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The Cost of War: What Is It That Defines Our Values?
A couple of weeks ago my friend Deena was laid off from her half-time job as a music teacher at Peninsula Elementary School. Deena is resourceful. She'll struggle a bit, but she'll survive. Of more concern are the students whose lives may be permanently diminished, as many Portland schools have responded to budget cuts by dropping or reducing music education.
What will the children learn instead of music? They'll still learn much -- at least "the basics." But they'll also learn that the greatest achievements of mankind -- the higher arts -- are frills, readily discarded in uncertain times. Outside of school, they may eventually understand that a society defines its values by how it chooses to spend its resources, and they will learn what the country's most important activity is: war.
More and more, America devotes its resources to war and national security. We squander tens of billions -- by credible estimates, trillions -- on seemingly endless wars while states lay off teachers, arts organizations fold and communities close. Although the official line is that we've ended our combat presence in Iraq, military experts recognize that U.S. troops will have to remain, and potentially face combat, for many years if we're to have a chance of success.
Our children are growing up in a nation in which war is the natural state of affairs. It's no longer a discrete conflict that erupts when tensions between nations are otherwise irresolvable. It's become as normal as the air we breathe. Eventually it may spur no opposition -- who questions the air? -- yet it demands that we ask: What is it we're defending?
Aristotle thought that the ultimate purpose in life was leisure, which to the ancient Greeks meant the pursuit of literature, the arts and science. In modern times the West has celebrated an economic system -- capitalism -- under which mankind for the first time mastered the basic struggle for existence, allowing many to devote time and resources to higher pursuits. In the United States the arts and sciences flourished as the country's extraordinary wealth created not only an astonishing economic engine but a world center of culture and learning.
Increasingly, however, we define ourselves not by our achievements but by our enemies -- not by what we are for, but by whom we are against. We barricade ourselves against threats while prosecuting wars that ensure the need for ever-higher barricades. We are undergoing a profound shift not only in our economy but in our consciousness. As we slowly let crumble our schools, our arts, our cities -- which, as The New York Times recently reported, are turning off streetlights and returning roads to gravel to save on maintenance -- we are no longer defending our way of life but merely our existence.
The dimming of streetlights is surely the mark of an impoverished nation, just as endless war is the mark of an impoverished imagination. Yet our leaders offer no hope for a saner course.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the states "laboratories of democracy." The analogy is imperfect, but the states, to which the bankruptcy of treasure and imagination trickles down, must take the lead and demand that our government recognize that its efforts to save the nation are destroying it.
Some may think it utopian to believe that we can craft a different relationship with a hostile world. Yet many believe that our endless wars have only decreased our security, and that ending them would make us safer.
Our troubles extend beyond the waste and folly of wars. But bringing them to a close would not only free up tremendous resources but also would refocus our national energies at home. It's enough that we have likely lost two wars. Let us not lose our children's future with them.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllWar does not define our values it devalues our finest and all the rest of us by proxy.
The answer is to make it traditional for all American students in school bands and orchestra to wear camouflage uniforms and spit-shined boots. Kids could walk through the school hallways humming or whistling the Guadalcanal March.
While I believe Mr. Bennet is generally on the correct path, here are four quotes which show he still does not "get it."
"...U.S. troops will have to remain, and potentially face combat, for many years if we're to have a chance of success."
"What is it we're defending?"
"- We are no longer defending our way of life but merely our existence."
"Some may think it utopian to believe that we can craft a different relationship with a hostile world."
My concern is that Mr. Bennet ;
1. Thinks that "success" can come out of illegal, unjustifiable, lie-based, unilateral wars of aggression.
2. Thinks these wars are about "defending" when, in fact, they are about blatant, corporate domination and aggression.
3. Does not see that "our way of life" is, for the most part, the greed, indifference and consumption which led to the war economy. I suggest that even in a city as beautiful and environmentally aware as Portland, if you stood on a downtown street and compared the number of SUV's to say Prius's, and then interpreted each SUV as a vote for war, it might bring it closer to home.
4. Does not see that this corporate-owned "government" has proudly crafted the relationship to be one of hostility.
All I am trying to say is that notions about "our way of life" and that we are the "good guys" need to be regarded as deceits and suspicious, especially when they have a clear history of injustice which has made them possible.
The differences between George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Osama bin Laden are much less than are the similarities.
Birdbrain, great name, great post. I too was concerned when reading "...U.S. troops will have to remain, and potentially face combat, for many years if we're to have a chance of success."
Success...like that is one of the options available?
