Let the world declare USA as a war-monger nation; to begin with.
How We Learned Not To Care About America’s Wars
by Andrew Bacevich
Let the world declare USA
as a war-monger nation; to begin with.
How
We Learned Not To Care About America’s Wars
by
Andrew Bacevich
Consider, if you will,
these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or
less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven. Second, the vast majority of the
American people could not care less.
Nor can it be said that
we don’t care because we don’t know. True, government authorities
withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details
that they find convenient. Yet information describing what U.S. forces
are doing (and where) is readily available, even if buried in recent months by
barrages of presidential tweets. Here, for anyone interested, are press
releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent week:
September 19: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS
terrorists in Syria and Iraq
September 20: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS
terrorists in Syria and Iraq
Iraqi Security Forces begin Hawijah offensive
September 21: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS
terrorists in Syria and Iraq
September 22: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS
terrorists in Syria and Iraq
September 23: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS
terrorists in Syria and Iraq
Operation Inherent Resolve Casualty
September 25: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS
terrorists in Syria and Iraq
September 26: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS
terrorists in Syria and Iraq
Ever since the United
States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases have
poured forth. And those are just for starters. To provide updates on
the U.S. military’s various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and
high-ranking defense officials regularly testify before congressional
committees or brief members of the press. From the field, journalists
offer updates that fill in at least some of the details — on civilian
casualties, for example — that government authorities prefer not to
disclose. Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and “experts” booked by
network and cable TV news shows, including passels of retired military
officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books and documentaries
that put things in a broader perspective.
But here’s the truth of
it. None of it matters.
Like traffic jams or
robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans may not
welcome, but have learned to live with. In twenty-first-century America,
war is not that big a deal.
While serving as defense
secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the “greatest contribution” of the
Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States “to go to
war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the
conflict once widely referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved
grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become
reality.
Why do Americans today
show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally
on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn’t the disparity
between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity
or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don’t we give a [expletive
deleted]?
Perhaps just posing such
a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable, like trying
to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on
television.
Without any expectation
of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at explaining why
we don’t give a @#$%&! Here are eight distinctive but mutually
reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly
obvious and ends with the more speculative.
Americans don’t attend all
that much to ongoing American wars because:
1. U.S.
casualty rates are low. By using proxies and contractors, and relying heavily on
airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the
number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all of 2017, for
example, a grand total of
11 American soldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to
the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over
the course of a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries
where the U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly,
plenty of people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed. (The
estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000.)
But those casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United
States is concerned. As long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations,
they literally don’t count (and generally aren’t counted).
2. The
true costs of Washington’s wars go untabulated. In a famous speech, dating from early in his presidency,
Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “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.” Dollars spent
on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes,
highways, and power plants that would go unbuilt. “This is not a way of
life at all, in any true sense,” he continued. “[I]t is humanity hanging
from a cross of iron.” More than six decades later, Americans have long since
accommodated themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it as a
boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions.
As such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending
wars. The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will
ultimately number in the multi-trillions. Imagine the benefits of
investing such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure.
Yet don’t count on Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about
anyone else to pursue that connection.
3. On
matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. Others have made the
point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer” at Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the American
people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the narrowest imaginable terms, ensuring above all that such support requires
absolutely no sacrifice on their part. Members of Congress abet this
civic apathy, while also taking steps to insulate themselves from responsibility. In
effect, citizens and their elected representatives in Washington agree:
supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in chief, without
inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest
sense. Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform
and boo those who decline to participate in mandatory
rituals of patriotism. What we don’t do is demand anything remotely
approximating actual accountability.
4. Terrorism
gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. While international
terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades before 9/11), it
comes nowhere close to posing an existential threat to
the United States. Indeed, other threats, notably the impact of climate
change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of Americans.
Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren? The opioid
epidemic constitutes an infinitely greater danger than “Islamic
radicalism.” Yet having been sold a bill of goods about a “war on terror”
that is essential for “keeping America safe,” mere citizens are easily
persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while
dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while
guaranteeing the latter. To question that proposition becomes tantamount
to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two stone tablets after all.
5. Blather
crowds out substance. When it comes to foreign policy, American public discourse is —
not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly
repetitive. William Safire of the New York Times once characterized
American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office
relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God.
Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this country’s role in
the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker
insists that it is incumbent upon the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom
and Democracy. Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along
with warnings about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous
references to Munich. Such grandiose posturing makes it
unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of
American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars ending
in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces serious
thought.
6. Besides,
we’re too busy. Think of this as a corollary to point five. Even if
the present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert La Follette or J. William Fulbright, who long ago warned against the
dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a capacity to
attend to such critiques. Responding to the demands of the Information
Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep reflection. We live in an era
(so we are told) when frantic multitasking has become a sort of duty and when
being overscheduled is almost obligatory. Our attention span shrinks and
with it our time horizon. The matters we attend to are those that
happened just hours or minutes ago. Yet like the great solar eclipse of
2017 — hugely significant and instantly forgotten — those matters will, within
another few minutes or hours, be superseded by some other development that
briefly captures our attention. As a result, a dwindling number of
Americans — those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts
— have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the
Afghanistan War end? Why has it lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn’t
the finest fighting
force in history actually win? Can’t package an answer in
140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? Well, then,
slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say.
7. Anyway,
the next president will save us. At regular intervals, Americans indulge
in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House,
all will be well. Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this
expectation. Presidential candidates struggle to differentiate themselves
from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or another to wipe the
slate clean and Make America Great Again. Ignoring the historical record
of promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be
deities but flawed human beings, Americans — members of the media above all —
pretend to take all this seriously. Campaigns become longer, more
expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial. One might think
that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the
exalted expectations of presidents putting things right. Instead, especially
in the anti-Trump camp, getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion!
Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) has become the overriding
imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by
the framers of the Constitution. The irony of Trump perpetuating wars
that he once roundly criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to
generals devoid of ideas for ending them almost entirely escapes notice.
8. Our
culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from
criticism. As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned
itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars. Who can forget the
gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s administration
during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly denounced
their commander-in-chief? Those days are long gone. Culturally, the
armed forces have moved left. Today, the services go out of their way to
project an image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on
all matters related to race, gender, and sexuality. So when President
Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in the armed
forces, tweeting that the military “cannot be burdened with
the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military
would entail,” senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back. Given the ascendency of cultural
issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda, the military’s embrace of
diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called to account
for a less than sterling performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics
who in an earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability
to bring wars to a successful conclusion hold their fire. Having
women graduate from Ranger School or command Marines in combat more than compensates for
not winning.
A collective
indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America. But
don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New
York Times to
lose any sleep over that fact. Even to notice it would require them — and
us — to care.
Republished,
with permission, from TomDispatch.
Photo: Sailors from Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare Unit One Zero Five
board a plane to deploy to the 5th Fleet area of responsibility in support of
the global war on terrorism. (Wikimedia Commons)
Andrew
J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular,
is the author, most recently, of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and
join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book,
Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of
U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II,
John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead,
and Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security
State in a Single-Superpower World. Copyright 2017 Andrew J.
Bacevich
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