Persistent, Pernicious, Perpetual, and Permanent War
The Real Enemy of America
The real enemy of America isn’t Russia or China or Iran or any other country. It’s America’s own pursuit of persistent, pernicious, perpetual, and more or less permanent war or preparations for the same.
It’s undeniable. America’s war and weapons budget is a trillion dollars a year. And rising. There are no plans in the foreseeable future to reduce spending on wars and weapons. Predictably, Americans are told this colossal spending on wars and weapons is for “defense” and “national security.” This is a lie. This spending enriches the few at the expense of the many. It sustains imperialism at the expense of democracy. It serves the desires of Wall Street while ignoring the real needs of Main Street USA. And it is supported by a bipartisan majority in Congress as well as the Trump administration (and the Biden administration before it).
War and weapons are making the American people poorer and less free. Sure, some people are getting rich selling murderous weaponry around the globe, yet America itself is being hollowed out. The warmongers in charge tell us that we can’t have nice things because America, or Israel, or Ukraine, or all three need more weapons (never mind the price tag). Yet it’s our money—it’s our taxpayer dollars.
We can’t say we weren’t warned about this. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 told us that pursuing war and weapons would lead to our crucifixion on a “cross of iron.” Eight years later, Ike warned that a military-industrial complex already existed that was undermining American democracy and that we urgently needed to act to curb its power.
Sadly, what gives the military-industrial complex its unity is, among other things, greed and power. Congress is more than happy to serve it. So are America’s presidents. The last U.S. president to speak sincerely and powerfully about peace, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated just over six decades ago. There hasn’t been a peace president since then.
Meanwhile, since 9/11/2001, if not before then, the U.S. military has enthusiastically embraced a warrior ethos, abandoning its own citizen-soldier tradition. America, of course, is supposed to be a constitutional republic, not Sparta or Prussia. But instead of a nation of justice and the rule of law, we have an empire and culture in which wars and warriors rule.
War is not peace. Warriors don’t seek peace. War is war, and perpetual war will destroy both the U.S. empire and the kernel of democracy that remains (however weak or shrinking) at its core.
The choice is clear. We must seek peace. We must cut war and weapons spending dramatically—I’d suggest by 50%—and reinvest that money in Main Street USA. We can have nice things again, if we’re willing to stop empowering the warmongers among us.
I believe it all comes down to control of the narrative - the whole "land of the free and home of the brave" nonsense, with its implication that "the finest fighting force in history", which is "a force for good" that can do no wrong, is out there preserving our way of life - with Lee Greenwood singing "God Bless the USA" in the background.
These are powerful myths that have socialized generations with beliefs that blind the majority to what all the gleaming weapons and tough-looking men in camo are really about. Consider all the television and print ads from defense contractors that 'thank our heroes', while extolling the brilliance of their weapons.
In 1943, a photo of dead soldiers lying face down in the beach sand of Buna, New Guinea created a hysteria in the States about the costs of war. By modern standards it was tame - no faces and the bodies were not torn up. But it was a shock then to people who had been shielded from the realities of war.
I fear what it will take now to wake people up to the costs of a militarized society.
The arms industry (for the US that includes the domestic gun industry) here and in many other countries is what drives their economies. It's what makes some people incredibly rich and our societies infinitely poorer in every way. It's a tragedy, it's a screaming outrage, it's a devastating attack on the environment and on life, and it shows us that there are far too many dumb, greedy, power-hungry war-mongers busy among us at their murderous work with no end to their craziness in sight. Incessant war has become the hallmark of the Western world, particularly of the US, which, to its everlasting disgrace, beats without stop on the drums of war.