War is hard to shake. Once it’s stuck on the bottom of your shoe, it’s hard to shake off. It gets dirtier with every step you take, and the more you walk, the more embedded in your sole it becomes. Glory is the glue that makes war a permanent part of human life.
Glory. It’s cheap and in abundant supply. I’m talking about the cheap and gaudy kind of glory that bathes imperialistic military adventures in a river of patriotic fervor and makes fools of ordinary men. Precious treasures, the spoils of war, are the reward only of the elite few, but there is always more than enough glory for everyone.
Cheap and gaudy glory is sweet, lasts a long time, and there is more than enough for every American to have a double handful for free. There is plenty for every soldier who goes off to battle, every file clerk who holds down a desk between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., every political hack from Congress to city council, and every hoorah citizen who slaps a flag decal on the window of the family SUV. The supply is endless.
At the very suggestion of war the chests of millions of “conservative” Americans swell with pride. Many invest in war as a junkie invests in dope. Millions who do not participate in the battle vicariously bask in the glory of imagined combat and fill their nostrils with the intoxicating scent that rises from the charred remains of a vanquished enemy, real or imagined. It is all a shabby and embarrassing substitute for the gold and silver such expeditions win for their masters, but it is something. Everybody needs something.
Whenever solemn decisions are to be made concerning war and peace, you can count on such folks to lobby for war. It is beyond their understanding that genius lies in the building of civilization, not in its destruction.
War profiteers rely upon the sentiments of such people to fuel their engines of profit. As long as passions for fight can be stirred, war profiteers can prosper, even in the face of a ruptured domestic economy.
Just as Cigna, Blue Cross and other health insurers rely upon Tea Party crackpots to act against self interest and wage war against those who would reform a corrupt industry, so do war profiteers rely upon warmongers to promote and prolong war. Their reliance is well placed. We are now entering our ninth year of non-stop military engagement in Afghanistan, and the occupation of Iraq continues.
The United States is not at war. It hasn’t been for quite some time now. It is only pretending to be, play acting for profit. Our government has tasked our military with the job of combating a phantom enemy in two theaters of pretend war, tilting at windmills and cluster bombing shadows. We are stag at the dance. There is no enemy.
Saddam Hussein is dead, and his Republican Guard is no more. His weapons of mass destruction never were. Still, U.S. troops battle on every day, trading tit for tat with gang members and common thugs, and the Washington spin machine calls it war. It is, of course, an occupation and an exercise in capitalism.
Al Qaeda is long gone from Afghanistan. No one believes otherwise. We are in partnership with a corrupt government, warlords and opium distributors to protect their regimes and fiefdoms and to silence their political opposition, and to fill to overflowing the treasure chests of corporate war profiteers. We are at war only with decency, forcing ourselves upon an unwilling population.
Painted on the side of trucks loaded with cheap and gaudy glory is the mantra that American soldiers are fighting for our liberty and freedoms, protecting our way of life. It is a shabby lie. They are doing no such thing. It is nonsense. Yet, millions of Americans believe it. It is all a part of the irresistible allure of cheap and gaudy glory.
KBR is not interested in glory. It is interested in the $2.8 billion contract it yesterday received for war related services in Iraq. Xe Services and DynaCorp aren’t driven by patriotism or bravado. They are interested in the lucrative security contracts awarded to private vendors in Afghanistan. Manufacturers of war planes, smart bombs, helmets, uniform belts and underwear are interested in selling their wares to the United States military, and Halliburton is interested in rebuilding everything our military tears up. War is for them all a marketing opportunity.
For soldiers the continued occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan represent separation from their families and the ever present risk of being injured or killed. Such sacrifices we may properly ask of Americans when the threat to our freedoms are real, and then as a last resort. It is immoral to ask their sacrifice for the profits of contractors. It is obscene to cloak their sacrifice in the mantle of cheap and gaudy glory.
Getting the gunk off our shoe will not be easy. It gets dirtier with every step we take, and the more we walk the more embedded it becomes. A new solvent must be found. Reason and common sense have proved no match for the adhesive power of cheap and gaudy glory. It is stuck to the American soul.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
The most disturbing thing is that most Americans don’t give Iraq or Afghanistan a single though throughout the day. They are not even really aware that the military occupations of those countries are going on unless someone brings it up. It is just not a part of their consciousness. Everyone is paying attention to their jobs and their finances and paying very little attention to anything else. Wouldn’t it be great if someone could get it through their heads that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing them tons of money that could be used for things like health care of bailing out people whose homes are being foreclosed!
A lot of my friends think that supporting the troops means supporting the war. If you are against the war then you are against American troops. That is ridiculous, but that is how it is. The issue of the war is a big emotional thing to them and they think that it is unpatriotic to want to bring our soldiers home. It does no good at all to try to talk to them because they cannot think about it at all. They just have these emotional feelings that determine what position they are going to take and those tell them that fighting is the American way. It is sad that so many people have to fight and die for a lie.
My brother Patrick, whose birthday is in 2 days, his (step)son, his (step) son-in-law and a dear friend of mine all are active duty US Army & recently served in Iraq. Domestic news media report nothing about the MUCH GOOD that our troops are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq (e.g, building schoolhouses & clinics), just the bad & the latest casualties inflicted by remaining al-Quaeda and other malcontents.
