During recent Internet discussions regarding the war in Iraq and free trade, I accused someone who disagrees with me of having an extremely limited understanding of military reality, basic geopolitics, resource constraint, and basic economics. Although I attempted to apologize for the admittedly condescending tone of my posts, my correspondent apparently decided that I needed to be put in my place. He unleashed a full broadside that referred extensively to his own military experiences as qualification for his anti-war stance, and to his and others’ difficult economic experiences as refutation of the morality of free trade economics. From his general tone, it seems pretty clear that he assumed (correctly) that I had not served in the military, and that he assumed (incorrectly) that I have never known the economic hardship that many Americans face daily. Furthermore, he implied that without such experiences, I was either unqualified to state my opinions on those matters, or, more charitably, that his personal experiences added weight to his opinions that I could never hope to match from my sheltered perch.
I disagree.
But in thinking about his arguments, I began to see the tendrils of a bigger idea, and that’s the point of this essay. I hope you’ll join me as we try to find common ground linking, and in my opinion, invalidating, the very foundations of my correspondent’s anti-war and anti-free trade arguments.[Note: I am not suggesting that all anti-war or anti-free trade arguments are invalid. While I disagree vehemently with most opponents of the war and free trade, many of the arguments they make are both reasonable and logically defensible. This essay deals only with my correspondent’s attempt to wrap himself in the flag of personal anecdotal experience in an attempt to give his positions greater weight.]
The Value of Prior Military Service in Military Policy Debates
In response to my suggestion that his arguments failed to consider military reality, resource constraint, etc., my correspondent (let’s call him “John” from now on – it’s as good a name as any) allowed that I had no right to lecture him regarding the realities of war. Although it wasn’t 100% clear from the context, he intimated that he had been present during the terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut back in October 1983. Having no reason to doubt his claim, I am assuming that “John” served in the United State Marine Corps, and I am quite certain he served his country with the distinction and honor we generally associate with the Corps. I similarly assume that he was in fact present when that truck bomb effectively served as the opening shot in the current War on Terror. I am truly sorry that he had to experience that, and I am saddened by the series of political blunders that ultimately led to that disaster.
I have incredible respect for the Corps. My uncle spent 24 years in the Marines, retiring as a gunnery sergeant after two combat tours as a Huey crew chief in Vietnam and follow-up assignments training the next generation of leathernecks (for all I know, he trained “John,” too). He’s 65 now, and at twice my age, I still wouldn’t mess with him for anything. My father enlisted in the Corps in 1969, only to be declared medically ineligible after a car accident that took place a few days before his induction. One of my best friends and former co-workers flew OV-10 Broncos over the jungles of Vietnam for the Marines, taking fire nearly constantly as he conducted treetop-level reconnaissance over enemy territory. To the extent “John” is part of the storied tradition of the U.S.M.C., I tip my hat to him for fighting to keep me free.
But John’s service raises larger questions: Does prior military service say anything at all about the weight we should give someone’s opinions on matters military? If so, what? Is there any force to the Heinleinian notion that only those with military service should be accorded the full rights of citizenship?
All of these questions are extremely important, and we need to deal with them soon. In all likelihood, the United States is about to elect its last or second-to-last President from a generation with a high percentage of military veterans. Twelve years from now, the “presidential generation” will have been born between roughly 1956 and 1966, and it’s extremely unlikely that even the very oldest candidates will have served in Vietnam. Sixteen years from now, we’ll be electing nearly all of our national leaders from the “all-volunteer” generation, and only a small percentage of the political talent pool will have served in the military. Even if future major conflicts produce additional American generations where military service is the norm, it’s clear that we’re going to go through at least twenty years where some or most of our national leaders did not serve, and where we cannot draw any conclusions from their failure to do so. Therefore, it’s time to figure out what this means for America – we’ll no longer be able to use distinguished military service as a proxy for sound military judgment in our evaluation of most candidates.
Taking the first two questions together (I’m going to save the third question for a subsequent essay), how should we think about a speaker’s prior military service (or the lack thereof) when we evaluate his or her normative statements regarding U.S. military policy? In some ways it’s irrelevant. We each enjoy freedom of speech without reference to our resumes, and I will defend anyone’s right to speak their piece regardless of their background. Also, I believe that ideas and arguments stand or fall on their own merit, and that our so-called “marketplace of ideas” does a better job than any possible prior restraint in separating wheat from chaff. In this sense, experience (military or otherwise) is just another factor to consider as we analyze arguments. But this begs the question, to a degree. The real issue is what, if anything, experience is likely to add or subtract from the quality of the debate.
The value of experience obviously depends to some extent on the character and depth of that experience. I am more likely to listen to a former general officer with significant boots-on-the-ground experience (e.g., leading a platoon or company-level unit in combat) than an honorably discharged former PFC whose full two-year enlistment was spent maintaining Humvees stateside (yes, I know this has implications for our friend who served in the Texas/Alabama National Guard with questionable regularity, but as discussed below, it just means I don’t accord his opinions any special weight because of his service). But there are infinite gradations between those two extremes, and I think it really comes down to two specific issues: (1) what does the speaker’s specific experience say about their opinions? and (2) what does the fact that they were willing (or required) to serve at all say about their opinions?
