CHAPTER 8

 

The “Very Liberal” View
of the US Military

Tod Lindberg

Public opinion is hardly monolithic. Although some views are a matter of almost perfect consensus—for example, that firefighters running into burning buildings to save people’s lives are heroes—most questions divide Americans in some way. Sometimes it is old versus young, or rich versus poor, or men versus women, or Democrats versus Republicans. In the case of the US military, the divide appears to be ideological, but not quite between liberal and conservative. On many questions, liberals appear only modestly more skeptical of the US military than are moderates or conservatives, or even those calling themselves “very conservative.” More precisely, the group whose skepticism distinguishes itself as a category apart consists of those Americans who identify themselves as “very liberal.” They constitute a small but influential segment of American public opinion.

The United States military has long been the American institution in which the public expresses the most confidence. A 2014 Gallup poll found 39 percent of Americans saying they had a “great deal” of confidence in the military and an additional 35 percent saying “quite a lot” (the other choices being “some” confidence and “not very much”).[1] The Supreme Court was next closest among government institutions, at a distant 12 and 18 percent, respectively. The confidence figures for the presidency were 14 percent and 15 percent, and for Congress 4 percent and 3 percent. Confidence in the military among Americans outpolls that in “small business,” “the police,” “the church or organized religion,” and “the medical system,” the next highest four in Gallup’s list. However, the American people are fully capable of carrying seemingly conflicting notions in their heads. In the YouGov data, only 12 percent of respondents stated that a lack of trust in the uniformed leaders of the military “is not happening” (CM2T 56).[2] Perhaps the message here is “I trust the military but am concerned that others do not.” An interesting avenue for investigation, then, would be where this notion of others’ distrust for the military is coming from.

This high level of trust would seem to be a bedrock component of the American social compact. Throughout its annual surveys during the 1990s, the Gallup poll never registered a combined total of those expressing “a great deal” of confidence and “quite a lot” of confidence below 60 percent—1997 being an outlier, with all other scores in that decade at 64 percent or higher. In the period since 9/11, the lowest combined figure was 69 percent, observed in the June 2007 survey, which surely reflected the deteriorating security conditions in Iraq of the previous several years. By 2009, the combined confidence figure once again reached its previous all-time high of 2003, 82 percent. In the decade-plus since, the Gallup survey has recorded figures in the mid to upper 70 percent range.

Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, meanwhile, has done annual surveys of young Americans for the past quarter century. The most recent found, once again, that the military was the institution most trusted “to do the right thing . . . all or most of the time,” at 47 percent, leading the Supreme Court (36 percent), the United Nations (34 percent) and the presidency (32 percent).[3] To the extent that there is a “generation gap” in attitudes—as some have found in views of gay marriage, for example—it is hardly a crisis in which the younger generation has turned antimilitary, as youth arguably were in the 1960s and 1970s when the draft loomed large in the lives of young men. The generation gap now, such as it is, appears to arise most significantly over the question of whether others regard the military highly enough. Respondents aged 18 to 29 and 65 plus in the YouGov poll had significantly different views on the military in response to questions such as: Does the military get the respect it deserves? (less respect: 35 percent versus 60.9 percent); Does Americans’ lack of trust in the uniformed leaders of the military hurt effectiveness? (yes: 48.8 percent versus 72.6 percent); and Does the military have a responsibility to support the war policy of the president (yes: 55.1 percent versus 82.1 percent) (CM2T 14, 56, 74). There is little generational divide on a number of questions asking respondents to assess the characteristics of the military: Does the military have different values from the rest of society? (yes: 46.9 percent versus 41.8 percent); Is the military more or less religious than the rest of society? (more: 24.3 percent versus 28.8 percent); and Is the military isolated? (yes: 30 percent versus 33.8 percent) (CM2T 18, 22, 23).

While 32.5 percent of respondents viewed the military as “isolated from American society,” and 59.6 percent agreed that a military isolated from society would be a “bad thing,” 46.2 percent did not perceive such isolation, while 21.3 percent were not sure. Clearly, if there is a crisis in civil-military relations, a very large majority of the public seems to be unaware of it or unconcerned about it. Nevertheless, opinion on the subject of the military is hardly unanimous. For an illustration of the contentiousness, one need look no farther than the controversy over Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper. Its reception exposed a fault line in opinions on the military that the YouGov survey data will help to quantify and clarify.

A Controversial Movie

American Sniper is based on the life of Chris Kyle, a Navy Seal who served four combat tours in Iraq. According to official military records, Kyle was the deadliest sniper in US history, with 160 confirmed kills. After leaving the service, he wrote a best-selling memoir, extending to the general public the fame he had already achieved in military circles (where he was known as “the Legend,” apparently without irony). He was subsequently murdered at a shooting range by a disturbed veteran whom he had sought to help (as he had others) through the challenge of coping with memories of wartime experience and loss and the return to civilian life.

