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With his observations about the damage done in combat by violations of "what's right," Shay brings us an important step toward understanding that the wounds of war are also spiritual, and spiritual healing is required.
Among the veterans who speak in this book is NCVNVM's President, Fr. Phil Salois.
"Ethics and Counterrevolution" is as thoroughly researched as it is critical. Equally significant, the author brings to it the perspective of a career military officer who has a sensitive but not uncritical understanding of the military mentalities (plural) of his fellow general officers. Also, given our history as well as the challenges we presently face in various parts of the world, it offers us an opportunity to reflect once again on the values we claim to hold as a nation and on how we might live by them in our complex and conflictive world. Likewise, it has relevance for the serious revelations that are still surfacing about our involvement in the civil wars of Guatemala and El Salvador and our former support of the ex-Chilian dictator, Gen. Pinochet.
The author is a retired major general of the US Army. After graduating from West Point, he saw combat experience as a platoon leader and company commander in the Korean War. He is also a graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College and the Army War College. In 1979 he was appointed Chief of Chaplains with the rank of major general. As such he was a member of the staff of the Chief of Staff of the US Army.
His military career enables him to give detailed analyses of conversations with fellow general staff officers and even of discussions in general staff meetings of the Army Chief of Staff. (However, Johnson makes no use of classified materials.) On some substantive issues, he finds many in agreement with him. But even when they are not, he bends over backward to respect and put the best face on their views before criticizing them. Johnson has been writing on military ethical issues since 1969, most in military journals. This is his second book since retiring in the early eighties. His first was "Realism and Hope in a Nuclear Age."
Johnson believes that revolutions will continue to challenge US foreign policy. For, "revolutions are not dead because their root causes [extreme poverty and violent repressions of people on the part of their own governments] still exist."
Nonetheless, his thesis is "that the US need not and should not be involved in revolution." It "SHOULD NOT", because US involvement has invariably resulted in the support of client governments that seriously and deliberately violate the most basic rights of their own people. It "NEED NOT", because such governments do not serve US long-term security interests. Among the rights often violated by our participation in counterrevolutions, Johnson argues, are the self-evident truths we proclaim and treasure in our "Declaration of Independence", "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness [and that] "whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it and to institute new Government...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
The author thoroughly examines the history of US military interventions. He cites, for example, the 1940 "Small Wars Manual" of the Marine Corps which affirms that between 1800 and 1934 the Marines landed 180 times in 34 countries and that they engaged in small wars "during about 85 of the last 100 years" (1840-1940. The Manual then adds "it may be anticipated that the same general procedure will be followed in the future." And so it has been. Johnson demonstrates how this policy has almost inevitably ended up in the support of military and elite classes who violently repress their own people and exacerbate the social and economic root causes of revolution. The book analyses with remarkable sensitivity and nuance the views of many US civilian and military experts. Johnson finds that various technological, ideological and essentially amoral assmptions lead many to abandon our democratic and human values and to accept any means that may achieve the "successful" results they desire for the US. But John counters that "no US involvement in revolutionary war can be judged successful if the United States sets aside or repudiates its own values."
As examples he cites manuals used in the US Army School of the Americas and with Mobile Training Teams in Latin America. These manuals advocated the use of blackmail, threats, extortion, false arrest and imprisonment, torture and execution in intelligence and counterintelligence operations. He observes that when the School of the Americas was moved from Panama to Georgia in 1984, the then president of Panama described it as "the biggest base of destabilization in Latin America." One of Johnson's suggestions for changing the direction of U.S. policy is the closing of this School.
In a somewhat surprising and very lengthy chapter, Johnson examines US and foreign documents that allege that Christian liberation theology promotes violence, communism, Marxism and socialism. Johnson finds that the author of these documents seem to want to descredit liberation theology in the hope that they can create a counter-theology that favors counterrevolutionary activity.
Thoughout, Johnson supports his analyses by quoting directly from numerous documents and statements of US civilian and miliary leaders. Thus, Johnson's conlusions seem to be not so much interpretations of US policies and practices, but more like statements of what those policies have often been and still are.
However, "Ethics and Counterrevolution" is NOT a polemic against US policy or its military and civilian advocates. Johnson is clearly proud of his military career and loyal to the nation and military institution he served for 35 years. But he firmly believes we should do unto others what we want done to ourselves, not just in the context of individual and interpersonal relationships, but also in the international context.
In brief, "Ethics and Revolution" summons us not only as individuals, but also as a nation, to answer to a higher loyalty -- one that transcends our own nation -- as well as all other particular lands, peoples and nations.
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