Called
The New American Militarism, purporting to track the rise in militaristic attitudes among the American people. His analysis of geopolitics ain't quite the same as mine, but he raises some interesting issues nonetheless. See below the fold to get in touch with my fears.
So the author is claiming that as a result of demographic and political/military changes since the end of the Vietnam War, the military has not only changed both in its personnel makeup and technology, but also that its relationship with the civilian world has drastically changed. He pins a lot of the blame on the AVF (all-volunteer-force), claiming that it's induced a rift between the civilian way of life and the military one. It's a little reminiscent to me of the way that Rome introduced an all-volunteer army, which led to the army more or less seizing political control of the Republic. In the same way, Rome was weakened when, as in America, the tradition of the citizen-soldier was broken. When you consider the fast-track citizenship program which allows foreign nationals to more easily gain citizenship through service, the comparison gets even more worrisome.
He goes on to talk about the convergence of "traditional values" and military values. Basically, the way the military has aligned themselves as portraying the kind of ideals and lifestyle valued by cultural conservatives. It's allowed the military to become seen as a guardian of American values, a vanguard against the kind of cultural upheaval we had in the sixties, as opposed to an employer of last resort, the way the military used to be viewed. This in turn secured the support of the evangelical establishment to expand and expand, because they vote in such large numbers, while causing the military to begin to view itself as morally superior to the general American populace. Certainly different from the way it was in World War I or II, or the Civil War, when the armed forces were the general American populace.
This is when I started to get a little worried. This kind of fetishization of the military reflects what David Neiwert, my favorite blogger, refers to as "pseudo fascism", well, at least a major component of it. There's a growing lack of realistic assessment of war, and of the actual human costs it entails. To most of the country, all the sacrifice it entails is pasting on a "Support The Troops" sticker to their SUV. And all this is accompanied by America being viewed as a global "hyperpower", with all the eagerness to use that power that the word implies.
So I've been starting to wonder if maybe underneath all the usual geopolitical reasons for the war, there's yet another. Just a "Wag The Dog" scenario, using a war as a device for unifying the people and making the work of government easier. After all, traditional liberal democratic values are incompatible with a state of continual war, as philosophers throughout history have said. If you really are willing to assign the worst motives to the current crew of miscreants in the White House, it makes a lot of sense.
It gives a whole new meaning to Bush as "a uniter, not a divider."