Of all the challenges facing our republic, from 45 million without health insurance to the fact that our electoral system is so compromised that we now have a President who was elected to neither of his two terms in office, there is one challenge that, to me at least, looms above all others in terms of its scope, its comprehensiveness, and its deadly import.
This challenge has been mounting for at least 50 years, compounded by Presidents of both political parties. And, as is often the case with major crises, it most affects those with the least political power, the least societal voice.
No, it is not climate change and global warming (which would be 2nd on my list...but let's not have a disagreement about that just now). It is the military-industrial(/corporate multinational-think thank)complex, presided over by an executive branch with vastly expanded power. And frankly, fellow progressive bloggers, I find myself silenced, wide-eyed and mouth agape, at the enormity of our situation and the magnitude of our responsibility. Would you follow me below?
Background: I am a new progressive/Dem/lefty convert. 2004 did it for me. Since then...let's just say that I had a lot of catching up to do, so I have been reading, watching, listening
a lot. Then I saw
Why We Fight, a mindblowing experience. Then I read some more. In addition, over the last two years I have also had very personal experience with the military, including people close to me go to work for the Army special forces, Marines reconnaissance, and the NSA.
What catches me by surprise the most is the cognitive dissonance I face as I survey the progressive blogosphere--while on the one hand I quite literally lose sleep thinking about the MIC problem, it garners relatively little proactive debate among my netrooty colleagues, in favor of dissecting diaries about this or that troop level or tactic. Which brings me to this diary. I want to ask you all a question because I am honestly, sincerely confused. The question is: Is it just me, or are we missing the forest for the trees?
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Iraq. Should progressives, and every other citizen of our nation, be outraged over the lies about WMD, the incompetence at the DoD, the lack of body armor for our troops and the open-endedness of the occupation? Sure. Of course. No brainer.
But while lefty bloggers and Air America radio hosts alike focus on these compartmentalized issues and have no lack of recommendations as to how better to manage the minutiae of the smoke and mirrors game dubbed the...(oh, I cannot even bear to repeat the idiocy of it, but it is 4 words long and begins with the word `global' and ends with the word `terror'), are we not myopic and forgetful, if not in a downright state of inexcusable denial?
Let us simply face our history. Iraq is but the latest permutation of the exercise of American empire. Have we forgotten Pinochet and Chile? Have we forgotten Vietnam and Cambodia? What about Iran, Guatemala, and now, Iran once again? Halliburton and KBR did not appear out of thin air in 2003. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been building bombers and missiles for decades, rarely used in actual, legitimate defense of our citizens. The CIA has been spending billions of our tax dollars every year to overthrow foreign governments at the behest of our (sometimes) democratically elected Presidents of both parties, often for the primary purpose of benefiting American-owned, multinational corporations (like in Guatemala). We have over 700 military bases across the world, and those are just the ones that are publicly acknowledged. And now, everyone from Democratic members of Congress to Sam Seder on Air America last week speak as though they are shocked! that the Pentagon wants to keep permanent military bases in Iraq? In the words of Dane Cook, "...um, hello?"
America--yes, that America, the one about whose amber waves of grain we sing and upon which we ask God to "shed his grace"--is the largest arms dealer in the world. And we're not talking selling arms to stodgy ol' Great Britain. We're talking selling weapons to African warlords. We're talking selling weapons to none other than Saddam Hussein (ever seen that great video of Rumsfeld shaking hands with him? Priceless).
We trained and armed Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in the 80's.
Let's think about that. We trained and armed Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
Then we experience blowback. Then we fight Al-Qaeda. Then we fight the Taliban. Then we invade Iraq and end up creating 20,000 trained, highly-experienced Iraqi insurgency fighters while creating who knows how many Abu Gharibs. Are we all going to be scratching our heads when the blowback from the Iraqi occupation hits? When 3, 5, or 10 years from now, a handful of newly-minted Iraqi Al-Qaeda terrorists bomb one of our embassies or attack American civilians, are we going to be shocked!, shocked!, shocked! that someone would be so entirely on the side of `evil' that they would kill innocent, corn-fed, American children?
Friends, American bombs and machine guns have killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. You think blowback is coming for the Iraq occupation? I sure as hell hope not, but not to expect it is simply naïve.
