The matron of our collective consciousness, the Media, celebrates 2 past events this week and covers a current happening, yet again, we learn nothing.
There is a screaming irony in the confluence of 3 events this week. The
1st is President Obama’s decision to double-down on a losing bet and
send 40,000 more troops into Afghanistan. The 2nd is the 20th
anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the third is our annual
observance of the Armistice of WWI, which we now call Veterans’ Day.
Let us discuss these things in reverse of the order I just listed.
WWI was the gold standard for apocalyptic, industrialized, modern, high tech warfare for a generation, and was known simply as The World War, until the mass genocide, torture, and nuclear annihilation of WWII reset the bar. WWI was also one of the greatest examples of a war with no true
winners except the arms manufacturers. It was a war characterized by
constant stalemate and troops who spent literally years living in the hell of trenches.
Historians tell us that WWI sprang up largely by accident, because the European nations had developed a Byzantine system of alliances. When an archduke was assassinated in the Balkans, fighting developed and soon all the alliance pacts were triggered. Well, that and profits to the arms industry.
WWI resulted in deprivation and devastation in Europe and the modification
of national boundaries, with poor nations being made poorer. In the eyes of the soldiers and their families, to Europe in general, it was viewed as a disaster of previously unthinkable proportions. The resulting political changes in Europe and elsewhere, while significant, could under no rational scale even be considered to be worth even the tiniest fraction of the costs of the war.
Great Britain picked up, as spoils of war, a goodly portion of Arab lands including Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization. The land was oil rich, and nobody did empire better than the Brits. But it turned out they couldn’t effectively manage this territory, and eventually gave it up. The Brits called their spoils Iraq, and the new name stuck.
The U.S., which had entered the war late in the game (1917), had a
radically different experience than the Europeans. The carnage and
slaughter all occurred away from U.S. soil, and so the day-to-day life
of Americans was, compared their counterparts across the water, barely
affected. U.S. civilians didn’t hear the guns in the distance, never
had their cities bombarded, and never had to eat bread made with
sawdust. And when it was over, the surviving U.S. soldiers returned and
the chattering classes solidified a myth that had been growing since the Spanish-American War. The myth was that America could be the world’s savior, the bringer of peace, defender of democracy.
Now to item #2 on my agenda, the Berlin Wall: This fell which fell 20 years ago, and had been constructed in 1961 by the East German government. It was perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Cold War. Those of us who experienced the Cold War as it was happening remember that virtually all of us thought that the Berlin Wall, like the Cold War, would exist henceforth forever.
That is because we were taught that the U.S. and its allies were locked in an eternal struggle with the Godless Communists, and that if the U.S. did not apply constant pressure in the form of a vast military-industrial complex, the USSR would drop nuclear bombs and would take over the world.
Two generations of Americans were born and raised with the belief that the ultimate expression of world history was the Cold War. We were indoctrinated to believe that there was a vast world-wide conspiracy, backed by vast military resources, to take over the world and that the U.S. alone was the decisive factor in holding back that conspiracy.
The Cold War, besides justifying the expenditure of trillions of dollars in unproductive activity, was the rational for the U.S. to assassinate human beings, overthrow legitimate governments, and launch military attacks in Korea, Cuba, Viet Nam, Grenada and probably places I don’t even know about yet.
The greatest expression of the Cold War was the U.S. war against the Vietnamese people. This war resulted in at least 2 million of Vietnamese killed, and about 60,000 U.S. soldiers killed. Besides the wholesale slaughter of a nation, the U.S. committed a number of well-documented and completely unjustifiable war crimes, the most famous of which is the My Lai Massacre.
At the time (1959-75), our war against the Vietnamese people was justified by a concept called the Domino Theory. The Domino Theory was the theme song of the Cold War. This theory held that if the ‘democratic’ nations allowed Vietnam to become controlled by the Communists, then Vietnam’s neighbors would follow and eventually the Communists would be literally knocking on our doorstep. So, in Vietnam, we were supposedly fighting Communists. Nonetheless, it was mostly civilians who died.
The Vietnam War gave American politicians and military leaders plenty of practice at revising strategies, redefining victory, and reassuring the public. From 1959 until about 1968, the U.S. was always on the brink of turning the corner in Vietnam.
Despite these efforts, U.S. military campaign in Vietnam was ultimately unsuccessful. Despite doing our damnedest to bomb the nation back to the stone age, we never won the hearts and minds of the native people, and the Communists took over the country for good. U.S. forces left in 1975. Now Vietnam makes excellent athletic shoes and quality other goods for American consumers.
And despite the U.S. failures in Vietnam, the Communists never came to our doorstep and life in the U.S. went on, pretty much as before. Except there were a lot of young men with serious PTSD, and the lavish expenditures of the war sent the nation into recession.
In the late 1970’s, however, the doldrums were interrupted by a chilling and well made propaganda film was played on nationally on U.S. TV stations demonstrating that the U.S.S.R. had a vastly superior military-industrial complex and that it was on the verge of pounding on our doorstep, or worse. This film was created and financed by the same people who in 1980 succeeded in the election of a presidential candidate who, among other things, promised to protect the U.S. from Communists.
Besides well-made propaganda to re-stoke the Cold War, Ronal Reagan’s election was also insured by an unexpected but, for the militarists, a fortuitous event in Iran. In that nation, a populist revolution expelled our client dictator, and a group of mostly Islamic revolutionaries captured the U.S. embassy and held captive all persons contained therein for over a year.
