Sermon
"Why I Took Off the Uniform"
Claudia Ziebis
April 2, 2006
Over a year ago I stood before you and explained why I put on an American military uniform. As you know, my reason for doing so was quite specific. It was not because I was a “military brat” or because I needed money to pay for college. It was not out of the sentiment called patriotism. Like many other immigrants’ kids, I wore a uniform because I had gotten a look at the fake democracy on the other side of the Iron Curtain and I wanted to do something – anything I could – to destroy it. Above all, I wanted to stand for a real democracy – for reality: not for wishful propaganda.
On November 3rd, 2004, I respectfully requested to retire. After 23 years I was taking off the uniform, about seven years earlier than I had planned.
The bottom line is that I increasingly found myself out of step in that uniform. I also found myself increasingly haunted – by that I mean that the same experience that put me into uniform was pivotal in taking me out of it.
Back in the late 70s the US military’s corporate culture and standing in society had been decimated and was in need of rebuilding. I am still proud of the truly tiny, tiny role I played in helping rebuild it.
It was an exciting time to be part of the most awesome military ever produced. I served with some of this nation’s best and brightest people all determined to create a better military – to learn from the best civilian business and management practices and to be more responsive to the society which we served.
This effort was particularly felt in my career field of public affairs. The searing disaster of the notorious “five o’clock follies” of Vietnam spurred us to get out fast, accurate information to the American taxpayer. I truly felt driven by the idea that you, the American citizen, deserved, required and demanded information in order to decide what it was you wanted your military to do.
We expended a great deal of effort in building our credibility with American citizens, with our allies and with the world. And we were successful.
I think it is remarkable that when I was a young second lieutenant I could tell a reporter that the sky was blue and watch him stick his head out the window to make sure it really was. But by the time I had birds on my shoulders, I fretted that the reporter would not bother to check the information I gave him! We achieved our goal. We gave you a military that was envied throughout the world not only for its raw power, but also for its integrity.
Sometime during the last 30 years the corporate culture of the Air Force changed in ways that concern me. I fear that what I spent a lifetime helping build is now crumbling.
A quarter century ago I became your public servant. Yes, I was a commissioned, regular military officer; but just like any other civil servant I worked for you. You paid me. I never forgot that -- I worked for you.
This was, to me, crucial and non-negotiable. In a real democracy government employees, no matter who they are, do the bidding of the citizens. In a government of the people, for the people and by the people – you are the people. What I saw on the other side of that damn Berlin Wall was the result of generations abdicating their responsibility as citizens. My grandparents and great-grandparents had found the work of citizenship too hard. They had “let” their government rule them instead of govern them.
By the end of the 90s, I felt that too many of my fellow officers did not see themselves as your public servants: we were your leaders. We were now setting the example for civilian society. Too often, we no longer looked outside for the best management and leadership practices. We had all the answers. We were more “moral,” more “ethical,” – “better” than “civilians.”
And you applauded. The military had become a highly professional business that you admired -- but it was a business. A corporation that did a job somewhere “over there.” Without the draft, the military was no longer part of you. It was some machine that someone else employed. It became separated and distinct from your society.
The sociologist Charles Moskos once warned that without a draft the military would slowly become alienated from the society which it served. By 2000, I thought I saw evidence that Moskos was right. I think after 9/11 that trend was alleviated somewhat with an influx of people who would not have otherwise have joined the military. But I think the trend will now resume – to the detriment of the military and the country.
As this insularity took shape, I also noticed changes in public affairs which began to concern me.
When I first became a public affairs officer, most of the people in the career field had some backgrounds in journalism, or the Humanities, and a deep appreciation for the Fourth Estate. Then, in the 80s there was a push for public relations and a concerted effort to adopt the practices of the large PR firms. In the 90s the emphasis shifted again, this time to marketing, and the buzzword was “image building.” Now political science is the hot, sought-after expertise. There’s actually talk of creating “political officers.”
So I now find myself not only out of step with the Air Force -- I seem to be out of step with my fellow Americans. It seems you actually want your government to be run like a corporation. You want to be customers and consumers rather than citizens.
