If you’ve noticed a scarcity of posts these last few days it’s because I was attending a funeral for my Uncle (who I wrote about here) just outside of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to hook up with BooMan and the Mighty Finn (who I hear is teething — welcome to parenthood Boo) but perhaps soon.
I did meet my 1st Cousin’s wife’s mother however, a grand woman in her 8o’s who still regularly attends anti-war rallies. Sometimes the peace movement has been forgotten since the Democrats took control of Congress, and in many respects that has been a great loss for our country.
I know that every week there are still valiant and dutiful individuals like this outstanding woman who make use of their freedoms and rights to continue what to many may be considered a Quixotic quest: to make Americans realize that we are still fighting futile and wasteful wars in the Middle East that in my humble opinion do nothing to boost our national security or enhance the safety, security and freedom of the people living in the Middle East.
These wars may benefit the war profiteers and the (i.e., KBR, Blackwater and all its affiliated companies and the oil giants now benefiting from pumping Iraqi crude oil)but for Joe Average Citizen they offer nothing except perhaps a chance to vent manufactured right wing rage and frustration against people who for the most part had little to do with the 9/11 attacks nine years ago.
As my Uncle who fought and suffered greatly in the Battle of the Bulge once remarked in a self-revealing moment of understatement, “War isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” He was speaking about the horrors of a war that at least ended the Nazi Holocaust, the “Good War.” Obviously he understood that no war is ever good.
I worry about what the future consequences to our nation will be from our unnecessary wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. So many dead. So many wounded, physically and psychologically. So much hate engendered against our country and for what ultimate purpose? To make Tom Friedman (and many others like him) feel better about their manliness?
If you can, stop for a moment today and consider contributing time and/or money if you can to those organizations that continue the struggle to end our absurd and useless overseas wars of aggression. “Blessed be the Peacemakers” said Jesus. Well, they and we need more than blessings. Please help of you can.
War only breeds more hate and more wars. Are children will be living with the consequences of the actions our leaders chose to take after 9/11 for decades to come. No one forced them to act as they did. It is important that we continue to protest and lobby our representatives to end these wasteful and in my mind activities. These wars cost us and the people whose countries we invaded far more than anyone can ever truly assess in lives or money.
Time for us to find the way to bring them to an end.
I’m going to recommend a book again.
James Carroll’s House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power is the best explanation of how we got here that I know of. It is now a structural problem, not just a policy problem.
The Defense budget is driven by defense contractors, but it is also driven by turf-building general officers and interservice rivalry for appropriations. Until that structural problem is dealt with, and it affects Congressional pork more than any other federal agency, we will continue to waste money on war capability in search of an enemy–and continue to not really be prepared. Although we have no way of knowing, and Congress and even the President have no way of knowing, the same situation probably applies to the intelligence community. Especially after the rise of contractors like Blackwater’s security analysis operation. CIA, DIA, NSA, NGIA, and the other agencies and consortia of agencies are fighting for their share of the Congressional funding, which is pork for somewhere and not claimable by the local Congress critters.
I am convinced that President Obama is doing everything a President can do, within the limitations of obedience by his direct reports, to extricate us from Afghanistan and Iraq without allowing the rightwing to claim a stab in the back. And without opening up other risks to national security.
Those in the peace movement need to become more sophisticated in their understanding of the issues and more specific in what they are asking the US government to do. In the absence of overwhelming numbers, like a 10-million person rally in DC, having specific policy items that can be taken seriously is how to avoid being brushed off as hopeless idealists who don’t understand what is going on.
Moral outrage no longer engages people in political issues. That might be a result of our loss of political innocence over the past 50 years. And the discovery that history books never tell the complete story.
It’s time to ask the press, including blogs, to start showering us with pictures of the horror we’re inflicting. When people see it, feel the damage viscerally in their gut, only then will they summon the courage to end this war and perhaps all wars, at least for a while.
People need to FEEL, not LEARN, what we are doing. They may understand intellectually. But until you hit them in the gut, they just don’t think it’s urgent. Help them feel the urgency.
I agree Lisa. All along our press has been involved in a cover up. If people see the horror they will not support these wars. One woman shot in the chest and killed in Iran outraged the “free” world. We see nothing of the horror we have inflicted on the Iraqis and Afghanis. Its criminal.
I realize this is years too late, but… wow. I just watched that Friedman clip for the first time, after hearing the “Suck on this” phrase bounced around the blogosphere for years. Hearing it in context – that’s crazy! What the hell was wrong with that guy?
I always knew he was a half-bright Establishment tool.
I never followed him close enough to realize he was personally sick.
Wow. Just wow.
Steven, sorry to learn of your loss.
Thanks for this post.
Please accept my deepest sympathies for the loss of your Uncle. He was far wiser than he might have ever known about the futility of war. I had the chance on Long Island to my sister-in-law’s neighbor who I learned had also fought in the Battle of the Bulge in WW2. From what I could tell, he had fortunately not experienced physically the worst that combat during winter could impose on a man, but he clearly still hurt inside when he but briefly described his participation in that fight. One does not often see a gentlemen in their 80s still tearing up when thinking about friends and buddies from an event sixty years in the past. I am sure that he would agree with your Uncle’s assessment of war.
Steven, I’m so sorry for your loss. And I’m sorry none of us got to see you – we’ll have to try again soon.
Yes we will have to get together sometime. Hope your life is going well.
but first and foremost it is about oil. Iraq is thought to have the largest reserves outside Saudi Arabia, and despite their being much smaller than the Saudi reserves, it still amounts to a lot.
The US on the other hand, quit being the world’s largest producer sometime after World War II, and by the mid-1970s US production had peaked. US production has continued to decline–as was predicted back in the 1950s–and we now import most of the oil we use. That will not change as long as the US exists.
Oil is not optional. It is what industrial society runs on. Without oil the “American way of life” does not exist. All ends of the political spectrum, left, right, and center are ultimately committed to the “American way of life.”
So the US needs that oil. That’s strategy. And it is “not negotiable.” How do we get it? Pay for it? You dream: We’re broke! That is why the Army is in Iraq–to force a favorable (that is, nominal) price.
Now not much Iraqi oil is actually flowing, because the local people are not eager to give away a valuable resource for nothing. So the war continues, because if the US can’t get that oil, nobody else is going to get it either. That’s strategy, too.
The war will continue as long as the US does.
How long will that be? Not as long as you think. Don’t worry about the war. Worry about what comes after the war. Most of us on this blog will live to see that day.