I was a freshman in high school at the time, and I recall how easy it was for me to be persuaded dislike this group of brown Islamic people who were picking on these poor, defenseless Americans. Like most Americans, I didn’t know that the U.S. had installed and supported a dictator, the Shah, who had perpetrated 25 years of oppression, thuggery, and murder against his people.
The late 1970’s and early 1980’s saw the U.S. radically increasing defense budgets. Perhaps the most telling of these programs was Star Wars, which proposed to create a space based anti-ballistic missile system that would keep any and all unfriendly missiles from penetrating American skies. Star Wars never worked, but that never stopped the billions from spent, and it hasn’t deterred those parties who even now are bravely and nobly spending the nation’s treasure on this program. [The day before 9/11, Condoleeza Rice gave speech advocating a new Star Wars system, a missile shield for the U.S.]
There were a few scatted parties who voiced the absurd opinion that escalated spending and posturing were unnecessary and/or counter-productive. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for instance, predicted that the U.S.S.R could not sustain its own military-industrial complex, among other liabilities, and would collapse sometime in the early 1990’s. But such statements were dismissed out of hand, in the manner that a sensible person today would dismiss suggestions of U.S. government foreknowledge of 9/11.
And so it was to our complete surprise and befuddlement when the Berlin Wall fell, peacefully and without atomic apocalypse, 20 years ago. The U.S. media, never a loss for a hawkish posture, proclaimed that we had won the Cold War. This despite the fact that the wall was breached by German civilians.
The various ‘Satellite Nations’ soon spun free of the U.S.S.R.’s control, and in 1991 the U.S.S.R. itself began its formal dissolution. Historian Frances Fukuyama wrote an essay (later a whole book) in which argued, in earnest, that we reached ‘The End of History.’
Fortunately for the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex, there were still unruly brown people upon which our armed forces could be sicced. Never one to miss an opportunity, George Bush the Elder launched a tidy little war in Panama to oust former CIA-asset Manuel Noriega, who is, to this day, confined in a U.S. prison.
Perhaps best of all, another former CIA asset, Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, invaded neighboring Kuwait in summer 1990, providing a wonderful opportunity for the U.S. to showcase the toys and tactics accumulated during the final decades of the Cold War. U.S. forces successfully expelled the brown-skinned Muslims troops from Kuwait, and Bush the Elder enthusiastically declared that the U.S. had finally ‘kicked the Vietnam syndrome.’
Throughout the 1990’s, the U.S. waged constant economic war against Iraq, and launched occasional military actions. The U.S. media had successfully painted Hussein as a super-villain. He served well as an external focus for internal anger and dissonance within the U.S., through the magic of stereotyping, solidified and entrenched notion that Muslims were the natural enemies of Americans.
And so when reports occasionally bubbled to the surface of U.S. media that intelligence services and government officials had exaggerated the strength and threat of the Soviet Union, even to the point of outright lying, these reports were soon lost among stories of the barbarities of Saddam Hussein and of brown Muslims in Somalia.
Which brings us to 2001, when the Twin Towers of NYC were destroyed and one side of the Pentagon was blown up, the natural response was to launch military operations against Muslim nations. And so here we are today, more than 8 years into an eternal war in Afghanistan and going on 7 years into an eternal war in Iraq. Item #3 on my agenda, as promised.
The consensus view within U.S. media is that an organization called Al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and I do not wish to challenge this assumption (for it is, here at the Daily Kos, against the rules to do so). It is legitimate, however, to question our notion what exactly is the nature of Al Qaeda.
Is Al Qaeda located in Iraq or Afghanistan? Can it be fought by continuously killing Afghans and Iraqis? Is Al Qaeda truly Muslim in its ideology, is it simply an organization which reflects the beliefs of certain fringe elements? Is Al Qaeda truly a world-wide Muslim Conspiracy? Or is it like a bunch of un-united, but ideologically similar, cells, each composed of a small number of members. Perhaps Al Qaeda is structurally similar to the many chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous throughout America, except having a fetish for arms and violence.
Another question: Can modern terrorism be fought by the invasion and occupation of nations, or is this approach analogous to fighting a flu virus with a cruise missile?
To me and to many other observers, it is manifestly obvious that the Cold War was replaced by another Eternal War. At this moment in history, it looks as if we are meant to be at war against the Muslims, although the current term is the ‘War on Terror.’
Will an unexpected, grass roots movement, suddenly surprise the Military Industrial Complex, creating events which suddenly make the War on Terror as obsolete and irrelevant as the Cold War? At this day and time, it seems unlikely. But if it does, perhaps our President, Barrack Obama, might be embarrassed by his current role in the War on Terror.
I believe that deep down, Mr. Obama is a sane and honest man, that he privately knows, as do all sane and honest people, that our present military missions in are morally wrong and doomed to failure. I often wonder what forces have induced him to pursue the present strategy of sending 40,000 more soldiers to experience and impose hell on earth.
Last week, as news of the Fort Hood shooting trickled out, a friend of mine heard the name of the suspected shooter and stated with disgust that the suspect had to be Muslim. Another friend remarked that he hoped the shooter would soon be enjoying his 40 virgins in Paradise.
Yet I have never heard discussion regarding the role that the Christianity of Timothy McVeigh, David Koresh, Ward Weaver, or Eric Rudolf played in their violence.
In WWI, trenches were dug in the earth, with soldiers condemned to a hellish existence within for the duration. Some time long ago, trenches were somehow dug into our minds , and those trenches have been manned and fortified continuously since. Those mental trenches are the source of our collective fantasy of a universal enemy, and the need to make war against the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq. When will the real armistice arrive?