Category: US Foreign Relations

From the Arsenal of Democracy to an Arsenal of Genocide

W.J. Astore

Time to Make America Sane–Again?

I started blogging in 2007 for TomDispatch.com. Tom Engelhardt, the mastermind of that indispensable site, saw something in an article I sent him on saving the U.S. military from itself. That is, from its own vainglory, its own global ambitions for power and dominance, its own illusions of being number one, both the world’s toughest military and also the world’s freedom-bringers. Certainly, the megalomania and Messiah-like fantasies weren’t a military mindset alone; it was even more pronounced among the neocons who orbited the Bush/Cheney administration and who still largely define U.S. foreign policy in the Biden/Harris administration. Things are so bad that some (wrongly) believe Trump/Vance offer a more moderate, far less warlike, alternative, when Trump’s record suggests little of the sort.

Anyhow, this is my 108th article for TomDispatch in the 17 years I’ve been writing for the site, a mark of persistence that suggests a certain folly on my part, and considerable patience on Tom’s part. 

During World War II, American leaders proudly proclaimed this country the “arsenal of democracy,” supplying weapons and related materiel to allies like Great Britain and the Soviet Union. To cite just one example, I recall reading about Soviet armored units equipped with U.S. Sherman tanks, though the Soviets had an even better tank of their own in the T-34 and its many variants. However, recent news that the United States is providing yet more massive arms deliveries to Israel (worth $20 billion) for 2026 and thereafter caught me off guard.  Israel quite plainly is engaged in the near-total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of Palestinians there.  So, tell me, how over all these years did the self-styled arsenal of democracy become an arsenal of genocide?

Israel, after all, couldn’t demolish Gaza, killing at least 40,000 Palestinians in a population of only 2.1 million, including thousands of babies and infants, without massive infusions of U.S. weaponry. Often, the U.S. doesn’t even sell the weaponry to Israel, a rich country that can pay its own bills. Congress just freely gifts body- and baby-shredding bombs in the name of defending Israel from Hamas. Obviously, by hook or crook, or rather by shells, bombs, and missiles, Israel is intent on rendering Gaza Palestinian-free and granting Israelis more living space there (and on the West Bank). That’s not “defense” — it’s the 2024 equivalent of Old Testament-style vengeance by annihilation.

As Tacitus said of the rampaging Romans two millennia ago, so it can now be said of Israel: they create a desert — a black hole of death in Gaza — and call it “peace.” And the U.S. government enables it or, in the case of Congress, cheers on its ringleader, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

Of course, anyone who knows a little American history should have some knowledge of genocide. In the seventeenth century, Native Americans were often “satanized” by early colonial settlers. (In 1994, a friend of mine, the historian David Lovejoy, wrote a superband all-too-aptly titled article on exactly that topic: “Satanizing the American Indian.”) Associating Indians with the devil made it all the easier for the white man to mistreat them, push them off their lands, and subjugate or eradicate them. When you satanize an enemy, turning them into something irredeemably evil, all crimes become defensible, rational, even justifiable. For how can you even consider negotiating or compromising with the minions of Satan?

Growing up, I was a strong supporter of Israel, seeing that state as an embattled David fighting against a Goliath, most notably during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Forty years later, I wrote an article suggesting that Israel was now the Goliath in the region with Palestinians in Gaza playing the role of a very much outgunned and persecuted David. An American-Jewish friend told me I just didn’t get it. The Palestinians in Gaza were all terrorists, latent or incipient ones in the case of the infants and babies there. At the time, I found this attitude uncommon and extreme, but events have proven it to be far too common (though it certainly remains extreme). Obviously, on some level, the U.S. government agrees that extremism in the pursuit of Israeli hegemony is no vice and so has provided Israel with the weaponry and military cover it needs to “exterminate all the brutes.” Thus, in 2024, the U.S. “cradle of democracy” reveals its very own heart of darkness.

Looking Again at the World Wars That Made America “Great”

When considering World Wars I and II, we tend to see them as discrete events rather than intimately connected. One was fought from 1914 to 1918, the other from 1939 to 1945. Americans are far more familiar with the Second World War than the First. From both wars this country emerged remarkably unscathed compared to places like France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, and Japan. Add to that the comforting myth that America’s “greatest generation” pretty much won World War II, thereby saving democracy (and “Saving Private Ryan” as well).

Perhaps, however, we should imagine those years of conflict, 1914-1945, as a European civil war (with an Asian wing thrown in the second time around), a new Thirty Years’ War played out on a world stage that led to the demise of Europe’s imperial powers and their Asian equivalent and the rise of the American empire as their replacement. Germanic militarism and nationalism were defeated but at an enormous cost, especially to Russia in World War I and the Soviet Union in World War II. Meanwhile, the American empire, unlike Germany’s Second and Third Reichs or Japan’s imperial power, truly became for a time an untrammeled world militarist hegemon with the inevitable corruption inherent in the urge for near-absolute power.

