U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation

Kelly Denton-Borhaug

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781845537104
• eBook ISBN: 9781317545217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The military-industrial complex in the United States has grown exponentially in recent decades, yet the realities of war remain invisible to most Americans. The U.S has created a culture in which sacrificial rhetoric is the norm when dealing in war. This culture has been enabled because popular American Christian understandings of redemption rely so heavily on the sacrificial. 'U.S War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation' explores how the concept of Christian redemption has been manipulated to create a mentality of "necessary sacrifice". The study reveals the links between Christian notions of salvation and sacrifice and the aims of the military-industrial complex.

Chapter One

WAR-CULTURE AND SACRIFICE

Introduction

On the eve of the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver, Colorado, more than 1,000 anti-war protesters took to the streets, led by Ron Kovic, the paralyzed Vietnam Veteran made famous by the Hollywood film, Born on the Fourth of July, and Cindy Sheehan, antiwar activist and mother of Casey Sheehan, a soldier killed in the Iraq War. Carrying signs decrying the use of torture and calling for an end to the war in Iraq, along the way of their march they encountered about 50 counter-protesters. Among them was Nancy Hecker of Colorado Springs, mother of yet another young man killed in Iraq, Maj. Bill Hecker. When asked about her reasons for participating in this counter-protest, Mrs. Hecker replied, ‘I’m here to honor our son and the sacrifice he made for our country and to support the troops and the families who give so much.’¹

What would we say about the losses associated with war if we did not describe them as sacrifices? Moreover, in a nation still dominantly shaped by Christian religious understandings and practices, how is sacrificial language such as Mrs. Hecker’s influenced by religious frameworks emphasizing Jesus’ sacrificia self-giving life and death? In the United States, language about ‘the necessity of sacrifice’ operates as an electrical conduit between the institutionalization of ‘war-culture’ and the understandings and practices of popular Christianity. At the same time, this conduit is entirely naturalized and mostly unquestioned in U.S. culture at large. As a result, the hinge of sacrific between nationalism and Christianity remains largely invisible to many if not most U.S. citizens, and the sacred sheen to war-culture contributed by sacrificial language and understandings goes unchallenged. The purpose of this book is to thrust this same relationship between Christianity, sacrifice and war-culture into visibility so that we may see it in operation, examine it, think about it and make judgments about what our awareness requires of us. The depth, breadth and intensity of war-culture as a dominant facet of the post-9/11 United States renders our clear thinking all the more urgent and timely.

What do I mean by ‘U.S. War-culture’? Defined, this refers to the normalized interpenetration of the institutions, ethos and practices of war with ever-increasing facets of daily human life in the United States, including the economy, education, diverse cultural sites, patterns of labor and consumption, and even the capacity for imagination. If ‘militarism’ is a traditional term that refers to the dominance of military over civilian authority, and the prevalence of war-like values in society, contemporary scholars now utilize the terminology of ‘militarization’ to refer to much the same reality described here as ‘war-culture.’ Catherine Lutz’s definition is particularly apt:

Militarization is a discursive process, involving a shift in general societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate the use of force, the organization of large standing armies and their leaders, and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them….[it is] an intensification of the labor and resources allocated to military purposes including the shaping of other institutions in synchrony with military goals (italics mine).²

Lutz’s insight regarding the way militarization shapes other institutions, perceptions and identities is important. Militarization does not stand apart as an isolated element in U.S. culture. On the contrary, in the post-9/11 world of the United States, militarization is a powerful force that shapes the dynamics of collective power, identity, memory and daily experience. ‘War-culture’ describes how this force has become a driving influence in U.S. culture at large. As Andrew Bacevich says, ‘the global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys – and is bent on perpetuating – has become central to our national identity.’ He continues,

More than America’s matchless material abundance or even the effusions of its pop culture, the nation’s arsenal of high tech weaponry and the soldiers who employ that arsenal have come to signify who we are and what we stand for…Americans in our own time have fallen prey to militarization, manifesting in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the efficacy of force ³

Though some citizens are aware and worried about the bloated U.S. military budget and alarming level of arms production, understanding war-culture involves becoming aware of the tentacles of militarization that reach into the entire realm of culture, resulting in ‘the quasi-militarization of everyday life.’ The educational process of our entire social and cultural experience, our institutions and all relationships that teach, define and illuminate (i.e., our ‘public pedagogy’) are permeated more and more by militarized values, aesthetics, experiences, goals and culture.⁴

Many analysts of militarization or war-culture utilize the descriptive phrase first used by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell speech to the American people on 17 January 1961, when he coined the term, ‘the U.S. military-industrial complex’ to begin to outline the dangerous interpenetrations of the defense industry, congress and the military in the United States.⁵ But in the intervening 50 or so years, ‘the complex’ has morphed beyond Eisenhower’s wildest imagination, assisted by a powerful rhetorical schematic that spreads its influence in the lives of people in the U.S. (and the world). The growth of the complex since his time makes this analysis all the more imperative.