Thank you for this post. I had the same problems with this article, and they are not niggling objections: they get to the very heart of the problems with the US citizens' way of thinking. Many articles posted on CS make the same assumptions--that we are in Iraq to "win," although what is to be won is never explained coherently; and that we are "defending" ourselves against a "hostile world," even as we create and propogate hostilities and commit massive war crimes. Either the authors of such articles are greatly confused, or this is a subtle form of propoganda which I've become used to seeing on progressive sites.
Bennett used the term "success" because that is what the "military experts" are saying is our purpose in staying there for many more years. He's not saying he buys it. We failed in Iraq when we invaded, and will never "succeed" ... not by any standards.
These wars never have _really_ been about "defending American freedom" (that's a Bushite term, not mine) More than anything else, they are about controlling the oil supply over there.
There are a lot more Priuses and less SUVs (but still too many) in Portland than there were even a year ago ... I've been noticing ... but what's _really_ impressive is the number of bicycle commuters going downtown in the morning. Personally, my 30+ year old SAABs (one of them is 44 years old) have already done most of their polluting, and I contend that they will pollute less in the next twenty years than the amount of pollution generated in the manufacturing process of one new hybrid. The manufacturing process can generate a lot of pollution, all the way from the mines where they get the raw materials, to the end of the assembly line. And hybrids use a lot of battery power; the pollution from battery manufacturing is some of the worst.
It is no surprise that such "austerity" measures can make a nation like this one a miserable failure that no other nation would want to ever become like. I hate to say this though but it is already too late. The young generation has already been brainwashed into accepting war as a "good" thing and the Obamabots still copy the Ronnie Raygun lies about the need to up the war spending except that they'll call it "practical". Ask them why this administration is letting the schools crumble and fail while going out on a limb to "defend" and "protect" Wall $treet from failing and crumbling and excuses will be invented to fly in the face of reality. For years and decades, small businesses and public education were systematically killed to the point of forcing most young people to pick between a rock and a hard place. If they can't find work, then all they do is sign up and join. Of those who do join, many will wake up to reality but others will turn psycho and end up defending Wall $treet and Big Military.
They're not just "letting the schools crumble and fail", they're aiding and abetting the failure by continuing Bush's policies, as well as instituting Duncan's own policies that failed so miserably in Chicago.
We need to demand local control and that our schools not sell teachers down the drain by allowing the Feds to bribe us into following their failed "guidelines".
Senator Bernie Sanders recently highlighted a principal of a Vermont school who had turned the school around and was getting major results, but the school's standardized test scores were still low. Attendance was way up from previous years and the students _like_ going to school. There are many students who are immigrants. There were something like 24 different languages in the school, and the students were struggling as they learn English, BUT SUCCEEDING in ways that they were not prior to the changes this principal had made. But the school district FIRED HER because of the low test scores, just so they could get Federal money. (The school district found her an administrative job.)
We babble on about the war and injustice, wasting of resources, cuts in education, global warming, and on and on.
We still sit at the table and play the game. One of the main rules of the game is, of course, keep the players polarized so they won't join together and maybe try something different. Build free hospitals, train doctors and nurses without putting them in debt. I am sure their are many who would be medical professionals not to make a profit but because they are drawn to it for more humanitarian reasons. To think the gov. aka, the pentagon, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, a bunch of millionare members of congress, is going to suddenly reform, bring the troops home from the 700 bases around the world and concentrate on domestic issues is a pipedream. The answer. Stop playing the game! The house always wins. Look what the loony toon tea party has done with bombastic flatulence. Are progressives no better than that?
The country and our military seems to be highly influenced by so-called Christians who are hypocrites, who go against almost everything Jesus is supposed to have instructed. The New Testament books, except for the last one, are almost ignored in today's fundamentalist "Christianity".
Instead, preachers go to the prophets and other books of the Old Testament, to find ways to justify, using scripture, the warlike and genocidal ways of the United States.
They don't seem to even realize that the Old Testament is not even Christian!
This is what I learned from several years of attendance at a midwestern Bible Belt something-baptist church where it seemed that George Bush was thought of as Jesus' copilot. Or vice versa.
They actually sing "The Star-Spangled Banner"- as if it were a hymn!- in church services.
The wars overseas have a large religious component which is more or less based on interpretations of Revelation and of some of the Old Testament books.
American "Christianity" now seems to believe in "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth", even though Jesus specifically renounced that idea and instead said to "turn the other cheek", to "bless those who curse you", and to "love one another".
He also said that whatever we do to the least of our fellows, we do to him. Try telling that to a "Christian" who "supports the troops"- and supports the wars.
