As the Army continues its struggle to imbue a “warrior ethos” while simultaneously battling suicide, PTSD, disciplinary infractions, domestic abuse, and the like, it raises a question as to whether the Army’s senior leaders have considered the implications of their paradigm. Historically, the warrior is not a disciplined team member, but a killer seeking individual glory. Achilles sulked in his tent when he felt he did not receive appropriate recognition. Medieval knights tilted in the lists. For most of human history, armies were composed of either the general citizenry or, more often, mercenaries and the scrapings of jails and slums. These mass armies served as the pawns of generals or the backdrops for individual heroes. “Warrior” cultures were not noted for their disciplined and humane armies. Armies of citizen soldiers were not particularly “warrior-like.”
Until 1945, the U.S. generally opted for the citizen-soldier model during wartime and recruited oppressed or undesirable individuals (often recent immigrants) in peacetime. The Cold War experimentation with peacetime conscription upended the model–the U.S. never became a true nation-in-arms because too few served, but neither could the common soldier be ridiculed and marginalized because the legitimacy of selective service rested on the perception that it was egalitarian in its reach. Moreover, the greater citizen participation in the armed forces, the more outside actors intruded upon training, doctrine, etc. Discipline and doctrine had to reflect the values of society because soldiers had families who did not want their sons treated harshly.
The other armed services have generally avoided the Army’s identity crisis. The Air Force has been a technical service since it gained independence in 1947, an ethos fostered by the domination of bombers and later missiles. The swashbuckling fighter culture of the Army Air Corps days maintained a niche but did not overwhelm the service culture. The Navy has always based its identity on superb seamanship. The most interesting case is the U.S. Marine Corps, a service that ought to suffer the greatest challenge to a unique identity, but instead represents the clearest individual identity of any service.
The Marines could easily have become confused based on their status as a land-based force within the Department of the Navy. Instead, they have forged a unique identity almost devoid of outside references. They do not feel obliged to define themselves as “warriors,” “citizen soldiers,” or any other generally understandable category. They are simply, Marines. They are more than sui generis; they have become a reference point for others–a category to which others aspire and refer.
The question the Army must face, is whether it can appropriate the term “warrior” for its own ends without importing the baggage that comes with it. Given the video-game culture rampant within the ranks of younger soldiers, this may be difficult to impossible. One might apply the term “warrior” to the Greek hoplites, but he must also apply it to Viking raiders, Huns, samurai, etc. It is difficult to appropriate only the toughness and courage of the traditional warrior without his indiscipline, individualism, and ruthlessness. It is not an accident that gangs frequently view themselves as “warriors.” If the “warrior ethos” cannot separate its desirable traits from its undesirable, then is there another that better fills our needs, or better yet, is it possible to forge a unique identity free of outside references? Can the American Soldiers be the symbolic equivalent of the U.S. Marine?
James W. Vizzard 