The Army marches to the cadence of coffee, literally. You know the one. "They say that in the Army, the coffee’s mighty fine." From the first day of basic training soldiers learn that breaking for coffee provides warmth, camaraderie, and, sometimes, a brief respite from the insanity. Ours is a coffee army. So, why have recent articles suggested that the military leadership in Afghanistan was overly influenced by tea, specifically, Three Cups of Tea, the beleaguered book by Greg Mortensen? Because it this is a good story, and if the Army runs on coffee the American media runs on scandal. Nonetheless, the criticism of the military leadership is not entirely unfounded. There are several reasons that the Army has recently migrated towards a lighter caffeine source.
First, Army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are heavily influenced by political constraints at home and abroad. With both conflicts growing long in the tooth, each rotation of military leadership is under heavy pressure from their political masters to present a plan of action that favorably departs from the status quo. Congressional delegations are frequent visitors to command posts and in-country briefings and they are keen consumers of initiatives that resonate with their constituents. Talk to them about cordon and search results, and their eyes glaze over. Trot out a local woman who is learning basic sanitation from a locally sponsored initiative and the cameras will not stop flashing for hours. One quickly learns that these briefings, and the funding that they often pitch for, are not targeted at winning the war in-country. They are designed to win the battle for money and support in Washington.
Second, the military’s dependence on political support, which in turn relies on the political will of the American people, is the backbone of our civil-military relations. The codependent interrelationship between the Army and society is not a new phenomenon. One need only remember the sheer number of embedded reporters that accompanied the "Race to Baghdad" in order to understand the role that popular media plays in present-day conflicts. The direct connection between Army operations and viewers at home subjects everything the military does to an additional level of scrutiny and places a premium on battlefield images that preserve and enlarge public approval for the military action. People watch and wait for two things: to see their army conqueror; and to see the oppressed people liberated. The role of the conquering military is set aside early in the conflict, which leaves the role of military as saviors. In reality, this is a role and image that has not been widely accessible to the American Army since World War II, but even small scenes of gratitude from locals broadcast to millions of viewers can make it seem like it is raining flowers in Afghanistan.
Third, the American public loves a good story, or, more specifically, a story with a good-ending. Books about boys running with kites, girls making dresses, or old men drinking tea lay uneasily, and almost fantastically, over the ruinscape of war-torn Afghanistan. Yet, these books and stories will sustain the best-seller list for months at a time. Americans love tales of morality and hope. The only people who love these tales more are the ideologues who populate the NGO delegations that crowd in and among senior military leaders and their advisers. Faced with a decision to make, no senior military leader, regardless of rank or conviction, can stare into a room of agenda-toting activists and not agree to build a girl’s school, a clinic, an occupational skills workshop, or whatever-else is currently on the menu. The commander will do this knowing full well that local norms may be dead-set against such an undertaking. That attendance in or around these facilities may make locals a target and that the contractors building these projects will likely use the funds to buy weapons for their insurgent countrymen. It is a decision that is impossible to understand, yet it must be made to preserve the idea that people are being saved, and that they are grateful for being saved, by the American military.
Saving people is not the business of the United States military and there is little doubt that, for the most part, the military remains very much committed to finding and killing its adversaries where it can. However, in this day and age of instant political feedback and mercurial funding, certain military decision are beholden to a higher power. The power of the American people. If there is any shame in the fact that our senior military leaders appeared beholden to drinking three cups of tea rather than good, old-fashioned, Army coffee, then we should first blame ourselves as American citizens. After all, Mortensen may have established that it take three cups, but we were the one demanding to see something sweet and not so dark.
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