While many scholars and activists have explored and condemned the growth of war-culture and empire in the post-9/11 United States, less attention has been paid to the significance of the rhetoric and cognitive framework of sacrifice that undergirds war-culture, and that simultaneously is tightly interwoven with experiences and practices of Christianity in the U.S. Sacrificial constructions, I argue, electrically draw together Christianity and war-culture, and enliven and inform each by way of the other. At the same time, however, not only does the cognitive framework of sacrifice act as an internal engine, it also places a sacred canopy over the institutions, culture and practices of war and thus is one important element through which the reality of war-culture is thrust out of conscious view; in other words, not only does the framework of sacrifice energize war-culture, it also plays a decisive role in the normalization of war-culture to the extent that it becomes invisible, simply part of the expected fabric of life in the U.S. Christianity is a usable pawn in this chess game, even at times a willing partner to the machinery and culture of destruction, idolization of security, and death. Moreover, when we explore this dynamic more deeply, we see that the flow of electricity moves in more than one way. If Christianity enables the operations of war-culture, then at the same time, the symbols, understandings, rhetoric and practices of war also seep through into Christianity via the same hinge of sacrifice. Thus, not only must we examine the dynamics of sacrifice in war-culture, such investigation reveals a certain vulnerability in Christianity to the influence of war-culture through this same relationship. Ultimately this book raises questions about any continuing ethically viable role of sacrificial constructs in a responsible Christianity that is conscious of the hinge of sacrifice that connects war-culture with Christian doctrine, understanding and practice.

Let us return to that final speech given by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961, and his coining of the term, ‘the military-industrial complex,’ to describe the new ‘conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.’ The influence of this complex, he warned, had economic, political and even spiritual impact, and while Eisenhower acknowledged that the need for this development was unarguable, nevertheless, he emphasized, it was imperative that Americans ‘not fail to comprehend its grave implications.’

Among those implications, Eisenhower specifically outlined four inherent dangers as a consequence of the growing military-industrial complex: 1) the intrusion of unwarranted influence into government by the complex; 2) the potential dangers to liberties and democratic process; 3) the danger to the free university if government contracts ‘substitute for intellectual curiosity’ and the nations’ scholars become dominated by Federal employment and allocations and the power of money; and 4) the potential for public policy to become captive to a scientific-technological elite. He closed by warning, ‘We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.’

Eisenhower’s initial description of the military-industrial complex and his concerns about it may be compared to the proverbial pebble dropped into a pond. Since his time, the depth and breadth of the ripples of war-culture extending out into the water of U.S. culture have grown exponentially and been analyzed by many scholars. What follows is a brief foray into some of the major facets comprising these connected waves.

Military Buildups and Decreasing Boundaries

Between 1950 and 2003, the U.S. experienced four periods of ‘intense military mobilization’ and concomitant increases in weapons purchases, including the Korean War, the buildups during the Vietnam War and under Ronald Reagan, and the boon overseen by the second Bush Administration following the attacks of 9/11.⁶ Militarism is characterized by at least three indicators: 1) the growth of a professional military class and the glorification of its ideals; 2) the infiltration of military officers and/or representatives of the arms industry into elevated government positions; and 3) an increasing embrace of policies that emphasize military preparedness as the highest priority of the state.⁷ If Eisenhower was concerned about the influence of increasingly permeable boundaries between Congress, the arms industry and the military, a fourth institution now plays an influential role in the spread of militarism: think tanks, ‘modern patriotic monasteries.’ But this is only the beginning of the story of the increase and permutations of war-culture in the United States. Beginning with the Korean War, huge defense expenditures became institutionalized in the U.S., altering the entire economy of the nation. Indeed, such spending became ‘a normal feature of civilian life,’ an expected characteristic of the United States and a naturalized aspect of the work of Congress, as more and more of its members sought lucrative defense contracts for their districts. ‘Americans are by now used to hearing their political leaders say or do anything to promote local military spending.’ The ‘circulation of elites,’ with high ranking retiring defense contractors receiving appointments as officials in the Pentagon, undercuts attempts by the Congress to enforce accountability with respect to military spending. It has become common for vast sums of money in this system to disappear, such as occurred in 2001 when the Pentagon’s Deputy Inspector General admitted that $1.1 trillion ‘was simply gone and no one can be sure of when, where or to whom the money went.’ Political scientist Chalmers Johnson remarks, ‘the fact that no one seems to care is also evidence of militarism.’⁸

The Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb was the beginning of the development of so-called ‘black budgets’ ena...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. War-culture and Sacrifice
• 2. Building and Maintaining the Drive to War: Victimage Rhetoric, Framing, and the Language of Sacrifice
• 3. A Deadly Nexus: ‘Necessity’, Christian Salvation and War-culture
• 4. Rehabilitating Sacrifice?
• 5. Detranscendentalizing War
• Appendix: ‘Just This Once’ by Coleman Barks
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Author Index