Eastwood’s film makes an unambiguous hero of Kyle, and American Sniper was a box-office phenomenon. When it opened nationally, it set records for an R-rated film. At this writing, it has grossed more than $349 million domestically and $543 million worldwide. Numerous reports had audiences cheering at its wartime climax, when Kyle, played by Bradley Cooper in an Academy Award–nominated performance, fires an astonishing long-range shot to take out a rival sniper, Mustafa. There were likewise reports of audience members weeping when a title card at the end of the movie informed them of Kyle’s death at the hand of someone he was trying to help. The movie concludes with actual newsreel footage of mourners and supporters turning out in large numbers for a memorial service for Kyle at the Dallas Cowboys stadium and along the road of the funeral procession to his burial place at Texas State Cemetery in Austin. Clearly, Eastwood had the choice of making a movie depicting a fictitious American hero of the Iraq war or a real hero, and he chose the latter.

In doing so, the famous actor-director had ample material from Kyle’s life on which to draw. Nevertheless, Eastwood introduced a number of fictionalizations, most notably the sniper “Mustafa.” Meanwhile, the accuracy of some of Kyle’s claims in his memoir and elsewhere has also come into dispute. And it appears Kyle expressed his attitude toward combat and the enemy he faced in harsher terms in the book than the movie depicts, though the movie character does refer to insurgents as “savages.” Finally, but not least, Kyle’s deeds took place in the midst of a bitterly divisive war, one that a significant majority of Americans have long judged to be a mistake. Gallup has been asking whether going to war in Iraq was a mistake since 2003, and by mid-2005 majorities started concluding consistently that it was. Only two polls of the more than fifty Gallup has conducted in the past decade show an even divide; it seems likely that they are outliers. A June 2014 put the figure for “yes, a mistake” at 57 percent and “no, not a mistake” at 39 percent.[4]

Some or all of these factors have figured into the negative responses to American Sniper. As Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone, “to turn the Iraq war into a saccharine, almost PG-rated two-hour cinematic diversion about a killing machine with a heart of gold (is there any film theme more perfectly 2015-America than that?) who slowly, very slowly, starts to feel bad after shooting enough women and children—[Forrest] Gump notwithstanding, that was a hard one to see coming.” He goes on to lament the implications of the movie’s success at the box office: “It’s the fact that the movie is popular, and actually makes sense to so many people, that’s the problem.” He notes that when the Chris Kyle character shoots Mustafa—portrayed in the movie as an Olympic gold medal–winning Syrian sharpshooter who has come to Iraq to join the insurgency and has been exacting a fierce long-­distance toll on US forces—“even the audiences in the liberal-ass Jersey City theater where I watched the movie stood up and cheered. I can only imagine the response this scene scored in Soldier of Fortune country.”[5]

Hollywood documentary filmmaker Michael Moore took to Twitter and his Facebook page (January 18, 2015) to denounce the “cowardly” role of the sniper in wartime. He says his uncle had been killed by a German sniper in World War II and adds, “My dad always said, ‘Snipers are cowards. They don’t believe in a fair fight. Like someone coming up from behind you and coldcocking you. Just isn’t right. It’s cowardly to shoot a person in the back. Only a coward will shoot someone who can’t shoot back.’ . . . I think most Americans don’t think snipers are heroes.”

Chris Hedges, writing at Truthdig, says the movie “lionizes the most despicable aspects of US society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a ‘Christian’ nation to exterminate the ‘lesser breeds’ of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression.”[6] David Adelstein, writing in New York magazine, calls the movie “essentially, a propaganda film” and “a Republican platform movie” in its view of the Iraq war.[7]

Others disagreed. Writing in Salon to defend the film against that very charge, Andrew O’Hehir said he detected (at least on second viewing) “a level of sardonic commentary at work”—which apparently brought American Sniper subtly into line with a view of the war closer to his own: “This is a portrait of an American who thought he knew what he stood for and what his country stood for and never believed he needed to ask questions about that. He drove himself to kill and kill and kill based on that misguided ideological certainty—that brainwashing, though I’m sure Clint Eastwood would never use that word—and then paid the price for it. So did we all, and the reception of this film suggests that the payments keep on coming due.”[8]

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the movie also gave rise to controversy on campus. A protest briefly derailed plans to show the movie at UMix, a regular Friday night social gathering at the University of Michigan. Organizers canceled the screening in response to a student-generated open letter claiming, “The movie ‘American Sniper’ not only tolerates but promotes anti-Muslim and anti-MENA rhetoric and sympathizes with a mass killer.”[9] But the decision to cancel quickly generated a counterprotest also organized by students. The latter group got a boost from Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh, who said in a tweet, “Michigan Football will watch ‘American Sniper’! Proud of Chris Kyle & Proud to be an American & if that offends anybody then so be it!”[10] UMix organizers subsequently reversed the cancellation. E. Royster Harper, university vice president for student life, said in a statement, “It was a mistake to cancel. . . . The initial decision . . . was not consistent with the high value the University of Michigan places on freedom of expression and our respect for the right of students to make their own choices in such matters.”

Meanwhile, the student-run movie theater at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute decided to postpone a screening of American Sniper, stating, “We realized that this movie has caused heightened tension across communities and campuses nationwide, including violent actions and even murders.” (The statement offered no substantiation for the contention that the movie “caused . . . murders.”) The student film group said it would reschedule the movie later in the semester in conjunction with “an educational forum.”[11]

Some of the critical response focused on a perceived anti-Muslim or anti-Arab bias in portraying Kyle as a hero. But much of it was directed at Kyle as a representative of the military as such and at the military’s place in society: hence the references to Kyle as “a mass killer,” “a killing machine,” and a kind of victim of “brainwashing,” as well as the denunciation of “blind adoration of the military.”

