A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS

I just finished a very interesting book by Andrew Bacevich, WASHINGTON RULES: America’s path to Permanent War. Bacevich is a retired career officer in the U.S. Army, and currently Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. The book tells the story of America’s transformation from a handful of breakaway, anti-imperialist, British colonies, committed to avoiding the entanglements of foreign wars, to become the worlds great military superpower, permanently at war on every continent. It’s intriguing, surprising, insightful, troubling, and overwhelmingly sad.

Today the United States of America has taken on the role of policeman for the world. Many profess to believe this is a burden thrust upon America. Why else would any nation assume the horrendous cost, not only financial but in blood? The answer is really quite simple. War produces mountains of prestige and influence for politicians, generals, and elites of all sorts. And trillions of dollars for defence contractors and what has been called the “military-industry complex”. War doesn’t work for peace, for the world, or for most of America. But it certainly does work for those who are in a position to work it.

Note the words of one of the great prophets of the last century:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms in not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

These are not the words of some peacenik zealot, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower, taken from his “Cross of Iron” speech, April 1953.

Since the end of WWII 102,480 Americans have died in foreign wars, 58,209 in Vietnam, 2,229 in Afghanistan, and 4,488 in Iraq. And if you include the wounded the number of American casualties since WWII is 399,542. That’s a lot of suffering, a lot of blood. 

But the ideals of America have also been a casualty of war. We’ve seen America carry out assassination plots against foreign governments, and counterinsurgency operations that would be called international terrorism today. In recent years, under George W. Bush, we’ve seen indefinite detention, rendition, warrantless wiretaps, and the abuses of Guantanamo. And all of this has continued, even escalated under Obama.

In recent months we’ve seen leaks of classified material that show how, in the name of security, civil liberties are being eroded in America, Canada and throughout the world. And now, quite predictably, we see embassies closed and travel advisories issued based on the “vital information” gathered by these dubious surveillance systems. It would be nice to take these warnings at face value, but it does make you wonder.

As I say, it’s all very sad. And it’s hard to imagine a solution. Permanent war seems to be just about the only thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree on.