There are always times when a public servant has to sell something to citizens for the good of the nation as a whole. It is true that in order to govern, all kinds of ideas can be considered to be “sold.” Vaccinations against disease, a particular farming technique, a welfare program, education, and, yes, even a weapon -- or a war -- is “sold.”
The act of selling something for the common good is part of good governance. But that need must always be carefully weighed against the right of citizens to determine their own fate. How we all – citizen and public servant alike – see the role of government directly effects how the scale will tip in weighing the need to persuade with the need to inform.
If you see the government as a corporation and the public affairs professional as a PR-man or salesman, then you give your tacit permission to be “sold” something rather than to be “informed” about something.
I ask you to take a minute and consider the strides made in technology over the last century. Look at how sophisticated our aircraft, missiles, computers – everything touched by the hard sciences – has become. Now consider the strides made in those areas shaped by the soft sciences. The fields of public relations and marketing have not stood still.
Go home and open your closet. Count how many things you have bought that you don’t need. This is a golden age of salesmanship. Do you want your government to “sell” to you? Or do you want your government to inform you? You have always expected politicians to sell to you (especially in election years) – do you want your military officers and civil servants to sell to you as well?
I am perfectly comfortable providing you with information which I think will help you decide whether or not we should go to war. I am comfortable providing you with as much information as possible about what your military is doing in war – so long as the mission is not jeopardized. But I am not comfortable “selling” you something I wouldn’t buy myself.
I am also not comfortable working with psychological operations -- I do not feel it is plausible to separate foreign media from domestic media: if we conduct offensive propaganda operations through foreign media, you and all global citizens will receive that propaganda and you will not be able to distinguish the manufactured news from reality.
How will you be able to form an accurate picture of whether we are “winning” or “losing” -- or performing well or performing badly -- or whether your military is serving you well or poorly? You will not be able to perform your job as citizens of a democracy. You will not be able to guide your government’s actions. It is a dangerous game to play. And I do not believe it is a game anyone can ultimately “win.”
It is not easy to walk along that line between information and persuasion. But that is precisely what you paid me to do. That is precisely what democracy demands. That is precisely what you must demand your public servants do – every single one of them. Because only by walking that line, do you prevent the corruption that turns democracy into a sham. But you have to do your part. You have to pay attention to what your government does; you have to question what your politicians say; you have to fulfill your role as citizens. If you don’t – if you’re too lazy to do that – you’ll be ruled and not governed.
So you could say that I retired because I was no longer comfortable with the changes in my career field, in Air Force corporate culture, and in government as a whole. I felt very old and started to think about retirement more and more.
Since you’re UUs, I’ll also mention that I found myself out of step with the religious orientation of the Air Force. Thirty years ago being an atheist Freethinker in the military was easy. Over the last decade it’s become harder in the sense that all too often individuals thoughtlessly impose their religion on others. From the prayers I heard chaplains give at various assemblies to the exhortation of a three-star general in a speech claiming that in defending the constitution we were defending the creator with a capital “C” – the intolerance was all too often breathtaking in its ignorance.
Thanks to my association with Unitarian Universalism, I now see a connection between the hubris that says “we know what’s best and must persuade people to do what is right” and the conservative religious chauvinism that became so bothersome to me. I can’t help but wonder how different things would be if more UUs, reform Jews and liberal Christians would put on the uniform.
I believe the strength of the American military in the last century was a direct result of its diversity. When an issue was discussed at the table, the breadth of perspectives, opinions and analysis around that table always amazed me. No other military in the world had that deep pool of expertise to draw from. I’m concerned that that pool has now become shallower in the aspect of religious and political perspective.
And finally, I have to talk about the Iraq war because there’s just no way around it. As you’ve probably surmised – I make a distinction between pre-emptive war and preventive war. I felt then and feel now that to invade a sovereign nation without imminent threat or provocation is wrong unless the community of nations clearly indicates otherwise – and yes, I mean the United Nations. I have never understood why the US has so often ignored, manipulated and maligned the UN. As far as I know, the UN is the only hope we have of lasting peace and prosperity. And until Americans look for ways to work with the UN instead of ways to compete with it, I think your military will continue to be deployed in large numbers throughout the world indefinitely.