Even though I chose not to serve in the military, I have to admit that part of me gives extra credit for the simple fact of service. Although I wrestled with whether to enlist in the Marines before college, and although I considered ROTC and then the JAG Corps in college and law school, I chose not to serve. I will always regret those decisions, and I will always be somewhat ashamed, because that regret cost me nothing. It’s easy to regret inaction after the fact.
When thinking about how to evaluate military experience in the context of discussions regarding current national-scale military policy, I guess I come down as follows (although this is only a guideline, and is in no way written in stone): I am likely to listen carefully to former higher-ranking officers (equivalent of Army Captain or higher), because they generally have actual education and experience relevant to bigger-picture military questions. I will also listen carefully to senior NCOs (at least one sergeant’s stripe), because their long-term service gives them unique perspective. I am unlikely to accord special attention to single-enlistment soldiers who never experienced combat, even though part of me thinks they should get some special recognition for simply being willing to serve. But what to do with our combat veterans of whatever rank?
As much as I admire even the rank-and-file that served in combat, I just can’t bring myself to accord too much weight to their opinions on current military policy matters. Here’s why: their unique perspective as combat veterans cuts both ways with respect to the importance and reliability of their opinions.
I’ll explain. “John” apparently experienced firsthand the indescribable horrors that sometimes await soldiers (I’ll leave for another time whether the Lebanon debacle qualifies as “war” or “combat.” In light of what happened there, it would be a petty and meaningless distinction for the Marines who died there and for the Marines who survived there, too). I’ve never met a combat veteran with good things to say about the experience. The phrase “War is Hell” is cliched and hackneyed now, but when we digest each word individually (including the definitional “is”), it regains some of its meaning and its power. War. Is. Hell.
Because the hellish reality of combat cannot be replicated or even sketched in broad outline by our best artists and writers, the perspective of our combat veterans is important. They offer the uninitiated majority its best opportunity to understand some tiny fraction of the realities of war. They remind us of the staggering human costs associated with armed conflict, because they have watched with their own eyes as the unbounded promise of youth is snuffed out by grotesque and seemingly senseless violence. They keep our eyes firmly fixed on the people our leaders send to die, hopefully in the necessary defense of a legitimate national interest. In an age where no national leader, no matter how brave, will ever again ride at the head of his columns, our combat veterans can be something of an auxiliary national conscience. This is a good thing.
But combat experience cuts both ways when it comes to thinking about current and future military policy. In simplest terms, the very horrors combat veterans have seen can sometimes rob them of objectivity. It’s simple, it’s understandable, and it’s probably inevitable, but it’s also dangerous. Those who experience war on an individual level are considerably more likely to let the anecdotal substitute for the empirical in their analysis. This is a bad thing.
“John’s” experience, as horrible as it was, was anecdotal. I know it sounds crass and mean-spirited to describe it thus (though it’s not intended to), but think about it. What does any single tragedy say about larger empirical issues? Unless that single tragedy is cataclysmic, it says very little about empirical reality. From a grunts’-eye perspective, any individual war is a series of horrible, but ultimately anecdotal, tragedies.
I am not suggesting that a single war cannot eventually rise to the level of the empirical. It can. Vietnam is a good example. But it’s really dangerous to accord too much weight to the personal and even the corporate horrors of war, especially because it is often difficult if not impossible to quantify the very real costs associated with the alternatives.
Put another way, it is human nature to latch on to the easily measured. This tendency is at the root of our “instant gratification” tendencies, because it’s harder to hold onto the ideal of an inchoate future than it is to analyze/evaluate/cook and eat the bird in hand. In the context of war, this can result in overemphasis on the current costs of war, without adequate consideration of (1) future benefits; or (2) future costs associated with inaction. This overemphasis is potentially even more pronounced among those who have experienced the “current costs” firsthand.
This is perfectly understandable, given the obvious difficulties associated with predicting the future. It’s very hard to play the “what would have happened if we didn’t do X” game. And even if we could figure this out, it’s hard to develop any metrics that would result in “apples to apples” comparisons of costs and benefits. But the real danger is that these difficulties will lead us to concentrate on the here and now while disregarding the future. We are notoriously good at self-delusion and rationalization, and those two facets of human nature can be a vicious one-two, ex-ante/ex-post punch.
In other words, when initial or current costs of a particular course of action are high, we naturally tend to downplay the negative consequences of inaction (or overplay the negative consequences of action, which amounts to the same thing). We delude ourselves into thinking that we don’t need to do anything. Then, whether we take the action or not, we tend to rationalize away the consequences of our decision. If we chose to act, then it’s human nature to focus upon the negative consequences of the action (i.e., failure, incomplete success, unintended effects), and less on the benefits. We rationalize away our success. More insidiously, if we failed to act, we tend to rationalize away the consequences of that failure. Because life is messy and impossible to analyze deterministically, there will always be fodder for our rationalizations. We’ll always be able to point to this factor, or that event, as the real reason something bad happened, and won’t have to accept responsibility for the fact that our inaction carried high costs.
