War Is the True Enemy
America's Revival Will Begin When It Finally Embraces Peace
Arguably the biggest problem in America today is that the government remains on a wartime footing. The possibility of America being a normal country in normal times, at peace, is simply never mentioned. In current politics and in the mainstream media, there is no vision of America being at peace with the world. Ever.
There is always an enemy, usually plural. Russia. China. Iran. North Korea. The inchoate threat of terror and terrorists. Islamist extremism. All these and more are cited by the “experts” in the “national security state” as requiring a military response. If some kind of peace deal is orchestrated for the Russia-Ukraine War, America and its war machine will immediately pivot to Asia. Or the Middle East. Or perhaps Africa. Or all three.
I’m amazed when friends tell me they’re concerned about U.S. isolationism. Usually this concern is couched in America’s alleged withdrawal from (or even betrayal of) Europe in light of the Russia-Ukraine War. Their message to me is simple: America must keep sending weapons and intel to Ukraine until Russia and Putin are defeated, “as long as it takes.” The “it” is left undefined, but apparently “it” refers to an unqualified Ukrainian victory over Russia, followed by Ukraine’s eventual admission into NATO. Whether that “it” is even possible—whether that “it” could well lead to a nuclear exchange—doesn’t seem to matter because “We’re at war.”
I don’t know how anyone can think America will return to isolationism when the U.S. has 800 military bases globally and a vision of global reach, global power, and total dominance everywhere. And when America spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined (and most of those are U.S. allies). Dominating the globe isn’t exactly consistent with isolationism.
The problem with all the war rhetoric, the war narrative, the war framing, the warrior and lethality talk, is what it enables and facilitates, which is atrocity. Waste. Destruction. War is no way of life at all. As Ike said, the persistence of war is humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron.
War is immensely corrosive to democracy. It is the enemy of freedom. Just listen to James Madison:
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare …
If you’re concerned about authoritarianism, if you’re concerned about maintaining and strengthening freedom, if you’re concerned about combatting corruption and waste, if you’re concerned about America’s huge deficits, stopping war should be your number one concern.
War is a terrible thing, and a state of war enables all kinds of butchery. Just ask the indigenous peoples of America, or the peoples of Palestine today. Even genocide can be disguised as a wartime exigency, a wartime necessity. How many times throughout history has the declaration, “We’re at war!” been used to justify the most heinous crimes against humanity? Even the Nazis hid behind wartime exigency to justify the mass euthanasia of the old, the mentally ill, and other forms of “life unworthy of life” as part of the T4 program (which anticipated the Holocaust).
The true revival of America will begin when this country declares itself to be at peace with the world. Until then, precipitous decline will continue for as long as our government remains at (and continues to celebrate) war.
"Arguably the biggest problem in America today is that the government remains on a wartime footing."
Have to disagree here, Bill. I think that our leaders' obsession with profits, from whatever source, be it armaments or food or floor tile, is the largest OBVIOUS problem, stemming from the real foundational issue: ignorance.
We have a very poorly educated, largely apathetic population (reasons for that situation are a whole 'nother series of posts). If our citizenry was aware and engaged, there wouldn't be perpetual war, IMO, because it's so counterproductive for all except the profiteers. As it is, our sheeple are [often willingly] led to endless consumerism, vacuous "entertainment," and other bad habits, because they don't know any better and/or need some relief from lives of drudgery.
Distraction, numbness, lack of critical thinking skills, misery, and desperation are the basic problems, to my.mind. War is simply possible because of all of the above.
So true, Bill, and posted on the 80-year anniversary of the firebombing of Tokyo, arguably the most murderous massacre of human beings by aerial bombardment in the history of humanity.
Regrettably, America's "force in the world for good" train left the station decades ago. Now humanity doesn't have enough of a time-line left for the US to ever be known as anything other than the rabid wolf of nations.