Stars Earn Stripes: bad TV, worse morality UPDATED

This is your fault America. When television producers were looking to cut costs and introduced low-budget fare to the public in the form of reality television, you gobbled it up. It did not matter how asinine or offensive the show was: Operation Repo, Jersey Shore, Undercover Boss, Toddlers and Tiaras. The dumber the better. Continuing this streak of crapulence, NBC is now subjecting us to Stars Earn Stripes, where eight celebrities, of varying quality, conduct dramatized military and law enforcement activities under the tutelage of former special operators and SWAT officers as well as today's least-liked graduate of Hudson High School for Boys (my alma mater), retired General Wes Clark.

I will not critique the show in the usual sense (the L.A. Times and Washington Post have already done so), mainly because I refuse to watch this nonsense. There has been, however, push back against the show because many feel that it glamorizes war and treats it as sport instead of the serious, deadly business that it really is. From a petition making its rounds on Twitter today, the leftist activist group RootsAction wrote the following to NBC:

Your entertainment show "Stars Earn Stripes" treats war as sport. This does us all a disservice. We ask that you air an in-depth segment showing the reality of civilian victims of recent U.S. wars, on any program, any time in the coming months. 

Their assertion is not incorrect - Stars does treat war as sport which is the greater of two disservices to the public (the other being the quality of the entertainment they provide). As a veteran who has seen war as closely as one can, I think that Todd Palin jumping from a helicopter is a far cry from earning stripes and can only be interpreted as the fetishization of war. (Aside: Where are all of you non-commissioned officers? I'm sure you did more than this nonsense to earn your stripes.)  In spite of this, Stars Earn Stripes seems comparatively benign to other forms of war glorification. These eight has-beens may shoot weapons at static targets, but compared to modern video games where war is literally a sport, albeit digital, this show seems delightfully archaic.

This is not to give Stars or NBC pass. They are using war and America's current trust, nay, love of veterans and the military to make profit for themselves and their shareholders. I find this morally offensive.  Yes, the winner of the show's competition gets $100,000 to donate to their veterans/law enforcement charity of choice. But how many dollars were spent producing this show? How much will ad revenue bring in? I suspect the profits of a prime-time show on NBC will exceed $100,000. Good on them for doing something for charity, but I think they could and should do a lot more.  If NBC were to contribute all of their profits to veterans charity, and I strongly suggest that they do, this show would cease to be a morally reprehensible source of entertainment. It would merely be a reprehensible source of entertainment, which is exactly what you all seem to clamor for anyway.

Update: As I think about why this form of profit-making from war is so offensive to me, vice other forms such as video games or war movies, I think it has to do with the fact that this show is purely profit-driven. Realistic video games show war as it is: bloody and cruel. Whether gamers choose to acknowledge this lesson potentially learned is not the fault (or even design) of the games' makers. But the lesson is there. Likewise, movies involving war generally have some sort of political message: to support the troops or protest a particular war or war in general. Stars Earn Stripes has no political message, it has provides no lens through which to learn more about the horrors of war. It is about the military and what they do being totally awesome and profiting from providing that viewpoint. In other words, it provides no utility to society except for those few making a buck off of the worst experiences mankind must endure. That is what makes this show so morally reprehensible.

Morality and Dissent: Redux

LtCol Milburn sure has caused quite a stir with that article of his. The latest commentary is from Bernard Finel who believes that I (and Dr. Kohn) use the "Nuremberg Defense" by ignoring peremptory norms, the "I just followed my orders" defense. I don't think that was the argument I made.

I'll draw Bernard's attention to the final paragraph of my post where I write that "once legal orders are issued a professional military officer has the obligation to execute those orders regardless of his or her personal moral views." I'll highlight the term "legal orders" - which in present day (or at least late 1990s, early 2000s) military officer education includes peremptory norms as a basis for legal orders. So, no, I don't see that I'm using the Nuremberg Defense that allows military officials to say they were just following orders.

As for the examples he uses from the Milburn article, I think Bernard is correct. The military should have questioned the disbanding of the Iraqi security apparatus in 2003, but the order given was quite legal, if ill-advised. They had an obligation to enforce it - something Milburn seems to disagree with. The military likewise should have dissented from upholding many of the detainee policies under the Bush Administration as they were quite illegal. General Hayden's defense (trusting the legal interpretation of the Administration) was unfounded and there should have been legal repercussions to him and other uniformed personnel who broke the law.

Essentially, I agree with Bernard and I don't think my previous post was argued as portrayed. I didn't mention peremptory norms specifically because my education placed it under the penumbra of legal basis for orders. We both agree that Milburn's "negative consequences" test would create a new CMR norm that would give the U.S. military unprecedented, and unhealthy to say the least, power to buck the civilian leadership in its own interests. Where Bernard and I still might diverge, as far as I can tell from his post, is the role morality plays as a basis for officer dissent as I can't tell if he thinks that morality does have a role beyond non-statutory, peremptory norms. I still firmly believe that dissent can only be based on the legality of the order. Granted, there is always some interpretation of legality and organizations are prone to expand their legal maneuver-space, but the United States has plenty of precedence from which to draw upon to help adjudicate such matters. The controversial orders given in the wake of 9-11 seem, for the most part, to fall neatly into categories of legal and illegal. Too bad those who executed those illegal orders didn't dissent at the time, as was their obligation.

On the Genealogy of Morals and Military Dissent

Since I've been on a bit of a CMR kick lately, I could hardly pass up this softball tossed by JFQ. A few others have commented thus far - specifically at Small Wars Journal and at Best Defense (I know, I'm not really keeping to my resolution. But Tom has had some interesting stuff as of late - credit given when due and all that.). But on to LtCol Milburn's morality-as-basis-of-dissent argument.

It's crap, pure and simple. Read the other links to get an in depth look at why. Morality is subjective to the holder of moral views. And there is no room in the uniformed military to impose one's personal views on the execution of his or her duties. The only true and accepted basis for not performing one's duties is the legality of the orders given to the officer. You know who uses those excerpts from the USMC War College survey to determine if they're going to do their job or not? The Pakistani military. And that works so well for that nation.

Could you imagine if the United States was suddenly confronted with imminent nuclear war (unlikely, sure), that the commander of STRATCOM came to the conclusion that nuclear war was immoral? Or a young battalion commander found homosexuality immoral, even though the repeal of DADT is coming? According to Milburn's topology, these officers are duty bound to disobey their orders in one way or another. That is unacceptable. If these officers disobey and duly relieved, or they resign, the legal orders given by the civilians who rightfully control the military will still be executed by someone else. After a delay due to the change in personnel. If these are life and death situations, that delay and subsequent disruption may make all the difference in the world.

(And as a side note, I find it odd that while Milburn disavows Huntington's standards of civ-mil relations, he takes Huntington's ideas of officership as a profession to such extremes.)

Officers do have a duty to voice dissent to their superiors, but once legal orders are issued a professional military officer has the obligation to execute those orders regardless of his or her personal moral views. That goes for jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Any change to these norms would represent a shattering of our CMR construct that is essential to maintain the Constitutional obligations of our military. I find LtCol Milburn's entire argument absurd and scary. Better to be read and promptly ignored.