An AWOL Critical Perspective?

Some of the negative response to American Sniper was vitriolic and visceral, as we have seen. But others have presented more thoughtful critical analyses of the military and its high status in American society. James Fallows, writing in The Atlantic, is one such critic. He avers that the comments of public officials on the military consist of little more than “[o]verblown, limitless praise, absent the caveats or public skepticism we would apply to other American institutions, especially ones that run on taxpayer money.” He described the attitude of the public at large as “reverent but disengaged,” a “Chickenhawk nation . . . eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going.”[12] The YouGov data do indeed affirm that the military life is not something Americans see as suitable for everyone. Although 43.7 percent of respondents stated that they have considered joining the military, only 26 percent would advise a young person to enlist after high school, and 67 percent of Americans oppose returning to the military draft (CM2T 10; CM1T 35, 36).

As with social criticism, so too in literary circles. The winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for 2012 was Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Johnson, a story about members of Bravo Squad on a “victory tour” in Texas following a tour in Iraq fighting insurgents and chronicled on Fox News.[13] The San Francisco Chronicle found it “a bracing, fearless and uproarious satire of how contemporary war is waged and sold to the American public.” The Washington Post called it a “masterful echo of ‘Catch-22,’ with war in Iraq at the center.” Yet as Fallows lamented in his Atlantic essay, the novel failed to “dent mainstream awareness enough to make anyone self-conscious about continuing the ‘salute to the heroes’ gestures that do more for the civilian public’s self-esteem than for the troops.’”

There is a certain paradox here, however. Those espousing the critical perspective on the military represented in some of the responses to American Sniper, in the Fallows essay, and in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk generally understand theirs as a minority perspective. Some 57.3 percent of YouGov respondents believe that depictions of the military today are very or somewhat supportive. Conversely, 18.2 percent believe that depictions are somewhat or very hostile(CM2T 13).

The supermajority support for the military among the general public is not something critics deny, but rather regret. Yet it would hardly be accurate to describe those who embrace this critical perspective as marginalized voices in the debate. The Atlantic, after all, has long been a leading American publication, known for thoughtful journalism and social criticism. Rolling Stone has a similar though edgier reputation. New York is the fashionable city’s weekly guide to itself. Billy Lynn won the National Book Critics Circle Award, a major literary prize, and won praise from the New York Times and its Book Review, as well as the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other newspapers and magazines.

This critical perspective is thus able to command a wide hearing in society and culture at large. Nor is there anything particularly new or unusual in this. Since World War I and throughout the twentieth century, a critical perspective on the military has been a salient characteristic of literary and intellectual culture—certainly not to the exclusion of more sympathetic perspectives, but the dominant perspective. As Fallows notes of World War II, “From Mister Roberts to South Pacific to Catch-22, from The Caine Mutiny to The Naked and the Dead to From Here to Eternity, American popular and high culture treated our last mass-mobilization war as an effort deserving deep respect and pride, but not above criticism and lampooning. The collective achievement of the military was heroic, but its members and leaders were still real people, with all the foibles of real life.” As to whether Catch-22 depicts the war as “an effort deserving deep respect and pride” or as, essentially, an absurdity, opinions differ. Fallows also notes the critical perspective of the cultural artifacts of the Vietnam era, such as M*A*S*H. He does not fault them for being unbalanced in their criticism of the military, yet it is hard to find in them anything resembling a depiction of the “collective achievement of the military [as] heroic.”[14]

And while Fallows insists that the critical perspective of Catch-22 and the other works he mentions has diminished, as we have seen, it has hardly vanished. Its influence seems to have waned since its heyday in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam era. But the critical perspective remains a significant strain of public opinion. Note the lead article by Fallows in the January–February 2015 edition of The Atlantic and the highly praised fiction winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for 2012. But exactly how broad a swath of opinion are we talking about? Here, the YouGov survey yields important insights.

Many of the survey questions invite answers indicating either a skeptical view of the military or a beneficent view. Once we have identified such questions, we can look at how the more skeptical viewpoint breaks down based on political ideology. Is a skeptical view (or a beneficent view) common among all respondents, or does it show up in more pronounced form based on ideological convictions? Is the distribution of skepticism a steady slope from left to right or right to left, or does it spike?

For example, questions 25 through 27 ask respondents whether they agree or disagree with statements about the fairness of the military, and questions 31 through 37 ask whether they agree or disagree with statements about the opportunity the military provides to its members (CM2T 25–27, 31–37). Insofar as we are justified in the conclusion that “fairness” and “opportunity” are of sufficiently general normative value among almost all respondents, regardless of ideology, we can further conclude that those who disagree with a statement that the military acts fairly in a particular area or provides opportunity for a particular group take a skeptical view of the military, whereas those who agree take a beneficent view.

Not all of the questions in the survey, of course, are premised on matters of general normative value. The survey asks in question 18, “Do you think the military has different values than the rest of American society?” Since we do not know if a respondent believes the military should have values different from the rest of society, the answer produces no reasonable inference about a skeptical versus beneficent attitude toward the military. More of something one regards as bad or wrong or unjust would be a bad thing, whereas more of something one regards as right or good or just would be a good thing. Without knowing the normative value a respondent attaches to the premise of the question, one cannot infer a conclusion about an overall positive or negative attitude toward the military on the question at hand. The answers to this and other such questions are markers for further research into underlying normative attitudes.