In December 1999 Newt Gingrich gave a speech which was given wide play inside the Pentagon. The speech was about America’s leadership role in the world and the crux of it was that he wanted to see America shift from a national strategy in which we were actively involved in the world in order to survive, to a national strategy where we would lead the world.
I thought then, as I do now, that America will never lead the world in the way Gingrich imagines – for the simple fact that the rest of the world isn’t American, doesn’t want to be American, and to be a leader you have to have followers. We may lead other societies in some efforts, on some issues and at certain points in time – but we will find ourselves following as well – sooner or later.
I won’t take the time now to outline all my angst and anguish over the Iraq War. (We would be here for another hour.) I will, however, share one pivotal moment with you and one fear which I still have.
The fear is this: we have set back real democracy in Iraq by a century. Amid all the talk about how the Iraq War was going to be like WWII and Iraq was going to be like Germany in 1945 – I could barely contain my disgust. I saw no comparison in that analogy. What I saw was a comparison to the French invasion of the German states even earlier in time.
There are some German historians – as well as my Grandmother (who is not an historian but an opinionated Prussian) – who argue that if the French had not occupied German lands way back in the 1790s and through the early 1800s, democracy would have come to Germans sooner. As it was, the French set the stage for popular distrust of the first German democratic revolution in 1848, and the widespread popularity of Prussia’s blood and iron empire in place of democracy. Democracy was too closely associated with the French to take root in German soil. The French occupation brought excellent administration, roads, schools, hospitals, and gave some German peasants the right to own more than the clothes on their backs for the first time. In return, the French were repaid not only with a slow, simmering insurgency but with the enmity of generations.
I can only hope that my fear of Iraqi children following in the footsteps of my great-grandparents and grandparents will not come to pass, but I’m sorry to say my hope is dim. One incident in particular brought this fear into focus, sealed my decision to retire -- and spurred me to give you that speech about why I put on the uniform in the first place.
One afternoon I was in my office reviewing some Combat Camera footage. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Combat Cameramen, they are military members who document military actions through photography. This particular footage was from a camera placed on a helmet during the arrest of a suspected insurgent in Baghdad.
On my screen I saw the soldiers approach the door of an Arab house, saw the door breached, and as the two or three soldiers in front of the cameraman entered the house I noticed at the far corner of the screen a small figure. As the lighting got better, I could see it was a young boy. The look of shock and fear on his face was unmistakable. For a time, the child was off the screen. A man was forcefully pulled into view from a narrow hall: we had obviously gotten our man. The cameraman was the last to back through the door; and as he left, his camera swept the room and the boy came into view again. I froze the frame.
I froze it – and I was frozen myself. The boy seemed older than I first thought. He had that gangly look of a young teenager. He was now standing there stiffly with his feet planted firmly. There were other children behind him now, two or three were frozen there. He seemed much bigger than them. The earlier look of shock and fear had vanished. Now the face was hard -- no emotion was there. It was white. It was hard and cold and tense and so very, very focused and determined …and I knew that face. In that instant I was no longer in my warm sunny corner office in Virginia. I was in a city a half a world away on a cold, damp morning a lifetime ago. A morning when I was a girl who grew older, and determined, and focused watching soldiers.
I stood in front of that TV a very, very long time. And then I went to my computer, printed out the request for retirement, and filled it out with everything except the date – for that I had to wait a year until we could find my replacement and I felt I could leave honorably.
And that answers the question of why I took off the uniform for the last time. You may empathize with my reasons or condemn me for them. Either way, I ask you to remember your responsibility as a citizen of a democracy.
You must seek out real information: distinguish between wishful thinking and reality.
You’re still a long, long way from anything resembling the German Democratic Republic. But you must supervise what your public servants do. If you must view government as a business -- then at least hire them and fire them and demand information from them and don’t put up with obfuscation, vague phrases and assurances that they know what is best. You are the people: and you have been given a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Never, never forget that.