Print this post.Dateline: December 15, 2009 [print_link] ANNOTATED POST
By Roger Shuler
Editor’s Note: We’re glad this orphan issue is beginning to get more attention. Cyrano’s Journal editors and The Greanville Post have long argued that the composition of today’s military allows the ruling class to get its imperial wars with little opposition at home—which is certainly not accidental. Many factors contribute to this ugly situation, but the bottom line is this: when it comes to do a little bleeding or dying “for the country”, it’s the disadvantaged who overwhelmingly fill this role. {See blockquote below for some of the main factors in this equation.]—P. Greanville
Cross Posted at Legal Schnauzer
In the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s announcement last week that he plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, most Americans probably did not think about an alarming fact: Fewer than 1 percent of us are being called to fight in our current wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has thought about it, and he calls it “obscene.” Herbert goes on to produce one of the most important and brutally honest op-ed pieces I’ve read in a long time.
Herbert relates a story that says a lot about how many Americans have come to think about war:
I spoke recently with a student at Columbia who was enthusiastic about the escalation of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He argued that a full-blown counterinsurgency effort, which would likely take many years and cost many lives, was the only way to truly win the war.
He was a very bright young man: thoughtful and eager and polite. I asked him if he had any plans to join the military and help make this grand mission a success. He said no.
War on the cheap—some factors enabling passivity in time of war:
• Population pool: The USA in 2009 is a monster superpower tipping the scales at 300 million inhabitants with a practically inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder from its huge and expanding underclass;
• Mental fatigue: The public has become used to the sanitized presentation of packaged war images, and thereby inured to the whole never-changing spectacle. After all, since 1950 we seem to be always at war some place;
• No draft (see also below);
• No tangible retaliation from “the enemy” or major disruption of the home front—no bombs, no civilian casualties, no shortages of anything, no rubble everywhere (as in Iraq, etc.), no blackouts of electricity, gas or other vital services;
• No letup or drastic change in media streams composition. The people’s main opiate, the corporate media, continue to serve up their toxic escapist infotainment brew day after day, not only misleading the people about the true realities facing them, but, in their immutable continuity, providing a sense of “normalcy” that bolsters the sense of unreality about “being at war.”
For the average American, war these days is cheap. —P. Greanville
It’s easy to be enthusiastic about a war that you know you’ll never have to take part in. In fact, most Americans know they won’t have to sacrifice at all, and Herbert says that is dangerous for any society:
The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do not want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.
To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement. The nation will always give lip-service to support for the troops, but for the most part Americans do not really care about the men and women we so blithely ship off to war, and the families they leave behind.
Finally, Herbert gets to the ultimate truth: The George W. Bush administration never would have started either of these wars if it had known that a broad cross-section of Americans would have to sacrifice for it:
The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.
I don’t think our current way of waging war, which is pretty easy-breezy for most citizens, is what the architects of America had in mind. Here’s George Washington’s view, for example: “It must be laid down as a primary position and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal service to the defense of it.”
What we are doing is indefensible and will ultimately exact a fearful price, and there will be absolutely no way for the U.S. to avoid paying it.
Author’s Bio: I live in Birmingham, Alabama, and work in higher education. I became interested in justice-related issues after experiencing gross judicial corruption in Alabama state courts. This corruption has a strong political component. The corrupt judges are all Republicans, and the attorney who filed a fraudulent lawsuit against me has strong family ties to the Alabama Republican Party, with indirect connections to national figures such as Karl Rove. In fact, a number of Republican operatives who have played a central role in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (a Democrat) also have connections to my case. I am married, with no kids and two Siamese cats. I am the author of the blog Legal Schnauzer. The blog is written in honor of Murphy, our miniature schnauzer (1993-2004) who did so much to help my wife and me survive our nightmarish experience with corrupt judges.
3 comments
It is actually a fact that American citizens are not war-like, unlike imperialist countries like Germany and France where the masses rejoiced before WW I
or England which had fire eaters like Churchill at its head in WWII. Thus any realization of what US armies do remains spectator sports, till the army itself starts protesting as in the Vietnam adventure. But the dominant role of the US gets diminished by the day, even though the establishment tries hard to keep the wheels rolling, which will be evident when technical warfare is defeated
by guerilla tactics (the new way of resistance to invaders). One sure way of avoiding more establishment mischief is to weaken the troops by enlightening
the soldiers to what they are doing and for whom. The rest will take care of itself.
Educating the soldiers was tried during the Vietnam period with–on balance–good results, but then again that was a period of youths fearing the draft and others already in uniform on the verge of deserting due to their (tardy) realization the Vietnam war was a moral and strategic boodoggle. These days I presume the powers that be will be a lot more self-conscious about any attempt to proselitize the men in uniform. We (on the left) may be learning from our mistakes as we go along, but “they” learn, too.
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