QotD: Scrabbling for troop morale

Scrabbletiles

I love Scrabble, even though I rarely win.  I just can't bring myself to go for the big scores, because my focus is on producing the most obscure or amusing words.  Guess that means I don't have much of a competitive streak, or at least that my idea of "winning" is somewhat different than the one defined in the game rules.

Today's word is morale.  We hear it a lot in its more modern meaning of the mental or emotional state (with regard to confidence, hope, enthusiasm, etc.) of a person or group engaged in some activity; degree of contentment with one's lot or situation. (Thanks Oxford English Dictionary.) That meaning has only existed since 1800's, and we use it pretty vigorously these days, as we discuss the ongoing Iraqle Debacle.  When politicians use it, they mean, "Are the troops happy?  Are they feeling okay about the mission?"  Those are valid questions, but increasingly, those are perhaps not the most important questions.

It may be time to look at the older meaning of morale, to consider its etymology.  Our friend the OED offers this as the first usage of morale in English: The morals or morality of a person or group of people; moral principles or conduct. Now rare.  Essentially, the word morale used to mean something very close to its root word moral.  According to the OED, we just added the e to make it look fancy-like.  With that in mind, let's ask ourselves, "How is troop morale these days?"

Let's see, we have US troops accused of murdering civilians. We have US troops confessing to the rape and murder of civilians.  Recently we also have video of an incident in which US troops taunted and teased Iraqi kids by offering them water and then making them run to get it, and then not giving it to them. 

Support_Our_War

 
So, how is troop morale?  I'd say it's pretty low. I'd say the troops are becoming demoralized.  (Demoralize is also a word that finds its roots in the French language, according to the OED: To corrupt the morals or moral principles of; to deprave or pervert morally.)  Of course, as I know I've said before, it's the nature of war.  You can't take a 19-year old kid from Alabama and send him to a foreign country with orders to kill, and expect that he's going to retain a hard and fast grip on all those barely remembered Sunday School admonishments to be as compassionate as Christ.  After all, Jesus said to turn the other cheek, but he wasn't dodging IED's left and right, trying to decide which carload full of teenagers were armed. Plus, so the story goes, he was the son of God. 

These kids aren't the sons of gods, and in their current situation, it's no surprise that they're losing their ability to tell the difference between wrong and right.  War demoralizes.  It has to, in order to avoid being a large-scale game of Red Rover.  (I for one would support the substitution of Red Rover for war, but the military industrial complex can't figure out a way to make money off that.) The military has to shift a person's paradigm, has to make it okay to kill.  Or the military has to find people who are already willing to kill, and we shouldn't be surprised at what those people are capable of.  The library is full of books that can tell you what American soldiers became capable of in Vietnam.  Now they're going to have to add more shelves to that section.

Meanwhile, we're just trying to get to that triple word score before somebody else runs out of tiles.

Giant_scrabble