Gazing in the Mirror

March 6 - A Martial Attitude

What if, all of a sudden,
we don't have troops in Europe,
we don't have troops in Asia,
we are just, frankly, like pretty much
every other country in the world ?
~ Adam Smith, Democrat,
House Armed Services Committee

Life is not just something to be
endured. It is to be lived in joy,
in a fullness without limit.
~ Ernest Holmes

It was 1972 and I remember now my senior year in high school. I had been selected by election along with other females at our school for the "ROTC Sponsors". It was purely a popularity indication. However, at the time I was also turning strongly against the Vietnam War, therefore I found it difficult to remain in that obviously militaristic group but my parents had invested in my uniform and so would not allow me to quit. I survived the experience but I never felt genuine in being there. I had chosen to stand for peace and I wanted no apparent part in supporting the military's ventures. I watched as our country abandoned the Vietnam embassy on television just before the end of my senior year in high school.

When I first wrote this essay our country's budget and deficits are the focus of political attention.  That has not changed under the Trump administration either. This is likely to be one of those almost "eternal" things like death and taxes which our military has direct relationships to. One of the "hot spots" is reducing the defense budget. Politicians from anti-tax Republicans to anti-war Democrats find common ground when the subject is multi-billion dollar projects in their home states. That was then.  Now, the Republicans are all in.  How did we get here ?  Is there any hope to get out ?  I am not optimistic.

At the time I wrote this, my husband had shared an article with me titled "The Force – How much military is enough?" from the New Yorker magazine's January 28, 2013 issue (yes, this essay is now 7 years old but updated for this platform). The United States' War Department was established in 1789 with a Secretary of War (a civilian) at its helm. A part of this country's revolutionary roots, "the department was to be called upon only if the nation was at war. Early Americans considered a standing Army – a permanent Army kept even in times of peace – to be a form of tyranny. 'What a deformed monster is a standing army in a free nation' Josiah Quincy, of Boston, wrote in 1774."

In 1822, congressional oversight was handled by 2 standing committees: one for the Army, the other for the Navy. A committee on the militia was established in 1815 but was abolished in 1911. Interestingly, after the First World War, there were new and old fears about the business of arming men. In 1939, the National Firearms Act was passed to strictly regulate the private ownership of machine guns and that is still an issue today in 2020. And at that time, this act was seen as being entirely consistent with the Second Amendment which is often cited in opposition to gun control. Gerald P Nye, a North Dakota Republican, led one of the most rigorous inquiries into the arms industry in 1934 yet ever undertaken. He said "The removal of the element of profit from war would materially remove the danger of more war".

I was shocked to realize just how recent our current state of dominance by the Military-Industrial Complex truly is. No less of an authority on all things military than President Dwight Eisenhower, who was a 5-star general during the Second World War, was deeply concerned about that influence in 1961. Yet in 2001, military spending was at only 6% of the over-all American economy, the lowest it had been since the Second World War. A peace dividend expected at the end of the Second World War never materialized because of the Cold War. Another such "dividend" in 1991, at the end of the Warsaw Pact only lasted a decade due to 9/11. The United States, even though separated from much of the world by two oceans and bordered by allies, is yet the best "protected" country on earth.

One need only look to some of our more popular movie entertainments to see just how much military "style" is glorified in this country. With George W Bush's second term, the National Defense Strategy was officially "ending tyranny in the world" which is not even a war but the truth is that much of the money that our federal government spends on "defense" involves neither securing our borders nor protecting our citizens. The United States has hundreds of military bases all over the world and yet few other countries have any military bases similarly outside of their national borders. Andrew Baeevich, a West Point graduate who fought in Vietnam and served as a career officer rising to the rank of colonel, notes that our American culture has "fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness and outsized expectations regarding the efficacy of force. To a degree without precedent in US history, Americans have come to define the nation's strength and well-being in terms of military prepardedness, military action, and the fostering of (or nostalgia for) military ideals". One could despair that peace will ever be possible under that perspective. I don't despair but the timeline for a peaceful world seems distant to me at the moment.

~ perspective

War is barbarous, grievous, untamable
and when in the midst of it society is
a party to the energies of destruction.
A society cannot progress when survival
is the only goal.
Fantasizng war leads to a perception of
exaggerated threats which are then
used to justify excessive military expenses.
Not every risk can be dealt with through
a military response - therefore we should
seek diplomacy and allow each country to
chart their own society's best course.
We need to restore balance to our
national spending because as long as
military industrial lobbying buys politicians
we are not going to see a willingness to
really look at what needs are essential
because these will continue to be opposed
by financially motivated, politically expedient
solutions that continue to increase spending.

#despair #finances #history #hope #peace #politics #profit #protection #security #war