John Buell

War as Our Way of Life?

Once again the United States seems eager to add to its inventory of ongoing, stalemated or even counterproductive wars. As was the case with Iraq in 2003, weapons of mass destruction, whether purportedly hidden or in process of construction, are the stated trigger. Even where peace seems in danger of breaking out, the US feeds its addiction to war making by playing war games just south of the most militarized border in the world. These war fevers are costly obsessions, even in economic terms, let alone in the loss of human life and the mangled and disabled bodies.

The Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America’s war on terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets). On average, that’s at least $23,386 per taxpayer.

Tom Engelhardt coments: “across vast swaths of the planet and somehow, again and again, [the US} has found itself overmatched by underwhelming enemy forces and incapable of producing any results other than destruction and further fragmentation.”

Why aren’t these wars and the subject of war more broadly objects of continuous debate?

Though we have been at war almost continually for the last half century, since the end of the Vietnam War there has been only sporadic discussion of war. Even the massive anti-war demonstrations preceding the invasion of Iraq, were followed by little else.

Once a war is started and the initial light show of aerial bombardments has been covered, day-to-day incursions or defeats receive at best only sporadic attention. In addition, corporate media correspondents might as well be embedded within the Pentagon and do little more than act as spokespeople for the military. Reporters with close Pentagon ties may not rock the boat, but in an age of growing cynicism toward government they hardly evoke more than a yawn.

For corporate media history began yesterday. Free of context it is easier for the bipartisan war caucus to construct the demon of the moment. Iranians might have reason to be suspicious of a government that overthrew their democratically elected leader for the sin of seeking to control its own oil. More recently, most hardly knew that Saddam Hussien — at our behest and with our support — carried on an eight-year war against Iran.

These wars, like the nuclear arms race play a central role in US capitalism. Wars provide a continuing demand for armaments. Armaments have played a key role in the US political economy. Military spending is the only form of domestic Keynesianism that economic elites accept. Public housing and public transit compete with major centers of capital accumulation; Stealth bombers do not. And the mere fact of continuing war becomes its own justification. As Northwestern University historian Michael Sherry puts it, war — if not winning — is what we do. Or as Andrew Bacevich says, since 9/11, long, drawn-out indecisive armed conflicts have become something of a Pentagon specialty. Not surprisingly, mass culture helps sustain and is sustained by these trends. American football, the most popular of spectator sports, blesses and is blessed by the military and its virtues. Would a Super Bowl be complete without a flyover by Navy jets?

Congressional oversight of our continuing wars is lax or nonexistent. The Congress has virtually ceded to the President all responsibility for how, when, and where our military is to be deployed. Even if Congress were to reassert successfully its constitutional right to declare war, that right would mean nothing if Congress were not willing to do more than rubber stamp commitments and decisions the executive has already made.

On a deeper plane, war and our relation to it raise the question of how we as individuals and societies relate to those who are different. During periods of economic distress and rapid cultural change, there is always the temptation to turn difference into otherness and thus reassure ourselves as to the validity of our own identity. Immigrants can be cast as simultaneously both unwilling to work and stealing our jobs, thus obviating challenges to a market economy and the work ethic.

But this process of rhetorical demonization is often not the only means by which personal and national security are fostered. The ultimate validation of identity for the US has often been war. War is so much a part of our history as to have become in itself the validator of a cause or the signification of a President as a worthy member of the pantheon of great presidents.

But the cultural and political dynamic need not move in this bellicose direction. Recognition of the contribution of difference to the strength and sustainability of the whole can be cultivated. In this context Bacevich suggests that perhaps the strongest factor preventing widespread discussion of the wars around us is that we have outsourced war making to our paid volunteer army. Lacking any obvious stake in its outcome we turn to our own pursuits. A universal draft not only gives the wealthy and privileged some of the burdens of war and military life. It also mixes class, race, and gender on behalf of common goals. He advocates restoration of a universal draft. His case is strong, but I wonder whether a society as inegalitarian as ours could enact such a draft and whether once adopted it would create a whole series of exemptions beneficial to elites. Perhaps as war fever heats up again it is time to remind citizens of how much is lost to the demons of war. What is clear is that war both as a practice and a rhetoric is deeply intertwined with the politics of inequality.

John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and environmental issues. His books include Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Email Jbuell@acadia.net.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2018

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