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The 9/11 Generation? |
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 by Benjamin Kerstein, August 11, 2007 |
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Bill Kristol (anti-neocon psychopathic raving may begin now) has written an interesting article in Time in which he claims that a new "9/11 generation" is taking shape, particularly among the soldiers currently fighting in Iraq. He claims that this will have far reaching social and political consequences
What does this imply? That the soldiers who have done well in Iraq will be major figures in American life for the next couple of decades. These men and women are no less suited to national leadership than are entrepreneurs, lawyers or local community leaders. In fact, they've had to show more courage, they've had to operate in a more fluid and volatile environment--and they've risked their lives for their country. Just as John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush benefited from their experience as young officers in World War II--and from the high regard in which their experience was held--so the Iraq vets will have every chance to rise to the top of American public life.
More interesting is Kristol's assertion that the spirit of this new generation is active in both the civilian and military spheres.
It's true that Iraq is an unpopular war. But hostility to President George W. Bush, or to the war, hasn't spilled over onto the military. A few weeks ago, the Washington Post Magazine featured an article on the military and its relationship with the broader society. The cover line was alarmist--"Us and Them: As mistrust, resentment and misunderstanding grow between the civilian and military communities, can America wage a just and effective war?" But when you read the piece, the only place you find mistrust, resentment and misunderstanding is among some liberal élites. In fact, in most civilian communities there appears to be pretty unambiguous admiration for the military.
While in Iraq, I kept thinking back to a story that Dean Barnett reported in a recent article on the "9/11 generation" in the Weekly Standard. Barnett attended the commissioning of a Marine Corps lieutenant who had just graduated from Harvard. After the ceremony, the young man returned to his dorm room in full dress uniform and received a spontaneous round of applause from classmates. A campus police officer took him aside to shake his hand. The young man's father observed, "It was like something out of a movie."
As someone who has long harbored a deep and abiding loathing for the baby boom generation and the egregious chaos they left to the rest of us to clean up after they had their fun, I certainly hope Kristol is right. But, if I can amend my previous sentence, there was always something false about the idea of the "Vietnam generation." The baby boomers who have written themselves into history as the essence of their generation were always a minority. The mythos of the '60s as one giant anti-war rally has always been a false history, erasing those who -- for instance -- fought in Vietnam and remain unapologetic about it. Silencing everything, in other words, which did not fit the preferred mythos of the scribes.
A 9/11 generation certainly exists, I have felt a part of it since 11am on the day itself, but whether this generation is really so much different from those who came before is, to my mind, questionable. Kristol's attempt to contrast the "Vietnam" generation with the 9/11 generation strikes a false note. It speaks to the unfortunate fact that the baby boomers have, unfortunately, ceded their own history to the worst among them. Nixon was, of course, right about the "silent majority," which is part of the reason he was hated so violently by those who desired to maintain the illusion of a non-existent radical majority. The difference now -- which is all the difference in the world -- is that the silent majority may cease to be silent. We can only hope.
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Bostonian by birth, Israeli by choice, soon to be graduate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, writer, blogger, aspiring novelist, student of Jewish and Israeli history and Assistant Editor of Azure. More... |
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Gregory C.
A lot of the revionism by neoconservatives like Kristol comes from their interest in participating in warfare that the missed as youths, and perhaps loathing with the chaos their classmates built into American life. It is hard to imagine a "9/11 generation" radically different from its predecessors, and like the two immediately preceding generations, great tragedy may not inspire militaristic patriotism. It's more likely to inspire greater consumerism and hedonism, both of which are triggered by the realization of mortality and the many dangers in the world. I find it difficult to see the war creating a generation of leaders, as Kristol envisions. Perhaps the wars now being fought and the people now fighting them will create a different domestic culture, but perhaps not. Apathy seems entrenched in American life pervasively.
Anonymous
Benjamin, meet Batya. Batya, Benjamin.
Dan Freeman
It's particularly interesting that there was so much more antipathy against the individual soldier during Vietnam, since so many American soldiers were conscripts, only serving because of the draft. Here we have an all-volunteer army, and we applaud. I am certainly among those applauding. Is it because we are able to now divide the culpable bad decision making with the admirable sentiments that underly many decisions to join the military? Do we give the benefit of the doubt to any individual solider that they are joining for the right reasons and not to join in a crusade? Is it because of the overwhelming prevalence that the war was staged on false grounds, thus making serving in it an even greater personal sacrifice?
A distinct issue that might be worth talking about - I'm curious what percentage of the soldiers serving in Iraq are Jewish - and the difference between that percentage and our prevalence in the overall population. Like playing hockey and eating lobster, serving in the military is - according to that great font of Jewish folk wisdom, my mother - something Jews don't do. And yet not doing it while so many others are making that sacrifice makes me feel intensely guilty (something Jews definitely do).
- dan
PS - I'm anti-suppression of speech but pro-organization. Can we move the above article/comment/entirely-off-topic-diatribe somewhere outside of this post, so we can have a conversation here?
JewcyCraig
I moved it to the netherworld.
Dan Freeman
More work for you maybe, but perhaps in the spirit of Jewcy you could set up an area for "Off-Topic Topics" where people could see what gets posted and removed? Just slap a topic on it and put in in a folder? And if it generates its own separate debate, run a link to it from the Schvitz or something.
Basically, I think a lot of what the writers here have to say would be moved to "the netherworld" on some more "mainstream" sites. Best not to allow some animals to be more equal than others once we put the animals in charge...
JewcyCraig
Dan, you make a good point about not letting some animals be more equal to others.. I'm banning François.
But actually, you're right, that'd be a neat idea. Amy is redoing forums.. Maybe we should create a Dead Letter Office there for the crazies.
Anonymous
Craig, I'd love to see the long cut and paste screeds that are seriously off-topic (if not off-Earth) consigned to their own chilly Anteroom of Bozos, along with, e.g., the puerile and repetitive attacks on Silverstein (not the substantive ones), the racist boilerplate, et al.
But I love to read ill-mannered and feral opinion, even if I disagree with its substance (Eugenides comes to mind), as long as it's literate, funny, surprising, etc., and I'd hate for degree of ferocity or extremism to be the measure of what gets banished to the margins.
You see the problem. If you are going to institute a hierarchy of comment, please err on the inclusive side. I vote for giving bad taste, rabid devotion to one's perspective (as opposed to the namby-pamby "all views are equal" pap) and snideness a pass as long as the scoundrels are interesting, while giving the boot to the boring, flat and redundant.
This leaves enormous discretionary latitude to you guys, of course, so maybe I'm not getting any closer to a solution.
I trust in your collective Solomonic insight to keep the site safe for outrage.