This article analyses the politics of “ground truth,” a premise central to the contemporary military dissent movement in the United States. Ground truth refers to the “truths” about war that soldiers who have experienced its realities can bring to bear on prevailing war narratives in order to disrupt them. The article identifies how the authority of ground truth is bound with accounts of gender and sexuality through which particular understandings of war (principally war as combat and violence) are reproduced. Examination of two prominent dissenting subject positions within the movement, the “(anti)war hero” and the “peace mom,” suggests that authority to oppose war is organized around the hegemonic military masculine figure of the warrior hero. Potentially more unruly war experiences, such as those of non-combat military personnel, remain obscured. I explore what perspectives and understandings of war might be revealed if we consider non-combat personnel as actively engaged in, and experiencing, war and discuss implications for dissent. The article therefore addresses how gendered power structures the ways in which war is known, understood, and also opposed through authenticity-based authority claims.
"We spoke with the legitimacy and the authority of those who were in the military, those who were in combat: those who saw what it was really like on the ground who knew the “ground truth.” (David Cortright, speaking at Winter Soldier 2008 [IVAW 2015])
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)