WHAT MAKES US DO IT?
Why do we continue to fight wars? Even when there is no reason, no threat, no purpose? Even when we can not afford them anymore? What makes our government spend three billion dollars every week in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why do we spend on guns and bullets when we are closing schools and libraries here at home and where the "cut the deficit" hawks are trimming away at the minimalist social saftey-net we have here in the USA? And as they argue in Washington over the deficit and what social service to cut next, we continue to be faced with the horror of the dead and mutilated which come home either in body bags, or as terribly hurt and deformed young men and women. What makes us do it?
When I would voice questions of this sort in the past, they were often addressed to my good old friend, Professor Mort Strassberg, who sat across from me in our office, his grey head just barely visible over a pile of dusty geology books, mineral samples, and a pile of blue-test-booklets waiting to be marked. My former Department Head, and respected colleague at Suffolk College, would often respond with his favorite answer, "Bob just follow the money. Some big shot, some elite, an oligarch is making good dough on the war. He has plenty of money and him and his big company have a host of "rabbis" in the Senate and Halls of Congress. The big shots get what they want from this government and us, the 'schlemiels', we pay for it in taxes and blood."
So now that old Mort is no longer here, and I can't muse with him about such things anymore, I often think of him and what his response would be.
I imagine his progressive spirit(he was not afraid to call himself a "liberal" ), wafting through his old haunts, the geology prep room, the mineral lab, and the physical science racks in the depths of the college-library basement, and possibly near that tree we planted in his name (a healthy sycamore, now a hefty six or eight inches across) uneasy with what is going on today in Washington. Mort abruptly left the political scene sometime in the George H. W. Bush era, (an administration which irked him greatly) and since then, political matters have deteriorated drastically moving rapidly alon a steep, right-hand slope.
Mort was a true progressive of the George McGovern era. I have to admit, at the time his brand was too strong for me. Perhaps I was too young or naive and it was early in my political development. Then I was a non-politcal scientist. My head was deep in sediment, both figuratively and literally. But time to read and study, and a political awakening occasioned by the GW Bush presidency changed my thinking drastically. Perhaps I can not quite take up Mort's mantle, but a bit of that cloth covers my shoulders now too. I think he would be happy to know that..in some way he did have an influence on my "erroneous" thinking. There would have been less hot air and lots more agreement over that pile of books and papers on our desks these days.
So asking that question again, why do we persist on fighting when it makes no security, political or monetary sense? Mort would have been sure to have underscored that it is certainly not to further democracy, or improve the lives of the poor. But mostly for the warmonger's profit, the general's pride, and the politicians glory. Those reasons were considered immoral ones by Mort, and today I must agree with him. I have had some experience with wars myself. I lived through World War II, the Korean "Conflict", the Vietnam War (I was fortunate to serve two years as a student ROTC cadet during that era), countless Reagan-Bush military actions around the hemisphere, in Lebanon the Middle East, Africa, and around the world, and more recently Geroge Bush's Deceit (Iraq War), Afghanistan War, the secret wars in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Pakistan, and now most recently Obama's illegal war in Libya (where he tries to suggest is not a 'hostility'. Where will it end?
Not having my old friend to puzzle over these matters with, I often resort to a variety of publications to seek answers to my queries. Today, I sought solace with (The Guardian) which ran this piece: Eisenhower's Worst Fears Came True by Simon Jenkins ( June 16, 2011) I excerpt part of it here. See below for the full site.
"It is not democracy that keeps western nations at war, but armies and the interests now massed behind them. The greatest speech about modern defence was made in 1961 by the US president Eisenhower. He was no leftwinger, but a former general and conservative Republican. Looking back over his time in office, his farewell message to America was a simple warning against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" of a military-industrial complex with "unwarranted influence on government". A burgeoning defence establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a "military-industrial-congressional complex".) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to "endanger our liberties and democratic processes".
I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today's US, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defence industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do. The cold war strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented."
The devil makes work for idle hands, especially if they are well financed. Britain's former special envoy to Kabul, Sherard Cowper-Coles, echoed Kennan last week in claiming that the army's keenness to fight in Helmand was self-interested. "It's use them or lose them, Sherard," he was told by the then chief of the general staff, Sir Richard Dannatt. Cowper-Coles has now gone off to work for an arms manufacturer.
There is no strategic defence justification for the US spending 5.5% of its gross domestic product on defence or Britain 2.5%, or for the Nato "target" of 2%.
These figures merely formalise existing commitments and interests. At the end of the cold war soldiers assiduously invented new conflicts for themselves and their suppliers, variously wars on terror, drugs, piracy, internet espionage and man's general inhumanity to man. None yields victory, but all need equipment. The war on terror fulfilled all Eisenhower's fears, as America sank into a swamp of kidnapping, torture and imprisonment without trial.
The belligerent posture of the US and Britain towards the Muslim world has fostered antagonism and moderate threats in response. The bombing of extremist targets in Pakistan is an invitation for terrorists to attack us, and then a need for defence against such attack. Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of appeasing the complex is astronomical. Eisenhower remarked that "every gun that is made is a theft from those who hunger" – a bomber is two power stations and a hospital not built. Likewise, each Tomahawk Cameron drops on Tripoli destroys not just a Gaddafi bunker (are there any left?), but a hospital ward and a classroom in Britain.
As long as "big defence" exists it will entice glory-hungry politicians to use it. It is a return to the hundred years war, when militaristic barons and knights had a stranglehold on the monarch, and no other purpose in life than to fight. To deliver victory they demanded ever more taxes for weapons, and when they had ever more weapons they promised ever grander victories. This is exactly how Britain's defence ministry ran out of budgetary control under Labour.
There is one piece of good news. Nato has long outlived its purpose, now justifying its existence only by how much it induces its members to spend, and how many wars irrelevant to its purpose it finds to fight. Yet still it does not spend enough for the US defence secretary. In his anger, Gates threatened that "future US leaders … may not consider the return on America's investment in Nato worth the cost". Is that a threat or a promise? .
http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/sNxtF6R1rdy0Q8zfHlow4wg/view.m?id=15&gid=commentisfree/2011/jun/16/eisenhower-fears-invent-enemies-buy-bombs&cat=commentisfree
Get the picture?
rjk
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