What quickly emerges from even a cursory glance is that there is a noteworthy divide in American society on those most inclined to question the institution both in wartime and in peacetime. It is not a divide between civilians and the military. It is not a divide between elite and mass opinion. It is political, but not simply between liberal and conservative, with the attitudes of moderates bridging the gap.

It is actually a divide between people who identify themselves as “very liberal” versus everyone else. Across the political spectrum running from “liberal” to “very conservative,” attitudes vary somewhat, and it is possible to say that those who consider themselves “liberal” may, on balance and as a whole, express slightly more skepticism toward the military than those who identify as “conservative” or “very conservative.” But the gap there is not very large, and on a number of specific survey questions, it is all but invisible. The clear outliers are the “very liberal.”

Those who are “very conservative” are somewhat less likely to question the institution of the military than the median view, but the emphasis has to go on “somewhat”—they are not that far out of alignment. Those who identify as “very liberal,” however, are often very far from the mainstream in their tendency to express skepticism toward the military. We can see this in their attitudes toward the military as a social institution, in their view of aspects of warfighting, and in their opinions about civilian control of the military.

The Military as Social Institution

First, let us consider some of the survey questions that probed attitudes toward the military as a social institution. Here, we are considering the military not in its warfighting and war-deterring ways, the key functions that differentiate it from all other social institutions, but as one American institution among many. The question is how it measures up to expectations Americans have for such an institution. Do Americans think the military delivers on such basic matters as fairness and opportunity?

A series of questions asks whether the military is “more fair . . . than the rest of American society,” “about as fair as the rest of society,” or “less fair” for specified cases. A number of these questions went to the issue of the internal fairness of military procedures in such matters as promotions, opportunity to excel, opportunity for self-improvement, and opportunity for respect. Here, it is noteworthy that very small percentages of Americans expressed a skeptical attitude, and variation based on ideology was minimal.

Let us look at some of the questions on which the skepticism of the “very liberal” is no more pronounced than that to be found among other ideological classifications. Question 26 asks about the fairness of “promotions and recognition” in the military (CM2T 26). Totals for “more fair” than the rest of society are 39.5 percent, “about as fair” 37.0 percent, “less fair” 8.5 percent, with the rest saying they are not sure. No major variation appears along ideological lines. Those saying “less fair” are 9.5 percent for very liberal (VL), 11.2 percent for liberal (L), 8.3 percent for moderate (M), 7.9 percent for conservative (C), 6.3 percent for very conservative (VC). A large majority of Americans all across the political spectrum sees the internal processes by which the military rewards its members as on par with civilian practices or better.

Question 27 asks about “opportunity to excel” (CM2T 27). Totals were 43.4 percent “more fair,” 37.1 percent “about as fair,” and 7.1 percent “less fair.” The ideological breakdown for “less fair” was 11.3 percent VL, 8.5 percent L, 6.4 percent M, 6.8 percent C, and 3.7 percent VC. Again, a large majority of Americans spanning the entire political spectrum believes the military is on par or better than society as a whole in providing individual members with an opportunity to demonstrate their true abilities. The same conclusion holds for question 28, which asks about “opportunity for self-improvement” (CM2T 28). Totals were 48.0 percent “more fair,” 33.7 percent “about as fair,” and 6.8 percent “less fair.” The ideological breakdown for “less fair” was 14.3 percent VL, 8.5 percent L, 7.1 percent M, 6.2 percent C, and 5.2 percent VC.

If the internal processes of the military win generally high marks from Americans, with no more than one in seven expressing skepticism in any ideological group, Americans meet some structural elements of the military as an institution with greater skepticism.

Question 25 asks about the treatment of women, and 14.0 percent find the military “more fair,” 38.1 percent “about as fair,” and 35.0 percent “less fair” than society as a whole (CM2T 25). Among those who say “less fair,” a sharp gradation on ideological lines is apparent: 66.9 percent of VLs, 60.6 percent of Ls, 34.8 percent of Ms, 20.9 percent of Cs, 11.7 percent of VCs. Notably, gender is the outlier, as one might expect given military restrictions on women in combat. Those who say the military offers “less opportunity” to minorities “than the rest of American society” amount to only 6.9 percent of all respondents, although that does includes 18.4 percent of VLs, somewhat of an outlier but not a high percentage of that ideological group.

A significant gap between the VLs and others does emerge in one potentially revealing institutional aspect, however. Two questions illustrate it, both asking whether the military provides more opportunity than the rest of American society, about the same, or less. For question 35, the group at issue is “the well-educated,” and for question 37, it’s “high-achieving people, regardless of background” (CM2T 35, 37). For the former, the overall response was 28.3 percent “more,” 48.5 percent “same,” and 13.4 percent “less.” But in this case, more than one in three VLs expressed skepticism: 34.1 percent VL, 21.7 percent L, 14.4 percent M, 7.2 percent C, 8.0 percent VC.

