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Justifying the Ultimate Sacrifice: Civil and Military Religion in Frontline Blogs Justifying the Ultimate Sacrifice Civil and Military Religion in Frontline Blogs Perché, dove è religione, facilmente si possono introdurre l’armi e dove sono l’armi e non religione, con difficultà si può introdurre quella. For, where there is religion, it is easy to teach men to use arms, but where there are arms, but no religion, it is with difficulty that it can be introduced. Niccolò Machiavelli Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio 1, 11 Morten Brænder PhD Dissertation Justifying the Ultimate Sacrifice Civil and Military Religion in Frontline Blogs Politica © Forlaget Politica and the author, 2009 ISBN: 978-87-7335-135-2 Cover: Svend Siune Print: Juridisk Instituts Trykkeri, Aarhus Universitet Layout: Annette Andersen Submitted XXXX The public defence takes place on December 11 2009 Published December 2009 Forlaget Politica c/o Department of Political Science Aarhus University Bartholins Allé 7 DK-8000 Århus C Denmark Tel.: +45 8942 1253 Fax: +45 8613 9839 e-mail: [email protected] Table of Contents Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... 5 Aknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 13 1.1. Latent and manifest functions of sacrifice ....................................................... 13 1.2. War and justification ...................................................................................... 14 1.3. The inarticulation of violence and the soldiers’ access to the public sphere .................................................................................................................... 15 1.4. Blogging for justification: Morituri te salutant ................................................ 16 1.5. Approach of the study .................................................................................... 18 1.6. Structure of the dissertation ........................................................................... 19 Chapter 2 Theory ....................................................................................................... 21 2.1 The sacrifice .................................................................................................... 21 2.1.1 Sacrifier and Victim .................................................................................. 22 2.1.2 The Manifest Function: calculating costs and benefits of the sacrifice ............................................................................................................. 23 2.1.3 The logic inverted: The victim of his people ............................................. 25 2.1.4 The Latent Function: When the sacrifice becomes the justification ........... 26 2.1.5 The victim: From Job to the American Soldier ......................................... 28 2.2 Civil religion .................................................................................................... 30 2.2.1 Sacrifice and religion ................................................................................ 30 2.2.2. Why Civil Religion? ................................................................................. 31 2.2.3 Why Civil Religion? .................................................................................. 32 2.2.4. Types of civil religion? ............................................................................. 34 2.2.5. Defining Civil Religion ............................................................................ 37 2.2.6 Civil religious justifications ....................................................................... 43 2.3. Military Religion ............................................................................................. 44 2.3.1 Études sur le combat – birth of a genre .................................................... 44 2.3.2 The American Soldier ............................................................................... 46 2.3.3 Qualitative World War II studies of soldier motivation ............................. 49 2.3.4 Motivation in Korea: The soldier’s two bodies .......................................... 52 2.3.5 Motivation in Vietnam: Self-interest and latent ideology .......................... 54 2.3.6 Motivation in Iraq .................................................................................... 57 2.4. Structuring the inquiry: A typology of soldier sacrifices .................................. 60 2.4.1 Common conscience and solidarity forms ................................................. 60 2.4.2 Abstract and concrete communities .......................................................... 62 2.4.3 National and patriotic civil religion .......................................................... 63 2.4.4 Buddy sacrifice: transcendent and mundane ............................................ 64 2.4.5 Officers sacrifice ....................................................................................... 67 2.4.6 Civil religion: present, dominant and constant? ....................................... 68 Chapter 3 Methodology ............................................................................................. 69 3.1. Designing the inquiry ..................................................................................... 69 3.1.1 The dependent variable: From causes to justification ............................... 69 3.1.2 The background variables and case selection ............................................ 73 3.2. Analysing discourse ........................................................................................ 76 3.2.1. Defining Discourse ................................................................................... 76 3.2.2. Language and society............................................................................... 78 3.2.3. Critical discourse analysis: How? ............................................................. 80 3.3. Narrative analysis ........................................................................................... 83 3.3.1 Narratives and discourses ......................................................................... 83 3.3.2. Defining narrative .................................................................................... 84 3.3.3 Blogs as narratives: genre and style .......................................................... 86 3.3.4. How should blogs be analysed as narratives? .......................................... 90 3.4. Measuring Discourse ....................................................................................... 92 3.4.1 Words as numbers .................................................................................... 92 3.4.2. Content analysis of civil religious discourse: advantages and challenges .......................................................................................................... 93 Chapter 4 Data: front-line blogs ................................................................................. 95 4.1. From Weblogs to Milblogs: general characteristics of the genre ..................... 95 4.1.1. What is a blog? ........................................................................................ 95 4.1.2. Milblogs, warblogs and front-line blogs ................................................... 97 4.2. The advantage of studying milblogs ................................................................ 99 4.2.1 Milblogs: A new source ............................................................................. 99 4.2.2. Milblogs: A valuable qualitative source .................................................. 100 4.2.3. Front-line blogs and other first person accounts .................................... 101 4.2.4. The public-private quarrel ..................................................................... 102 4.2.5. The indirect impact of military blogging ................................................ 104 4.3. The volatility of the genre ............................................................................. 106 4.3.1 From the server to the book shelf ........................................................... 106 4.3.2 Competing media of expression .............................................................. 107 4.4. Problems and challenges in using milblogs as data ....................................... 108 4.4.1. Milblogs: a biased source ....................................................................... 108 4.5. Milblogs and War 2.0 .................................................................................... 111 4.5.1 Short-circuiting the vertical lines of communication ............................... 112 4.5.2 The advantages of milblogs for the military ............................................ 113 4.6. Blogging and security .................................................................................... 115 4.6.1. Information control ............................................................................... 115 4.6.2. Discipline ............................................................................................... 116 4.6.3 Operational Security ............................................................................... 116 4.7. Analysing milblogs ........................................................................................ 121 Chapter 5 In the name of the father(s): Dimensions of civil religion in
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