American "Christians" in large numbers believe that it is okay, that it is "the Lord's will" that Christians kill Muslims.
These days, so many American "Christians" believe that the evil wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan are not only approved by their "Lord", but that the wars are really a Christian DUTY- in order, you see, to help enable the "all these things must come to pass before" concept from the Bible- in short, they believe that the wars in the Middle East are holy wars, and that they are helping bring Armageddon, which they consider necessary before Jesus returns in the clouds and sweeps them up and takes them to Heaven, away from all those nasty little brown people who don't have Jesus in their hearts and therefore deserve to die- perhaps after torture, rather like the way things were done in the Inquisiton.
People do the most terrible things in the "name of God".
Not all the Christian churches are like this. This attitude is in the genre of "southern Baptist" churches, or the evangelists, fundamentalists, creationists, and the born-agains.
I don't think the Catholics believe the same way.
However, all the churches have failed by either explicitly supporting the wars or by a failure of omission by not protesting the wars much or demanding an end to them.
If I were Jesus (which I'm not) I would say to them all, "I never knew ye."
I mean, show me where Jesus instructed us to "support the troops" or to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He didn't.
I am not trying to be anti-religion. But a twisted Bizarro World form of an essentially good religion has badly contaminated both the U.S. military forces and civil political life. This trend is dangerous, and it is evil, and it is wrong. I don't know how to stop it except to not vote for the religious nuts who run for office.
These days a political candidate has to be religious and mention their deep faith in "the Lord" and so forth or they won't get elected. The separation of church and state has already failed, folks.
The recent nonsense about Obama's religion, the controversy about the NYC mosque, and the Beck rally in D.C. the other day are examples of the kind of fanaticism that is widespread today.
I am ashamed to call myself an American anymore. The religious lunacy, and the wars, and the massive robberies of tax money transferred to private hands since 2000 in particular, disgust me.
FROD: You raise many significant points.
Even the way Glenn Beck uses the name of God to paint himself as this deeply moral and religious person when his true creed is HATRED of other... as the crowds lay down their homage, is ominous.
Too many on CD don't recognize the threat posed by the millions who believe this nation is intended to function as a Christian theocracy.
Since killing is a taboo in every land, the best way to get people to bypass that taboo is by telling them God wants them to slay a certain enemy (du jour). This belief is, in my estimation, THE MOST dangerous of any known to mankind.
And much in this article lends proof to what I often relate: that to the extent Mars rules (seen in how much of our budgetary money is ear-marked for the MIC) society will experience a Venus deficit.
The "Venus Deficit" means:
1. Law is no longer just, but favors those who already have power & privilege
2. The arts are not funded, or otherwise given relative crumbs
3. Women's rights (especially around reproduction) are back on the auction block
4. There is always money for weapons, but seldom money for human welfare and basic needs
5. Warriors (uniformed soldiers) are given enormous respect, but peacemakers are suspect, and may end up the targets of smear campaigns
(I could add a lot more, but I've related the basics.)
I really believe that the "respect" given soldiers by the Reich-wing is a false respect. If they _really_ respected them, they'd be out in the streets opposing unnecessary wars that exploit them, and demanding that they be brought home.
Frodnonag, you've nailed it. What our "religious" politicians and pundits call Christianity is truly a creed of hatred, and our priests and ministers have failed to speak out against this perversity.
Martin Luther King would have spoken out.
The problem isn't that nobody is speaking out. Th problem is that the news media won't let dissent be heard. Anything that disagrees with the narrow minded viewpoint of the extreme right is to be suppressed.
Then of course there are the other "little brown people" who are coming across our southern borders. We have to be afraid of them, too, according the the "Christians", but most of _those_ "little brown people" are Catholic ... oh, that's right, many of those "Christians" don't think Catholics are Christian.
Actually, I just read something tonight that said that people are going back to Mexico, because people aren't hiring day labor like they were doing before the economy crashed.
There is a strain in the American mind that is anti intellectual, authoritarian, and anti cultural. Maybe it comes from our Puritan brethren, I don't know, but it's there.
This mindset is also racist, xenophobic, and militaristic.
Of course music is fine if it's in a marching band or in the service of say the Marine Corps, or a sporting event but certainly not for it's own purpose as a thing in itself.
The only educational experience I remember from grade school with any clarity is the once a week music lesson where we leaned and sang Negro Spirituals. I still sing them to myself to this day. I keep going back to Orwell's observation that to control the people we must remove from them the tools with which to think. As in dumbing down the language and contracting the cultural and philosophical dimension of mind.
Maybe there is such a strain in some minds, but not in mine.