For “high-achieving people,” the totals were 33.3 percent “more,” 45.1 percent “same,” 10.6 percent “less”—but here just over one in four VLs expressed skepticism: 26.7 percent VL, 13.6 percent L, 9.8 percent M, 7.0 percent C, 9.6 percent VC. Here, it is interesting to look at the educational attainment levels (CM2T 92). Overall, 30.1 percent of respondents had a high school education or less, 30.4 percent “some college,” 23.3 percent college degrees, and 16.2 percent postgraduate education. The ideological breakdown for those who said they had a postgraduate degree was 24.4 percent VL, 18.0 percent L, 12.8 percent M, 12.9 percent C, and 16.2 percent VC. It seems likely that some well educated VLs see little opportunity for themselves in the military and accordingly express skepticism at greater levels about opportunity for the well educated in general—and by extension, perhaps, “high-achieving people”—a mirror imaging of their own attitudes.

A series of questions asks, “If a military person brings discredit upon the country, should that person go to jail in the following cases?” (CM2T 38–44) One interesting case from the culture wars is “opposing women or homosexuals serving with them.” Overall, the response was 22.7 percent “yes” and 57.4 percent “no,” with the rest undecided. VLs, however, divided equally on the question, at 43.0 percent on each side; otherwise, “yes” was 35.4 percent L, 27.6 percent M, 13.3 percent C, and 9.3 percent VC. VLs are clearly the most willing to mete out serious punishment to those who disagree with their normative views on how the military should be more inclusive.

The survey also asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement, “The military has more sexual harassment and assault than the rest of society,” a view with which 35.5 percent of all respondents agreed (CM2T 48). For VLs, however, the figure was 78.5 percent agreement, with 62.3 percent L, 39.2 percent M, 18.3 percent C, 18.3 percent VC. Emerging from this and the previous question is a broadly shared view among VLs of the military as a sexist institution in which women are at risk.

And in the prevalent VL view, the military must change to accord more with their normative preferences. Overall, fewer than 1 in 4 (23.3 percent) agreed that “the military needs to change to become more like American society” (CM2T 48). But that was the majority view among VLs, 51.5 percent, compared to 39.6 percent L, 29.1 percent M, 7.8 percent C, and 4.1 percent VC.

Given the attachment within the military to ideas and practices VLs regard as retrograde and in need of reform, it is perhaps unsurprising that VLs tend to see a mirror image of their normative disapproval of the military in military attitudes toward the society at large. Overall, 63.9 percent of respondents agreed that “most members of the military have a great deal of respect for civilian society” (CM2T 50). Yet this is a minority view among VLs at 42.1 percent, compared to 53.3 percent L, 63.8 percent M, 71.4 percent C, and 83.7 percent VC.

What, then, do VLs think of those who emerge from an institution some of whose fundamental characteristics they find very troubling? Overall, 65.9 percent of respondents agreed that “veterans are more reliable and hard-working than the rest of society” (CM2T 48) But among VLs, this statement mustered the support of only 49.8 percent, versus 55.0 percent L, 60.8 percent M, 79.1 percent C, and 81.3 percent VC.

On some questions, VLs and Ls do not diverge as much, and the division that emerges is more starkly liberal-conservative. Question 63 is one of a series that asks whether a particular situation might help or hurt the effectiveness of the military in wartime (CM2T 63). In this case, it’s “the military trying to hold on to old-fashioned views of morality.” Respondents had the option of saying the proposition being tested “is not happening at all,” and across the ideological spectrum, few did. For VLs, the figure is 7.1 percent and for VCs, 6.2 percent, with Ls, Ms, and Cs in the middle. The overall response to the question is 29.5 percent “hurts effectiveness” and 30.9 percent “helps effectiveness”—a fairly even split indicating no great skepticism. But the ideological distribution here is quite striking, as the military’s “old-fashioned views of morality . . . hurt effectiveness” in the view of 56.9 percent of VLs and 59.9 percent of Ls, versus 14.6 percent of Cs and 6.2 percent of VCs (with Ms at 29.1 percent). The “helps effectiveness” figures are the mirror image, at 2.8 percent among VLs and 9.0 percent among Ls, versus 49.5 percent of Cs and 67.9 percent of VCs (with Ms at 25.3 percent). Perhaps the starkness of the term “old-fashioned views of morality” invites Ls here to close the gap with the VLs rather than to move in the direction of the M view, where presumably “old-fashioned views of morality” meet less disapprobrium.

Wartime Issues

Most of the YouGov survey questions go to views of the military as an institution. Yet several expose fault lines in views of the military’s essential function, to deter and when necessary wage war.

And it is a fact of war that bad things happen in wartime, at times accidentally, at times on purpose. A series of questions asks, “If a military person brings discredit upon the country, should that person go to jail in the following cases?” One is for “offending the sensibilities of other cultures (for example, burning Korans)” (CM2T 40). Responding yes overall were 26.1 percent, no 50.2 percent. Among VLs, however, the yes response was 47.6 percent, compared to 33.4 percent L, 32.7 percent M, 16.3 percent C, and 6.9 percent VC. What we see here—in addition to conservative indifference to clearly prohibited conduct—is perhaps an extension of the broader VL view in opposition to intolerance of diversity.