Yes, we and our allies didn’t do the “end-game” right, just after we overthrew Hussein’s genocidal dictatorship. And whether a people under the baneful influence of Islam can ever learn to be peaceful and democratic is certainly an open question. But setting those two factors aside, it’s arguable whether our job in either country is finished.
I advise you not to mention WMDs (existent or not) to the Kurdish people or other Iraqi minorities; how Hussein was exterminating them hardly matters. Had Hitler used the guillotine rather than gas chambers, would that have made any difference in the heinousness of that earlier holocaust?
Al-Quaeda is “long gone”? Odd then, that the news media still report occasional capture or killing of yet another al-Quaeda leader along with on-going influence of the terrorist group just across the border in Pakistan, & every once in awhile another Obama videotape shows up on the Internet or al-Jazeerah.
Finally, I find it VERY intriguing that our current Commander-in-Chief, who ran on a strongly anti-war ticket (I’d expected him to order the troops home the day after Inauguration) is taking a different path now that he has direct access to our military intelligence. Do you suppose Osama has a valid reason for this changeof his?
Glen,
1. The U.S. military may be doing good work building schools and clinics, but that isn’t what we went to Afghanistan to do. We went to Afghanistan to kill or capture Bin Laden and to bust up Al Qaeda. We don’t need to be building infrastructure in Afghanistan when people need health care and so much more here at home.
2. The “baneful influence of Islam” is a patently offensive characterization. Fundamentalist brands of Islam exert no more “baneful influence” upon Muslims than fundamentalist Christianity exerts upon evangelicals. Throughout the centuries both religions have been rather adept at killing large numbers of people in “holy” causes, and both religions continue to oppress millions throughout the world. That is not an indictment of either Islam or Christianity. It is an indictment of those who use religion as a weapon, a concept upon which Islamists have no monopoly.
Having said that, though, I am wondering why we are concerned whether Afghanistan is either internally peaceful or democratic. We went there for a limited purpose which did not include bringing democracy to the place. The fact is, many (perhaps most) of that country’s people do not want democracy. Why must we force it on them?
3. As you said yourself, occasionally we capture or kill an Al Qaeda operative in PAKISTAN. So, why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan? I repeat…. Al Qaeda isn’t there anymore! Do you now wish to declare war on Pakistan?
4. Occasionally a tape from Bin Laden will appear in the media. Do you have some reason to suspect that those tapes are being made in Afghanistan? No one else seems to think so. So, why are we spending billions of dollars in a place where the enemy is not?
5. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy (sort of like Andrew Jackson). He killed a lot of Kurds (like Jackson killed Indians), and when he did that the U.S. did nothing. We didn’t go to Iraq to save the Kurds. We were told we were going there to prevent Hussein from using a stockpile of WMD. That was a lie. Anyway you slice it, that was a bald faced lie. Nonetheless, Hussein is dead now. So, with Saddam dead and there being no WMD, why are we still there?
You know the answer to all those questions as well as I do. We are in both Iraq and Afghanistan to support the military industrial complex and its insatiable thirst for taxpayer money.
As for Barack Obama, I am very disappointed that he has, in fact, abandoned his campaign promises and continued our military presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I do not suppose he has done so because he is now possessed of new information that has lead to a change of mind. He has abandoned his promises because, I believe, he is a political lightweight who cannot press his agenda in the face of even the slightest opposition in the Congress.
Okay, your rebuttals are well taken, even where I may not agree with you or accept your reasoning.
As for #2, I recently re-read the Koran (Qu’ran or however they want us to spell it today). I was surprised that it isn’t as bloodthirsty and warlike a document as I remembered. However, it does provide plenty of support to the general Muslim trend thru history to offer comquered people and enemies the choice of forced conversion, a heavily-taxed second-class citizenship or death. If “baneful influence” is offensive, I’ve observed that one CANNOT avoid offending followers of Mohammed if one makes the slightest criticism or even a factual observation about their book, their prophet, heir oppression of wome, etc. So I chose to go for broke.
Contrast this with the fact that the New Testament, early Christian writings and the pacifist lifestyle of the earliest disciples of the Nazarene give NO support at all to the centuries-later militant activity of alleged Christians like the medieval crusaders. Contrast: when Rushdie published “The Satanic Verses” the Ayatollah and other Muslim leaders called for his murder. When Scorcese filmed “The Last Temptation of Christ” the vigorous and well-deserved condemnation did NOT include calls for somebody to off Scorcese! I rest my case about the superiority of basic Christianity over basic Islam (in the teachings and foundational books, not the practices).
As for #3 & #4, why are you so certain that neither Bin Laden nor his al-Quaeda AREN’T still in Afghanistan? I’d like to see the evidence.
As for #5, the jury may be out yet on whether Hussein had or didn’t have WMDs. And I seem to remember other reasons were presented for seeking his overthrow. The Kurds et al. are certainly grateful that he’s gone. Also (#1) we aren’t still in either nation primarily to build infrastructure, but we ARE doing it as long as we’re there — even tho’ the media ignore this side benefit.
On the other hand, I must admit that the fact that the allies are easing out and leaving the USA alone gives me pause. And your final paragraph is an analyisis of our current President that should be considered, by me and other readers.