So while we all in the netroots are debating Lieberman bear ads, and the Sunday talk shows revolve around Bill and Hillary Clinton's sex life, the rest of the world is experiencing the military-industrial-corporate multinational-think tank complex in a way we are not, save perhaps our military men and women. Here within our borders, we drone on about paying less than half of what Europe pays at the pumps, while Iraqi villages are bombed. We explode in indignation when Ann Coulter says something stupid, while the CIA sends covert operators into Iran to prep for the next war which will then create blowback, which will eventually get innocent Americans killed, so Ann Coulter can say something stupid about their widows, too. Columbian warlords are financed by us in the "war on drugs," Kazakhstan tortures our prisoners for us, away from our watchful eye, automatic rifles and fighter jets are sold to African nations dying of starvation, and we prop up dictators that overthrow democratically-elected governments while we develop thousands of new nuclear weapons.
What is my point in all of this? That we should all blunt our swords into plowshares, go up into the mountains, and meditate until we reach nirvana? Well, no, but if you all think there's nothing we can do about this issue, I might give up and do just that. Literally. Except for the plowshare part.
My point is that we progressives, online and off, on tv and radio, especially elected Democrats, must stop talking about Iraq as an isolated instance of 'Bush lied, people died,' and see it for what it is--our legacy, a legacy in desperate need of reversal. Because if we don't get to the root of the problem, we are going to see more Iraqs, more Guantanamos, more 9-11s and more Irans.
My question is, without sarcasm, simply, honestly, where is the substantive progressive debate on this topic? Where is the legitimate, respected think tank dedicated to a foreign policy that includes scaling back of nuclear weapon development and putting a halt to clandestinely supporting warlords who want to overthrow any government that smacks of socialism, only to install a dictator that we eventually have to bomb? Where are the ideas about how to dismantle the military-industrial complex? Where is the discussion about cutting some CIA funding when a progressive finally gets elected as President? Who out there in our nascent movement is taking this behemoth on? Because I've been looking, and outside of the reporting of a handful of journalists, I haven't seen any real policy debate yet that even begins to address it, especially next to zero from elected Democrats.
Or am I crazy?
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Update [2006-6-18 14:33:15 by Harmonious]:: Thank you, everyone, for joining in the conversation and for all of the links provided. And according to you, I'm not crazy. That's reassuring.
The reason I am updating this is just to summarize and ask a further question. From the 99 comments below, the overaching response is: "Yeah, you're right. This is the state of affiars because either a) this is just the results of our long, expansionist history, going way back to...well, way, way back somewhere, b) it's the neocons--they've done it, and flushed us down the toilet, c) the MIC is just way, way too entrenched in our system and our economy/population can never truly be weaned off of it, d) this is human DNA, man--the powerful elite consolidate power and wage war to further consolidate--get used to it!"
Obviously, since this problem is of such enormous scale, it is difficult to narrow down to concrete solutions. Instead of doing that, let me pose a question to all of you.
As you may have read in the comments, I am personally in a state of career/scholarly transition. I am young enough that essentially I could start over and do most anything. I have a career path all worked out (involving graduate work, starting tomorrow, no kidding) and am about to embark upon it. However, when I think about the era in which I live, the citizenship I have, the education I have, the gifts and abilities I have and do not have, I wonder if there isn't something else that I might do that would make a bigger impact on this problem. The path I am beginning/continuing will in the long run benefit our nation and the world (or so I hope), but given the current placement in our unique historical/geographical/social/political frame, I wonder if there isn't something else I could do...to, well...influence our current course more powerfully, away from the MIC? Does our unique place in history urge us to use this opportunity more directly to end this particular destructive force?
So here's the question: What can a person (like me, or like you) do to make the most impact on this issue in particular? Become a policy wonk? Run for office? Reform the military by becoming an officer and working up? None of those would work for me, I think, though maybe they would work for some of you. Get behind progressive candidtates who are concerned about this issue? Work on public financing of elections, thereby reducing Oil/Defense contractor/Big Money pressure on Congress?
Any other ideas? Or should we all minimize debt, and, as someone noted below, buy a condo in Vancouver?
What do you think?