A quality education is _far_ more important to _real_ security than any war that we've ever fought ... especially the two in which we are currently engaged. The sooner that people learn that, the sooner the warmongers can be voted out of Congress and replaced by enlightened Progressive intellectuals ... like this nation's founders.
When I was a kid, my old man used to try to tell me a "joke". Perhaps "parable" would be a better word. Anyway - he could never get it right. It was something to do with Hitler sitting on a train in his uniform, long after the end of the second world war and a little kid opposite him says, "Aren't you Hitler? Didn't you lose the war - what makes you think you can possibly win again" And Hitler replies something to the effect - "Yes but this time I'm going to be the good guy."
Not a particularly tactful nor PC "joke", but I keep thinking back to it. It seems to me, as an outsider to the US and this forum, that so much of Nazi Germany is being reproduced now in the States. Under the guise of being the good guys. Is Glen Beck another popularist fascist? He scares the bejeezus out of me. Look at his eyes. Would you buy a used car from that man, yet we let him talk about matters spiritual, and mangle history in the process. What was it Goebels used to say? - Tell a lie and tell it big, and again and again, and people will believe it. Is that what Beck is doing and plenty more like him?
Because if it is, the first people to get the chop will be the liberal intellectuals. That is this Common Dreams forum. I agree with so much of what so many people say on this forum, but it's somewhat like the News24 site in South Africa, where most of the anti-government comments are written by white, middle-class vested interest. Not by the millions of previously disadvantaged black South Africans who don't have access to internet or don't disagree with government policies in the first place, despite manifest evidence of corruption, nepotism, etc, etc.
It's a bit of a clumsy analogy, but you get the point? We are all talking to ourselves on the forum - the people that matter don't ever visit CommonDreams.
I am not criticising this forum. Far from it. But these voices need to be magnified and find their way into mainstream dialogue.
Otherwise the Nazis really will have simply crossed the ocean and become the "good guys."
I agree dreamlot.
But I feel the utter incomprehensible frustration of Frodnonag's most pertinent comment on this perverted use of the term 'Christianity'. Remember when Bush began with 'Crusades'? The script writers 'pulled it' just like Silverstone's comment about the fate of building 7 in N.Y. right?
Karl Rove's targeted population, for Bush's supposed success' evolved so rapidly in electoral politics. An opportune bastion resulted to the delight of current self appointed Old Testament practitioners. A very small select group of people financed a satellite into space and that then took off payback with the beaming down across that Southern bible belt, into all those family homes, programmed religious sing alongs. Wow! What fun we are all having together! Join in the fun folks and be saved to boot!
Such entertainment rapidly progressed that so filled the coffers of that small group as donations were encouraged and taken up by Evangelical preachers putting on large mass shows..
We used to watch them and laugh a bit. Had a giggle at the initial audaciousness.
How ridiculous it all appeared!
Boy was I naive, though I had a whiff of dangerous possibilities even then.
That was the big start. Rebirth! Once Old Testament selective text was honed into well organised and sponsored indoctrination, the books began appearing.
Opportunists proliferated and reigned supreme as more nutty cases surfaced. Zionism entered comfortably with those who'd joined that band wagon. The opportunity presented itself as it were. They all went crazy for all that loot the media blitzed more simple folk were enticed to 'donate' and people really felt the power. Born again exploded! Praise the Lord! It was an astonishing show of media driven fleecing of that particular targeted 'Christian' flock's base. Sponsoring support followed rapidly.
I confess I am a Catholic myself by the way. I was baptised one as a child. I see no reason to change my religion now. I'm not what would be called a good catholic. I'm a poor one. I have been interested in discovering about all main religions. Practising Muslims are wonderful people, in my experience. I'm sure Jews, Hindus Buddhists and people of no faith are too. However, there are essentials in all the major religions that are similar.
Some have really tried to become Christians and done so. Others have given up I guess, as it is not an easy thing become either? I just aspire and will try again as I don't believe its nonsense as others I know like to claim it is. Quite the contrary in fact personally. I'm quite certain its not nonsense at all. Misunderstood maybe? Perverted by some, yes indeed! That much is obvious and evident.
Anyway, Catholic teaching comprises its many saints and I've been reading about a woman called Saint Teresa of Avila, who rose up to become a doctor of the Holy Roman And Apostolic Catholic Church, in the fifteenth century. I'd recently heard that one St. Benedicta, who lately had her anniversary, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who died under the Nazis, had been much impressed by reading this particular book. I'd read it before too. Its called 'The Book of my Life' and the edition I bought is new by one Mirabai Starr. She writes well and I'd congratulate her if I could?
