socially conscious publishing companies, ‘The New Press’ (established in 1990) specializes in public interest subjects (as opposed to those offering private gain potential) and puts forth books that may not actually be economically profitable, but that are perhaps of great importance in terms of informing and educating a public that never gets enough of the RIGHT information.

Author Tod Ensign wrote much of the material in the book himself, but also served as editor for what ends up being a small anthology of about 410 pages of opinion and various analyses on the nature of today’s modern American military establishment. As a historian, both in military sciences as well as socio-cultural affairs, I have long maintained an interest in the nature of armed human conflict, since it is the formative core experience of all human history and civilisation. I have, for some reason I can’t explain, been putting off delving into this book for about a year, but it sat there on my reference shelf staring balefully at me each time I sat down to read in my study’s reading nook. Sooner or later I’d have to pick it up, but since I’m what they call a ‘mood reader’ (I have to be in a certain frame of mind to read certain subjects), I must be in a semi-militaristic reflective state at the moment (although I can’t explain why). Shortly after I opened the book, the reason for this axiomatic causative factor started to crystalise, however, for the very first chapters of the book dedicated themselves to the topic of military recruiting. Strangely, as I read further about the ‘marketing’ of war-fighting to young people of cannon-fodder age (late teens through the twenties), the image of ‘L’il Wayne’ started to intrude into my thoughts like a pesky mosquito that hovers unseen, but annoying as hell, above the bed at night.

Ensign’s book is a good one in that it covers a lot of material centered on today’s military  establishment that has direct relevance to the disconcerting problems and challenges America faces in structuring and supporting its modern military forces in a changing world. Problems like sexism, homosexuality, esprit de corps, authority, morality, ethics, and treatment of veterans after they’ve returned home or been discharged all receive due attention therein.

My own background in the military is an interesting one, for I was on active duty during the Vietnam war and became involved in what historians have come to term the ‘uniformed war resistance movement’. In other words, active duty members of the country’s armed forces who strenuously objected (though not pacifists in the strictest sense) to that particular war and made no attempt to hide their extreme disaprobation, despite being sworn and serving members of the American military forces. My own service was the US Air Force and I ended up assigned to both SAC and TAC (Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command, both Air Force specialised commands that either no longer exist or that have been restructured, or renamed) as an aerospace medicine specialist. When I was at Minot AFB (North Dakota) in 1967, I first became involved in the uniformed war resistance via the GI coffeehouses. Ironically, the USO in the city of Minot, some 24 klicks (that’s ‘kilometers’ to you) outside the base itself, was the local venue for this activity. I’m absolutely sure that the wonderful people who ran that haven for us GIs had not the slightest clue that they were harboring a cell of uniformed anti-war activists.. The Minot First Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) on the other hand very definitely knew what we were up to and that church’s pastor was a source of great comfort to those of us who intuitively felt that the Vietnam War was an execrable and completely unjustified military ‘adventure’ that America should never have become involved in at all (very much like the ill-fated and colossally ignorant ‘Iraq War’ that the Bush Administration duplicitously rammed down the throats of the nation, despite the patently clear fact that Osama Bin Laden’s Al Queda originated and remained in Afghanistan/Pakistan).

At any rate, I and my colleagues were young and very idealistic (all in our early 20s) who worked both on the base and in town (at the John Moses Military Hospital, which was a former VA facility built back in the elate 20s to serve the large number of WWI vets living in the northern states, and at the base flight surgeon’s office). Minot AFB was at that time the hub of any possible American nuclear strategic response that might be retributively launched against the USSR, hosting three nuclear ICBM (Minuteman I) squadrons and the 5^th Bomb Wing (all B-52H nuke-armed ‘BUFFS’ on 24 hour operational alert). In the event of the unthinkable—a pre-emptive Soviet nuclear strike that came without warning--we would have instantly become prime targets for the vaporized consequence of having what was estimated to be at least a dozen 100 megaton Russian atomic warheads aimed right at us. With that sort of happy Damoclean sword dangling over our heads by a slender string, we had no compunctions whatsoever about working to end the concurrent Vietnam conflict in whatever manner we could. But that was then—a very complicated time that today’s generation has no clue about—and this is now, with 6 years of futile Southwest Asian war behind us and still no end in sight of Osama’s smirking defiance from his safe-haven on the Pakistani border.

To return to the irritating image of hip-hopper ‘L’il Wayne’ I mentioned earlier, as I ploughed through the first section of Ensign’s book on modern American militarism, I came across and stumbled up short upon the chapters concerning themselves with recruitment, for in today’s ‘all-volunteer’ armed forces, the recruitment process is pregnant with relevance. Military recruiters have traditionally taken the path of least resistance in sourcing out recruits for all of the main uniformed armed services (USAF, USA, USN), which means that one of the key target populations for recruiters has always been those who are economically disadvantaged; it was a true during Vietnam as it is now. The prime difference is that during Vietnam, the draft was still the law of the land and now the draft has been replaced by an ‘all-volunteer’ Army.