In the series of questions that asks whether a condition “helps effectiveness” or “hurts effectiveness” during wartime, one issue resonates ideologically with contemporary debates about alleged media bias: question 66 asks whether “inaccurate reporting about the military and military affairs by the news media” hurts effectiveness (CM2T 66). Overall, 73.3 percent say it hurts effectiveness, which is perhaps unsurprising in light of the premise of the question, namely, inaccurate reporting. Yet respondents also have the option of disagreeing with the premise by indicating the posited condition “is not happening.” For this question, VLs are more than three times as likely as the next closest ideological classification (Ms) to say inaccurate reporting “is not happening,” albeit at rather low levels (12.6 percent VL, 4.1 percent M). Ls, Ms, Cs, and VCs believe inaccurate reporting hurts effectiveness by very large margins (respectively, 70.1 percent, 67.8 percent, 82.8 percent, 89.5 percent). Among VLs, however, the percentage who say inaccurate reporting hurts effectiveness is a bare majority, 52.9 percent. This view may reflect a higher level of identification among VLs with those who are trying to report the news accurately but sometimes err than with those who might claim to be “victims” of media errors (a frequent complaint heard from conservatives).

Questions 79 and 80 ranked respondent agreement and disagreement, respectively, with a number of statements about the use of force and military intervention (CM2T 79, 80). Ambivalence about the use of force is pronounced among VLs, though the distribution from VL to VC often seems to be more a continuum along a relatively straight line. One statement for agreement or disagreement was: “Military force should only be used in pursuit of the goal of total victory.” Overall, 24.4 percent disagreed with this statement, but of those who did, VLs were the highest, at 44.0 percent compared to 39.6 percent L, 23.6 percent M, 19.1 percent C, and 9.6 percent VC. Another was: “The use of force in foreign interventions should be applied quickly and massively rather than by gradual escalation.” Overall, 15.2 percent disagreed. VLs, however, were more than twice as likely to disagree, at 32.4 percent, compared to 24.0 percent L, 20.9 percent M, 5.7 percent C, and 4.9 percent VC.

Finally, the same question assessed overall views of sources of security by asking respondents if they agreed or disagreed with the statement “American national security depends more on international trade and a strong domestic economy than on our military strength.” Switching lenses to look at agreement here, we see that this was the view of merely 37.6 percent of respondents overall (those disagreeing were a plurality at 44.1 percent)—but of 68.8 percent of VLs, compared to a bare majority of Ls at 51.1 percent, a plurality of Ms (42.6 percent), and minorities of Cs (24.7 percent) and VCs (17.9 percent). VLs are far less likely to see “hard” security as central to US national security.

Question 61 is one of the series that asks whether a particular situation might help or hurt the effectiveness of the military in wartime (CM2T 61). In this case, the question asks about “nonmilitary people getting too involved in purely military affairs.” The question as formulated is somewhat tendentious, referencing a group already “too involved.” And overall, 61.5 percent of respondents said “hurts effectiveness.” This was majority sentiment among Ls (50.7 percent), Ms (55.1 percent), Cs (76.3 percent), and VCs (81.1 percent), but not among VLs (43.9 percent), who were also nearly twice as likely as Ls to say that “nonmilitary people getting too involved” actually “helps effectiveness” in wartime (18.2 percent to 9.5 percent). Again, we can see a marked propensity among VLs toward the view that the military needs outside supervision.

Command and Civilian Control Issues

The US and other modern, Western-style systems of civil-military relations are based on the fundamental proposition that civilian authorities control the military, not the other way around. In the United States, Congress is responsible for legislation establishing and regulating the armed services, and the president has the constitutional power of commander in chief. Although military leaders have considerable influence over defense policy, including decisions about whether and how to go to war, the command authority belongs with the president, who has been elected by the people.

The deference military leaders owe to civilian authorities is something that seems well understood by the military itself and by the American public. Although military leaders have opinions of their own, if they are critical of the civilian leadership, especially of the president, there is an expectation that they will keep these opinions to themselves—at a minimum, that such criticism will not become public. In the event of a breech, there will be consequences. President Obama relieved General Stanley McChrystal of his command of the Afghanistan war following publication of an article in Rolling Stone magazine in which officers on McChrystal’s staff made disparaging comments about senior administration officials. The president’s decision drew bipartisan and military support, notwithstanding the esteem in which most close observers held McChrystal’s abilities as a wartime commander.

An indication of the nearly creedal status across ideological lines of the principle of civilian control can be seen in the survey’s question 74, which asks, “When the president makes a policy decision on the wars, does the military have a responsibility to support the policy?” (CM2T 74) Overall, the answer was 72.3 percent yes, breaking down 78.8 percent VL, 85.9 percent L, 67.1 percent M, 70.7 percent C, 73.8 percent VC. Question 75 applies the general principle to a specific case, with results not too far at variance (CM2T 75). A series of questions gauges what action by the military might be appropriate if “the President decides to withdraw completely from the Afghan war in 2014”—a previous survey question (CM2T 73) having informed respondents of “the military’s support for continued involvement in Afghanistan after 2014.” Question 75 asks if the military “has a responsibility to . . . support the policy despite any concerns to the contrary” (CM2T 75). Overall, those responding yes are 63.0 percent, breaking down as 80.2 percent of VLs, 76.0 percent of Ls, 60.0 percent of Ms, 62.7 percent of Cs, and 61.4 percent of VCs.

