On Sunday, Monitor columnist Ray Duckler wrote about Rene Gagnon Jr., the son of one of the Iwo Jima flag-raisers immortalized by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal in 1945. Gagnon was interviewed by a Smithsonian Channel documentary team that’s attempting to put to rest questions about the identities of the men in the iconic photo.
It’s an intriguing mystery, but aside from historians and war buffs, the relatives of those six Marines care more than most. It’s been more than 70 years since the photo was taken, and the stories of the individual men have ceased to be of PR value for the military. But the image itself – that’s a different story. Its power hasn’t faded.
After all, how do you persuade a young man or woman to put themselves in harm’s way for low pay? How, when one U.S. military veteran commits suicide every hour, do you sell a young person on enlistment? How do you explain away, during the recruitment pitch, the 20 percent of veterans of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? How, when 23 percent of enlisted women report being sexually assaulted, do you convince them of the camaraderie that awaits? How do you promise a better life in exchange for military service when health care and jobs are so hard to find after the homecoming?
Mythology is the most powerful recruitment tool, and that’s why stories like the flag-raising on Iwo Jima and the Fighting Sullivans are so important to the military and its $596 billion budget. Aside from the narratives of the warrior’s glory and the eternal gratitude of a defended nation, what can be offered to service men and women that is truly worthy of their sacrifice?
“Thank you for your service,” the occasional free meal and Clint Eastwood’s war worship hardly seem like proper compensation.
To question the motivation of America’s exaltation of its fighting men and women is to touch the third rail, especially so close to the day when the nation pays tribute to its war dead. But if the myths weren’t so vital to the mission of the military, its leaders and politicians wouldn’t go to such great lengths to protect them. If you’re a Viking, you don’t question the power of Odin. If you’re an American, you don’t call attention to the jingoism in American Sniper.
How, then, do you confront the myths when you risk denying solace to so many American families in the process? The son or daughter, father or mother they lost reside not in mythology but in the nation’s collective heart – and the way we remember and mourn should reflect that. There is honor in delicately stripping away the Hollywood version of war to reveal the humanity that is the skeleton of myth. There is truth in rejecting the tall tales of war and embracing – as people rather than heroes – the men and women who fought and died.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead once wrote: “Warfare is here, as part of our thought; the deeds of warriors are immortalized in the words of our poets, the toys of our children are modeled upon the weapons of the soldier; the frame of reference within which our statesmen and our diplomats work always contains war.” War is part of what it means to be an American, an identity shaped in part by photos, stories and films that seek to legitimize what too often feels like senseless death.
Illusions help us bear the unbearable, but the Hollywood version of warfare is increasingly hard to accept, especially as the nation prepares to spend another Memorial Day at war.