Where Military Honor?
by Bob Barr

A 26-year-old man, born in Cuba under the regime of Fidel Castro and still a citizen of that Caribbean island nation that maintains no diplomatic relations with the United States, joins the Army, not having completed high school and unable to speak any language but Spanish.

He displays a sticker of the Cuban flag on the windshield of his military vehicle. His hero is Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the long-deceased but deified guerrilla fighter killed 40 years ago following his capture by U.S.-trained and U.S.-backed Bolivian army units while he was fomenting peasant uprisings in that Andean country. In fact, a copy of a biography of "Che" is among this Army enlisted man's prized possessions.

The preceding description likely would surprise no one, if in fact it described a member of the Cuban army. The problem is, the description fits not a Cuban army enlistee, but a member of the Georgia Army National Guard — yes, the U.S. Army — serving in Iraq. For Army Spc. Hector Arbosferrer, the U.S. Army is, in the words of a recent interview, simply a "path to citizenship" in America.

In England, more than a dozen British sailors and Marines, including a 25-year-old mother of three and a 20-year-old male whose angelic visage appears not even ready to begin shaving, were released after two weeks of being detained by the Iranians. During their days in captivity, the Brits were subject to nominal psychological pressure — separation from colleagues, being lied to about the terms of their release, and being led to believe they might be executed — which caused several of the group to crack.

These capitulating crew members publicly apologized for their actions, which they stated were wrong insofar as they took place in Iranian waters (contrary to the position of their own government). The lone female, Leading Seaman Faye Turney — simply "Faye" to her apparently adoring tabloid fans in the United Kingdom — wrote and signed several letters not only "confessing" to having violated Iranian sovereignty, but also demanding the withdrawal of British and American troops from Iraq and criticizing the already well-publicized scandal at Iraq's former Abu Ghraib prison.

This shameful and humiliating display of British spinelessness was compounded when the 15 were reunited with their families in their homeland. Rather than being subject to discipline if not charges for their failure to adhere to norms of military conduct, the British High Command stated "they were a credit" to the British military. It was revealed within days of their release that the Ministry of Defense had approved allowing them to profit from their "ordeal" by selling their stories to the British press for significant sums of money. Government officials justified their bizarre decision — which was later rescinded — by comparing the plight of the 15 to having engaged in "exceptional circumstances" akin to being awarded the Victoria Cross.

What do these two stories reveal about the status of the armed forces in the Western World's two most powerful military powers? Simply that the armed forces of the West, which military historian Victor Davis Hanson noted in his 2001 book, "Carnage and Culture," historically have bested their adversaries of other cultures because of superior discipline and initiative, have lost their sense of what the military is supposed to be; indeed, what it must be.

The armed forces of the United States — whether because of a pervasive sense of political correctness or because the twin conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the military to the point at which selectivity in recruitment can no longer be afforded — are now reduced to enlisting foreign nationals who cannot even speak English, who have not finished high school, are citizens of nations with which we do not maintain diplomatic relations and whose heroes are communist guerrilla leaders.

That such criteria — or lack thereof — as these are accepted by military leaders and society in general without raising an eyebrow or a question, is troubling in the extreme. If in fact recruited military personnel have so little understanding of the nation to which they profess service as to view that service as nothing more than a ticket to citizenship, then an element critical to the melding of the military into an overall sense of common culture — essential to long-term sustainability of the goals that must be common to civilian and military society — has been lost.

Across the Atlantic, if in fact the British armed forces have been reduced to defining heroism as capitulation to captors — and then at least temporarily approving personnel to profit monetarily from such cowardice — then truly the line between defeat and victory has been erased.

In both countries, and in both circumstances, what has become clear is that today's armed forces are no longer your father's military.

Former Congressman and U.S. Attorney Bob Barr practices law in Atlanta. www.bobbarr.org