[As an aside, it might interest you to know that in addition to the US Coast Guard, one other, smaller uniformed force is the USPHS, or US Public Health Service. The latter group’s ‘Uniformed Service Corp’ officers wear distinctive US Navy uniforms, but with USPHS insignia and buttons on them. The USPHS has been in existence for well over 150 years, but it is a little known force among today’s military services. The US Surgeon General of the United States is the chief of the USPHS, the most well-known being former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who favored wearing the uniform to create a striking impression. Upon first glance at a portrait of Koop, one would think he were viewing a picture of a US Navy Vice Admiral, so closely does the USPHS uniform resemble that of their navy counterparts.]

In the past, that ‘path of least resistance’ has led directly to the lower economic third of the American population, since service in the military has typically provided (since the early 50s, that is) a ticket out of the endless grind of economic poverty along with practical job training preparation for civilian trades and professions. With those in the higher 2/3^rd of the population more reasonably assured of advanced education opportunities and consequent higher-paying professional occupations (and therefore more likely to join the military as commissioned officers), recruiting efforts in the hood and ghettos to enlist soldiers was seen as a better prospect than in predominantly WASP communities.

With the advent of the ‘new’ all-volunteer military forces policy that came about after the Vietnam era, the military was not only faced with having to recruit higher caliber enlistees, it was also forced to conform more circumspectly with the ‘political correctness’ ethics and racially egalitarian standards that arose concurrent with the social civil rights movement. In actual fact, in our most recent decade, recruitment has succeeded quite well in that lower economic third of the population (for the same reasons that obtained before), but as the continuing demands of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems have placed added demands on the knowledge and capabilities of those recruits, even ‘average’ recruits need to possess greater abilities and higher levels of competence. Additionally, the manpower attrition created by the demands imposed by two very difficult wars simultaneously (Iraq and Afghanistan) has put additional significant burdens on recruitment efforts.

Today, the US military forces contain a disproportionately large number of black Americans, the fortunate ones among them going on into more highly specialised areas of skill that may well produce capabilities that are useful in the civilian marketplace. The problem remains, however, of where to obtain enough of the ‘ordinary’ cannon-fodder that typically bear the brunt of all fighting (whether in conventional warfare or in today’s modern guerilla counterinsurgency actions): the common infantryman. Since no person of any substantial intelligent awareness wishes to assume that thankless, highly demanding, and unusually dangerous role, recruitment incentives ranging from sign-up and retention bonuses to extra-generous educational subsidies have all be exploited relentlessly in order to attract enough foot-soldiers to fill the front ranks of our conventional military forces. One tactic that works has been the development of sophisticated advertising campaigns (“Be all you can be”, and “Any Army of one”, etc.), drawing heavily on the large corporate commercial names in advertising expertise to help snare the interest of potential enlisted recruits. Further enhancements are also be found in elaborate virtual war-gaming activities and complex public-relations promotional efforts sponsored by the Army that co-opt the popularity of virtual gaming to make modern war seem more like simply another (larger) game.

One comment that Ensign quoted struck with a resonance that I hadn’t anticipated, as once again that repugnant image of ‘L’il Wayne’ came to mind, for Ensign quoted a higher-placed person in the US Army’s Recruitment Services who said that the Army had contracted with ‘The Source Magazine’ (stated to be the “hip-hop bible”) to promote recruiting. Equipped with a military Humvee vehicle outfitted with a monster ‘ghetto-thumper’ audio amplification and multi-media sound system, the recruiters spend their time trolling in poor black neighborhoods for recruits. Since violence in many of these impoverished areas is almost a daily fact of life, it doesn’t take much effort to place that violence into a more ‘constructive’ context, where one is actually ‘paid’ to carry a gun and fight for an honorable cause. This phase of extended recruitment outreach has had an unintended consequence, however, in that as more and more recruits have been needed to fill out the ranks (thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan), recruiters have also dipped lower into previously ‘forbidden’ recruitment levels, taking in some enlistees with minor criminal records and histories of misdemeanor violations. As a Colonel Thomas Nickerson (Chief of Army Accessions) explained, “You have to go where the target audience is. Our research tells us that hip-hop and urban culture is a powerful influence in the lives of young Americans. We try to develop a bond with that audience. We want them to say “Hey! The Army was here…the Army is cool.”

Somehow the thought of whole platoons of ‘L’il Wayne’ clones in desert camo fatigues and rapping against a background sound-track of incoming AK-47 rounds does things to my sense of appropriateness that are not easy to reconcile.