But as to how much latitude the military should have in expressing its views in opposition to the president’s policy, the ideological divide reasserts itself. Question 78 asks if the military should “educate the public about their concerns” (CM2T 78). Overall, 50.4 percent of respondents said yes, 33.0 percent no. But a clear majority of VLs, 56.2 percent, said no, far outstripping the no tally in other ideological groups: 37.5 percent L, 33.8 percent M, 27.9 percent C, 35.2 percent VC. Question 76 asks if the military should “testify to Congress on their concerns,” to which 61.3 percent of respondents overall said yes (CM2T 76). This was a clear majority view among Ls at 53.0 percent, Ms at 59.2 percent, Cs at 73.8 percent, and VCs at 69.3 percent—but not among VLs at 42.1 percent. A presumably less drastic step than testifying publicly, but potentially perceived by some as more underhanded, namely, “privately explain their concerns to Congress,” skewed similarly, with 57.7 percent of respondents overall saying yes, including majorities of Ls (54.2 percent), Ms (53.3 percent), Cs (65.7 percent), and VCs (73.7 percent)—but not VLs at 46.4 percent.

The “Very Liberal” View in Sum

What emerges from these survey findings is a group of people, the very liberal, who are much more inclined to express skeptical attitudes toward the military. Though they do not tend to dispute the internal processes of the military in matters such as awards and promotions, they perceive an institution less fair to women and gays and are more likely to see punishable conduct in the expression of opposing views within the military. They tend to think the military should become more like the rest of society. They are more inclined to see members of the military as disrespectful of the rest of society. They tend to think the military’s attachment to old-fashioned moral structures undermines the institution and its effectiveness. They tend to see little place for highly educated and high-achieving individuals in the military, perhaps a reflection of their own high levels of educational attainment. They are more skeptical than others about service in the military making veterans more reliable and hardworking.

The very liberal tend to think that the importance of military power is overrated compared to the economy in assessing national security. In cases of the use of force, they are less inclined to see a need for its overwhelming application and to insist on clear victory as an objective. They are disinclined to worry about the effects of poor news reporting on military effectiveness in wartime. And they tend to judge misconduct by US service members more harshly.

The very liberal of the present day are not much more likely to support civilian control over the military than others, but they are less inclined to support public or private expressions of disagreement within and from the military over policy questions. They tend not to be very worried about the effects of the involvement of nonmilitary people in military affairs. Despite the fact that most of the very liberal are themselves nonmilitary people—yet have a decided view of the need for the military to change in accordance with their normative preferences—they are self-confident in their ability to reform the military without diminishing its effectiveness.

It seems plausible that the very liberal view, were it widespread throughout the US population, might indicate a gathering problem for civil-military relations. Given the very liberal view of the primacy of the economy in national security, for example, one might expect proposals to gain traction for an extended period of much lower levels of defense spending.

However, the military has also shown itself able to accommodate, at least to some degree, views originating on the left side of the ideological spectrum by changing policies. Expanded opportunities for women and the end of the ban on gays serving openly are prime examples. So, too, is the military’s increasing commitment to investigating and prosecuting sexual harassment and assault. And in fact, under the budget sequester, military spending has gone through a period of pronounced contraction. The military is hardly indifferent to the concerns most prevalent in the very liberal point of view, though, perhaps unsurprisingly, the very liberal tend to be skeptical about the sincerity and sufficiency of these efforts.

The next thing that must be remarked, however, is how tiny a fraction of the US population identifies as “very liberal” (CM2T 93). Of the total sample, 4.8 percent described themselves that way, as against 16.4 percent “liberal,” 30.7 percent “moderate,” 30.3 percent “conservative,” and 10.1 percent “very conservative” (7.6 percent did not know). Thus the category of those most likely to take a skeptical rather than a beneficent attitude toward the military is quite a small segment of the American population, notwithstanding its considerable cultural influence.

The raw numbers may tell only a part of the story, however. In the first place, even among those who call themselves “very liberal,” a skeptical attitude toward the military is hardly uniform. The “very liberal” are not unanimous in agreeing on X, Y, and Z. It would be interesting to look in detail at the answers from each individual identifying as “very liberal” to see if the generally expressed skepticism toward the military divides between a larger group that almost always expresses a skeptical view of the military and a smaller group that almost always expresses a beneficent view of the institution—or if the beneficent view of the military pops up from those who call themselves “very liberal” more randomly depending on the survey question. If it is the former, then the category of skeptics represents an even smaller segment of the population than the 4.8 percent of the population calling themselves “very liberal.”

It is also possible that different attitudes toward the act of classifying oneself politically may be a factor in the results. To declare oneself “very liberal” or “very conservative,” it seems to me, is to make a statement in a way that classifying oneself as “liberal,” “moderate,” or “conservative” may not be. If this is so, then there may be a significant segment of those identifying as “liberal” and “conservative” who are actually (subjectively or by some notional objective measure of policy views) “very liberal” or “very conservative” but unwilling to identify itself as such. I would expect that this is largely a one-way phenomenon, that is, that there are relatively fewer individuals who claim to be “very conservative” or “very liberal” when they are “actually” merely “conservative” or “liberal.”