I'd recommend it to Frodnonag perhaps or anyone who might be interested?
Teresa was a mystic.
Incidentally, a book relating to the Old Testament was written by Doctor Maurice Nicoll called 'The Mark'. It is likely out of print.
He also wrote 'The New Man' about New Testament interpretation.
Anyway, Jesus said clearly many times to Authorities and law makers who were interpreting Jewish laws, 'Hypocrits'!
Frodnanog is right on the button. Most citizens pay little attention and yet this phenomena has become pervasive through media and is increasingly being used as a weapon throughout the military to meet their own particular requirements.
But rest assured, these wars abroad have nothing to do with Christ. Jesus challenged the old Testament's practitioners and taught the exact opposite. When asked what was the main of greatest commandment he said it was to love the Lord thy God and added to love your neighbour as yourself.
Like the Zionist enterprise itself cannot be justified through Judaism, neither can American military adventures abroad be justified by Christianity. That's impossible!
'Religion' like the word 'war', is used willy-nilly.
Understanding that alone is important!
Therefore, it is becomes to 'the cute whores' that the people don't understand but that they are manipulated into thinking they understand. As like when Orwell says, 'bad is good and good is bad' or something to that effect. Get it?
'America' is a word used as an image. Never mentioned are Central or South America, even Canada? Just 'America' is used to signify the United States alone. So too 'Great' Britain was simply invented as opposed to the original (little) Britain in France? Brittany!
Indoctrination and propaganda are manipulative and effective tools to have developed in the military arsenal. They are essential and crucial to the mission. Missionaries is what the military are you see? Ah heck! Lets just go the whole and call them Crusaders.
Pupils are consumers to be made ready to serve this Corporate World's needs and to encourage the appetite to aspire to attain the almighty dollar, at all costs! If you are broke you can always join the military. See the world. Become a real man or become a real woman?
Yeah! Depleted uranium and go for it! Nuke those muddas!
Work for dollars to pay those taxes girls and boys. Smile and be happy!
Oath of Allegiance anyone? Onward Christian soldiers?
Jesus wept!
"So too 'Great' Britain was simply invented as opposed to the original (little) Britain in France? Brittany!"
Are you actually serious! Have you ever read a history book? It was a good point until that unforgiveable clanger. Or are you trying to say the original Britain was actually French? That Agincourt, Crecy, Trafalgar, Waterloo and a score more horrific battles never happened?
And it's Bretagne, not Brittany. My God in heaven above, will the ignorance ever end.
I read an article a while back that talked about how colleges spend millions on the sports program, which does NOT pay for itself, at the expense of academic programs that _could_ pay for themselves if the funding was there to make them functional.
Sports benefit a few students that participate. The arts benefit _every_ student. I have a friend who played basketball in high school. One day the coach announced that he wanted the team to go to dances that were taught by another teacher, because dancing teaches coordination and teamwork. When I knew him, Johnny wasn't playing basketball any more, but he was still dancing.
Music and dance and creative arts have been important parts of my life.
"...military experts recognize that U.S. troops will have to remain, and potentially face combat, for many years if we're to have a chance of success."
Would somebody mind explaining what is meant by "success"?
I have yet to hear even a single "military expert" define "success".
Let's see now.
We invaded Iraq to "find weapons of mass destruction". They weren't there. MISSION FAILURE.
We invaded Iraq to "remove Saddam Hussein". Well, we did that, then put a puppet in his place ... but the guy Bush wanted to put in as head of the Iraqi government, the one who told us all kinds of lies to convince us to invade, turned out to be untrustworthy and was bypassed for the job. "Mission accomplished?" It's rather dubious a claim, since the country is far less stable today than before we invaded.
We went there to "free the Iraqi people". Well, most of them say that they are far worse off today than they were under Saddam Hussein. They are now lucky if they have electricity for a few hours a day; they used to have it any time they turned on a switch. Most of them still do not have potable water and sanitary sewers. Women have lost freedom and mobility _and_safety_ that existed under Saddam Hussein. Women aren't even safe going out together in groups. I think we get another big "MISSION FAILURE" on those points.
So, exactly what do they mean by "success".
Let's face it, we lost that war the day the first soldier crossed the border, and we will continue to lose it. Other than deposing their dictator, which is a war crime under international law, we have not succeeded at _any_ of the stated reasons for invading the country. (Which doesn't _really_ surprise me, since George W. Bush has never succeeded at anything he has done in his adult life.) So why are we still there? WE'VE ALREADY LOST! LET'S GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!