In his book, Ensign outlines various considerations that the modern demands of war-fighting have placed upon our military forces and the subject of enhanced complexity of war materiel systems receives no small amount of scrutiny. Aside from the question of recruitment, there are considerations of cost that the author somehow fails entirely to address. One of his key points is that with the increasing sophistication of ‘personal’ weaponry and combat gear, the traditional infantry soldier will have a much greater impact on the outcome of a battle than ever before. Armed with highly ‘intelligent’ battlefield sensor systems and communications gear, the ordinary soldier with be able to target his fire with a dead accuracy never before attainable. Ensign also mentions exoskeleton ‘powersuits’, first conceived of back in the 40s by sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein in his novel ‘Starship Troopers’, and currently popularized in the adolescent TV programs ‘Transformers’ and ‘Power-Rangers’. Equipped with such mechanically ergo-augmented suits, Ensign argues that the average infantry ‘grunt’ would be able to carry prodigious amounts of heavy weaponry, be semi-impervious to incoming small-arms fire (through use of all-encapsulating body armor), and perform prolonged work perhaps 500 times more arduous than an ordinary human body is capable of, unassisted.

While that idea sounds great on paper, Ensign fails to recognise that such developments are still in the ‘advanced imagination’ stage, with extant hardware technology lagging appreciably in being able to accommodate these grand predictions within the reasonably immediate future. He also fails to recognise that as technology costs soar higher and higher, some of the more elaborate systems now being put into production are costly almost beyond imagining (e.g. the new USAF air-superiority fighter F-22A Raptor) with a take-home cost of about $140 millions each (that does not factor in R&D and other costs, which would boost the per-plane cost far higher). And since no aircraft, no matter how stealthily advanced it is, is absolutely invulnerable to offensive threat, even the loss of one or two of the few authorized for production (now anticipated to total about 87 only, out of more than 375 originally requested) would be intolerable.

After all the arguments have been aired in Ensign’s book admittedly interesting and well researched book, there is still no overlooking that the costs of war are now too great to justify undertaking any military actions capriciously or without a fully fleshed-out strategic analysis of possible immediate and long-term consequences, both political and economic. The days of deploying our military forces imperiously and without the fully informed consensus of all Americans (not just the congress) must necessarily come to an end. If the needless losses of life and battlefield casualties are not deemed a sufficient deterrent in themselves, then the excessively high economic costs to the entire nation ought to be. Sadly, as long as most Americans continue to think reactively and emotionally, rather than with cold, clear-headed logic aforthought, and as long as powerful media tools to influence and sway opinion are maliciously abused and misused (as they were by the Bush administration), wasteful wars like the still current Iraqi imbroglio will squander thousands of American lives and waste trillions of our dollars to absolutely no positive gain.

Ensign’s book is a very refreshing look at many aspects of modern militarism that are not covered in the usual historical or strategic studies venues, as much for its frank and honest emphasis on the complex special problems faced by the modern military establishment (sexism, gender bias, law-bending ethics, and so forth) as for its well-researched and astutely balanced arguments presented therein.

On the island of Molokai we have the ‘Koa Kahiko—Molokai Veterans’ group. An ancient term that roughly translates to ‘veterans’ (Koa Kahiko corresponds to ‘wise, ancient warrior’), the Molokai Vets, led by Commander Larry Helm, comprise a small but committed group of former soldiers who undertake the old Hawaiian cultural mission of working together to make a community difference. Since they come from all backgrounds (mostly US Army, but some Navy, and with one or two USAF vets), there’s little philosophical consensus on the subject of war and its many causative considerations, but there is a strong sense of congruent feeling that those whose lives have been arbitrarily caught up and thrown into the battles of the nation ought to at the very least receive the simple thanks of a grateful nation (even if they will be forgotten in the next instant) upon their return. Fortunately, that thanks seems to be forthcoming as America’s soldiers come home to their families. A parallel exists within the basic training paradigm of all soldiers when they first learn soldiering. “Respect the uniform, not the person”. It alludes to the necessity of following orders out of respect for the rank of the person issuing them and not out of respect for the person himself.  While we may not respect the philosophy that got us into that regrettable Iraqi quagmire, at least that should not diminish our respect for those who serve in uniform.

On Molokai, no Koa Kahiko asks for thanks; the Molokai Koa Kahiko are adamant only about reminding people to keep providing kokua (help) to the kauhale (community) through public spirited community service; hopefully also, through those civic-minded efforts a better sort of remembrance than mere, hollow congressional platitudes and inconsequent gestures of emotional opprobrium will obtain.

Aloha Kakou. Malama pono!