If an effect such as this is in play in the responses, its implications would be asymmetric. The reason for this is that in response to most questions, the difference between the views of those identifying as “conservative” versus “very conservative” is significantly smaller than the difference between “liberal” and “very liberal.” As noted, the “very conservative” view is much closer to the view of the sample as a whole than the “very liberal” view. If some who identify as “liberal” are “actually” “very liberal,” then of course the segment of the population that is “very liberal” is larger. But it would accordingly be even farther out of line with mainstream opinion on the military. If one could somehow properly sort “very liberal” respondents from “liberal” respondents, on this analysis, the respondents one would be moving from the “liberal” to the “very liberal” category would tend to be more skeptical about the military than those who remain. This would skew the aggregate “very liberal” view even further in the direction of skepticism toward the military, while moving the aggregate “liberal” view closer to the mainstream.

We should also note that this survey took place against a backdrop of a country at war for well over a decade, led now by a Democratic president. The situational element of the responses is something the YouGov survey has not assessed. For example, suppose a conservative Republican were president and in favor of a wartime escalation of troop strength to advance military objectives (an example would be the “surge” strategy in Iraq from 2006 to 2007). Suppose some senior military officials held the view that the escalation would be ineffectual at best, leading only to a protracted commitment and more US casualties. Would the very liberal be as intolerant of expressions of dissent from Congress under such circumstances? In this context, respondents’ perceptions of the question might not be along the axis of civil (presidential) authority versus military (uniformed) authority, but rather along an axis of bellicosity running from more (the president) to less (the military brass). More research will be necessary to distinguish views of the military as an instrument of bellicosity as opposed to a source of bellicosity.

It is undeniable that the skeptical view of the US military was once considerably more socially and culturally influential, especially in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It is likewise important, as Fallows says, for outsiders as well as the military itself to scrutinize its conduct and its institutional structure.

The range of opinions on military matters revealed in the YouGov survey data does indeed seem to suggest that the cultural reach of the “very liberal” skepticism of the military as an institution of American society and as an instrument of national policy is out of proportion to its share of public opinion as a whole. Contrary to Fallows, however, the skeptical view would seem to have more rather than less influence given the 5 percent share of the population the “very liberal” view commands.

This disproportionate cultural influence of the “very liberal” view could be contributing to an exaggerated sense of conflict between civilian and military perspectives. We are likely seeing evidence of this in the responses to many survey questions of those who identify as “conservative” and “very conservative”—an impression on the right side of the political spectrum of a culturally embattled military. This impression is arguably well-founded with regard to the skeptical view of the military among the very liberal, but arguably ill-founded with regard to the prevalence of this skepticism among the general public. Conservatives are not wrong to conclude that an influential strain of public opinion is highly skeptical of the military, an institution they hold in high esteem—as do a large majority of Americans, who are perhaps less inclined to publicize their views beyond occasionally thanking members of the military for their service or giving them a round of applause when called upon to do so at sporting events.

In sum, a very tiny percentage of Americans go to see American Sniper and emerge from the theater so repulsed by its portrayal of Chris Kyle that they are moved to denounce the movie, the man, and the institution in which he served. A large majority of Americans emerge from the theater saddened by Kyle’s untimely death while trying to help a fellow veteran, but pleased by the film’s depiction of a hero.

Notes

1. Gallup, “Confidence in Institutions,” June 2–7, 2015, http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx.

2. References to the YouGov data by question number appear in parentheses throughout this essay with the abbreviations CM1T and CM2T indicating the 2013 and 2014 surveys, respectively. The complete results are available at http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-1 (CM1T)M and http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-2 (CM2T).

3. Institute of Politics, Harvard University, “Survey of Young Americans’ Attitudes toward Politics and Public Service: 25th Edition,” April 29, 2014.

4. Gallup, “Iraq,” http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/iraq.aspx, accessed April 16, 2015.

5. Matt Taibbi, “American Sniper Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize: Almost,” Rolling Stone, January 21, 2015, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121.

6. Chris Hedges, “Killing Ragheads for Jesus,” Truthdig, January 15, 2015, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/killing_ragheads_for_jesus_20150125.

7. David Adelstein, “Clint Eastwood Turns American Sniper into a Republican Platform Movie,” New York Magazine, December 29, 2014, available at http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/movie-review-american-sniper.html#.

8. Andrew O’Hehir, “American Sniper and the Culture Wars: Why the Movie’s Not What You Think It Is.” Salon, January 20, 2015, http://www.salon.com/2015/01/21/american_sniper_and_the_culture_wars_why_the_movies_not_what_you_think_it_is.

9. Laura Moehlman, “Umix Won’t Screen Film in Wake of Complaints,” Michigan Daily, April 5, 2015.

10. Emma Kibery, “University Plans to Show Both American Sniper and Paddington on Friday,” Michigan Daily, April 8, 2015.

11. See Jessica Chasmar, “Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Postpones American Sniper Showing after Muslim Outcry,” Washington Times, April 13, 2015.

12. James Fallows, “The Tragedy of the American Military,” Atlantic, January–February 2015.

13. Ben Johnson, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ecco Press, 2012.

14. Fallows, “Tragedy of the American Military.”