These tendencies are understandably magnified when the action in question runs counter to our own personal ideologies. And when you add in an intense, galvanizing personal experience like combat, things get messier still. At the end of the day, I think the combat veteran has an extremely important role to play in our national debate, and I acknowledge that it is always a good thing to keep the up-front human costs of our military policy front and center in the national conscience. That said, the personal anecdotal horrors of war can easily overwhelm the very real, but somewhat speculative and ephemeral items on the other side of the scale – the benefits of war and the costs associated with failing to act. How do you pit a hypothetical future full of probabilities and statistics against the cold, hard reality of the here and now? For these reasons, I will not accord any particular additional weight to the opinions of someone who has experienced combat, although I respect and praise that person for serving.
Free Trade – Same Story, Second Verse
“John” also regaled me with a litany of personal tragedies that he claims are the result of intrinsically evil capitalist free trade policies. Because these arguments, too, substitute anecdote for empiricism, my response is much the same. (Thankfully, it will be a lot shorter, though).
John and others he knows have gone through extremely difficult economic times. In fact, shortly after John unloaded on me, he announced that he had lost his job. For this I am truly sorry, and it is my fervent hope and prayer that he finds work again soon.
As near as I can tell, John’s recitation was meant to do two things. First, he seemed to be interested in shaming me by comparison. Second, he was suggesting that any economic policy that produces these sorts of individual results is a priori unfair.
With all due respect to John, he has no idea about my background, and to the extent he was really trying to make me feel bad by comparison, he has no right. I’m not going to go into a lengthy recitation of my personal history, but suffice it to say that I’ve lived below the poverty level. I’m not going to claim that my experiences were anywhere close to as bad as it can get, but for a period of several years, I wondered frequently where my next meal was coming from. From his personal history, it would not surprise me if John tended to resent the mostly rich kids he went to college with. And it would be natural, I guess, for him to conclude that I was just another one of those kids. To the extent it’s relevant, I had the same feelings when I was in school. The vast majority of my classmates came from a world I knew only by reputation, and though our family circumstances had improved by the time I went off to college, I remember both resenting and envying the easy lives the other students had. In any event, I’ve been there,and done that, “John,” and I’m not going to be shamed by any attempted comparison.
John’s attempt to argue again by anecdotal example is far more interesting, but there’s really not much to say about this that I did not already say in the “combat veteran” section above. Same story, second verse. The anecdotes of any personal tragedy are heartwrenching, and they have understandable emotional impact. And just like war, we always need to be aware of the real, human costs associated with our economic policy. But I think John’s arguments give far too much weight to the anecdotal, without any attempt to speak to the empirical. As with war, it’s tempting to overemphasize present costs when looking at our economic policies. And as with war, the probability-driven speculative statistical case of the future doesn’t fare too well in most folks’ minds against tragic personal stories of the present.
But absent from John’s reasoning is any attempt to quantify or describe what the world would be like in the absence of the policies he despises. He also fails to address the possible long-term costs of the protectionism he thinks appropriate. He can dismiss with a wave of the hand any suggestion that the future would be far worse for many more Americans if things went his way – after all there are real people hurting right here and right now. Again, I’m not saying that there are no valid arguments against Ricardian trade policies (after all, Keynes’ famous line that “in the long run, we’ll all be dead” is not without force). But I am saying that an appeal to emotion based solely upon anecdotal evidence is utterly unpersuasive, and is in some ways a threat to the reasoned debate we should be having.
Tying it all together, it seems to me that anecdotal “personal experience” evidence is of extremely limited value in any policy debate, unless and until those anecdotal experiences aggregate to empirical significance. While it’s always important to remember that real human lives are affected by policy decisions, most American leaders are sufficiently empathetic, sufficiently human that this is less of a concern than it otherwise might be. That’s not to say they’re completely in touch with the real world. But the real concern is that the immediacy of anecdotal evidence detracts and distracts from the ephemeral, but far more important, gross empirical analysis of a particular policy. Excessive reliance on anecdotal evidence enables self-delusion, and supports both ex ante and ex post rationalizations. Accordingly, I cannot and will not be swayed by stories of personal tragedy (or stories of personal triumph, for that matter) when attempting to analyze policy. It doesn’t mean I don’t care, and doesn’t mean I don’t feel. It just means that I think it’s best to avoid focusing on individual stories until they become representative of a larger trend.
[Note: this means I’m willing to listen to statistical arguments regarding, for example, the impacts of foreign outsourcing. But I’m not interested in hearing a particularly touching story of how offshoring decimated a hardworking family of four. The latter story may inspire me to personal charity and compassion, but it’s largely irrelevant to the policy debate. If that sounds harsh, so be it, but I’ll be able to find equal but opposite counterexamples of terrible personal tragedy regardless of our economic system. Anecdotes don’t necessarily extrapolate now, and they never will.].
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