Two weeks ago I attended an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC honoring Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon consultant who released what are called the Pentagon Papers. The classified documents revealed the government had been lying to the American people about the Vietnam War for years. Ellsberg was feted as a heroic whistleblower whose courageous act had hastened the end of the war.
I was out of the country, dodging the draft, at the time Ellsberg was in the news and so did not follow the story much (by that time—1971—anyone who didn’t already know the government was lying about Vietnam wasn’t paying much attention), but the event sparked an interest, so I did some research. I was immediately struck by the fact the Papers were first reported on by the New York Times. That seemed odd to me, as the Times represents the very pinnacle of the Establishment’s public opinion-shaping pyramid and is ever ready to keep from a trusting public any disturbing revelations about their leaders’ conduct. To me, the publication of the Papers reflected a fundamental division within what would be called the Deep State today between the Hawks, who were determined to continue the war until victory, and the Doves – too laudatory a term; let’s call them, as some of them were called back then, the Chicken-Hawks, who recognized the war was a futile, costly, morale-sapping misadventure.
If this be the case, then might it have been that Ellsberg was not simply following his conscience but collaborating with the more realistic mandarins of the power elite to bolster their side in the debate? Because he had the backing of the high and mighty, did Ellsberg consider his purloining of the secret documents not a career-ender but a career-advancer, an act which might land him a cushy job as a Times Senior Foreign Correspondent? Any fear he might have had about being prosecuted would have been assuaged by the Times’ stable of top defense attorneys (In fact, Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1918, but the charges were dismissed in 1973).
What happened to Ellsberg after 1973 might shed some light on whether my speculation is reasonable or not, but his entry in Wikipedia jumps from his exoneration to his reappearing in the news as a critic of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. What was he doing in the intervening 30 years (during which the US intervened in, attacked, invaded, and/or occupied Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Nicaragua, Chad, Iran, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, The Philippines, Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia)? Similarly, Ellsberg’s obituary on NPR (he died last June) glosses over the intervening years, saying simply he devoted his time to teaching and writing. His career may have been curtailed by his action, but he may not have expected that, and maybe it wasn’t—monetarily, at least.
Ellsberg’s story got me to ruminating on heroes and heroism. Must a person suffer, perhaps making the ultimate sacrifice, to be considered a hero? Must the cause for which a hero suffers be noble? Does the motive behind a seemingly heroic deed matter? Does the concept of heroism play a vital role in the survivalistic fitness of a society? Let’s examine these questions in turn.
If being declared a hero demands suffering, Ellsberg hardly qualifies compared to the man who didn’t just blow a whistle but ignited a bonfire under the vanities of the bemedaled class: Julian Assange. The purloined video of a brutal, misguided attack by US forces on Iraqi civilians Assange aired on his brainchild, Wikileaks, is so gruesome as to turn the most hardened warrior into a pacifist. For his journalistic diligence, Assange earned the enmity of the warrior caste, causing him to take refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years to avoid extradition to the United States, where he would face trial for doing the same thing which wins better-connected reporters a Pulitzer Prize (e.g., The Times won a Pulitzer for publishing the Papers). Assange is currently incarcerated in England facing extradition.
Another who paid dearly for her heroics is Ana Montes, an American intelligence operative who was released last January after spending 20 years in prison for spying for Cuba, a hero of mine (till proven otherwise) for countering our ignoble—nay, contemptible—opposition to the Cuban revolution, which is as much a betrayal of the values we claim to hold dear as our hostility to the Vietnamese revolution. (I await a lavish gathering in a prestigious venue hosted by the café revolutionaries who presided over the Ellsberg tribute honoring Ms. Montes, or even Assange!)
Ms. Montes’ case raises the question, “Must the cause for which a person acts courageously be righteous for the act to be considered heroic?” For instance, were the German and Japanese soldiers who died in the service of leaders unworthy of their sacrifice not heroes but misled dupes? If so, were my contemporaries who risked their lives slogging through the enemy-infested jungles of Vietnam while I was galivanting unheroically around the world similarly duped, as the Pentagon Papers suggest? Does it matter in terms of assessing their acts as heroic?
Similarly, must the motive behind a heroic act be pure? Take, for instance, a young man who robs a 7-11, risking a long prison term. If his motive was to gain cash to score some fentanyl, most would say he’s just a criminal deserving incarceration? But what if he stole the money to buy food for his hungry children? From Robin Hood to Jesse James, history is replete with outlaws who “stole from the rich and gave to the poor” and so acquired hero status, so why not a robber from the ’Hood? I’m sure his family would consider him such. To adapt that line about Beauty, could it be “Heroism is in the mind of the beholden”?
Recently I was asked why I blog. I’d never thought much about that and so did not give a very cogent answer. Now that I’ve reflected on it a bit, I could give a better answer, but I’m not sure I would put much faith in it. I’m afraid the motives I’ve come up with are more self-serving than honest. If I can’t judge my own motives, how can I judge that of others? Perhaps the outcome of a heroic act reveals the motive of the actor, but not necessarily. A hero might benefit financially from his heroism, but that does not mean it was pecuniary gain that motivated him. We best leave the question of motive to whatever god or goddess there may be out there.
Finally, is a belief in heroism as important a concept in the functioning of society as such concepts as Justice or the belief in a Divine Being? If so, it’s a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the acceptance of the heliocentric nature of the solar system was hastened by the medieval martyrs who were burnt at the stake for espousing the theory. Without their heroism, might we still be forced to believe the sun revolves around the earth? The wheels of progress are greased with the blood of martyrs.
On the other hand, the unscrupulous use the concept of heroism to promote their own, not necessarily noble, ends; for instance, the militarists who cheapened the concept of heroism by awarding Congressional Gold Medals to the 13 soldiers who died when a bomb went off at the Kabul airport during our evacuation from Afghanistan, the solders’ heroism consisting, in essence, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Warmongers would have us believe that a recruit automatically achieves hero status just by enlisting! If they convince us of this, many more “heroes” will die (along with all the rest of us?).
May we have the wisdom and insight to recognize and honor true heroism.
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Note: I just published a book, 112 Ways To Alienate Most Everybody (available wherever fine books are sold–Amazon, too), which is a collection of all my postings to this blog, except this one (Posting 113).
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