Vast levels of destruction visited upon this planet by two world wars left an opening for Washington to attempt to dominate everywhere. Hence, the roughly 750 overseas bases its military set up to ensure its ultimate global reach, not to speak of the powerful navy it created, centered on aircraft carriers for power projection and nuclear submarines for possible global Armageddon, and an air force that saw open skies as an excuse for its own exercises in naked power projection. To this you could add, for a time, U.S. global economic and financial power, enhanced by a cultural dominance achieved through Hollywood, sports, music, and the like.

Not, of course, that the United States emerged utterly unchallenged from World War II. Communism was the specter that haunted its leaders, whether in the Soviet Union, China, or Southeast Asia (where, in the 1960s and early 1970s, it would fight a disastrous losing war, the first of many to come, in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). Here, there, and everywhere, even under the very beds of Americans, there was a fear of the “commie rat.” And for a while, communism, in its Soviet form, did indeed threaten capitalism’s unbridled pursuit of profits, helping American officials to create a permanent domestic war state in the name of containing and rolling back that threat. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 erased that fear, but not the permanent war state that went with it, as Washington sought new enemies to justify a Pentagon budget that today is still rising toward the trillion-dollar mark. Naturally (and remarkably disastrously), it found them, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or so many other places in the case of the costly and ultimately futile Global War on Terror in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

And eternally losing (or at least not winning) its wars raised the question: What will replace it? What will happen as imperial America continues to decline, burdened by colossal debt and strategic overreach, and crippled from within by a rapacious class of oligarchs who fancy themselves as a new all-American aristocracy. Will that decline lead to collapse or can its officials orchestrate a soft landing? In World Wars I and II, Europeans fought bitterly for world dominance, powered by militarism, nationalism, racism, and greed. They suffered accordingly and yet did recover even if as far less powerful nations. Can the U.S. manage to curb its own militarism, nationalism, racism, and greed in time and so recover similarly? And by “racism,” I mean, for example, reviving the idea (however put) of China as a “yellow peril,” or the tendency to see the darker-skinned peoples of the Middle East as violent “terrorists” and the latest minions of Satan.

And then, of course, there’s always the fear that, in the future, a world war could once again break out, raising the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons from global arsenals that are always being “modernized” and the possible end of most life on Earth. It’s an issue worth highlighting, since the U.S. continues to “invest” significant sums in producing yet more nuclear weapons, even as it ratchets up tensions with nuclear powers like Russia and China. Though a winnable nuclear war among the great powers on this planet is inconceivable, that hasn’t stopped my country from pushing for a version of nuclear superiority (disguised, of course, as “deterrence”).

Making America Sane Again

The world wars of the previous century facilitated America’s global dominance in virtually all its dimensions. That, in fact, was their legacy. No other nation in history had, without irony or humility, divided the globe into military combatant commandslike AFRICOM for Africa, CENTCOM for the Middle East, and NORTHCOM here at home. There are also “global” commands for strategic nuclear weapons, cyber dominance, and even the dominance of space. It seemed that the only way America could be “safe” was by dominating everything everywhere all at once. That insane ambition, that vainglory, was truly what made the U.S. the “exceptional” nation on the world stage.

Such a boundless pursuit of dominance, absurdly disguised as benefiting democracy, is now visibly fraying at the seams and may soon come apart entirely. In 2024, it’s beyond obvious that the United States no longer dominates the world, even if its military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) does indeed dominate its national (in)security state and so increasingly the country. What an irony, in fact, that defeating European militarism in two world wars only accelerated the growth of American militarism and nationalism, making the world’s lone superpower for so many decades the scariest country for all too many peoples outside its borders.

Think, in fact, of the U.S. emerging from World War II with what might be thought of as victory disease. The last nearly 80 years of its foreign policy witnessed the remarkable progression of that “disease,” despite a lack of actual victories (unless you count minor escapades like the invasion of Grenada). Put differently, the U.S. emerged from World War II so singularly an economic, financial, and cultural juggernaut that subsequent military defeats almost didn’t seem to matter.

Even as America’s economic, financial, and cultural power has waned in this century, along with its moral position (consider President Obama’s curt “We tortured some folks” admission, along with support for Israel’s ongoing genocide), the government does continue to double-down on military spending. Pentagon budgets and related “national security” costs now significantly exceed $1 trillion annually even as arms shipments and sales continue to surge. War, in other words, has become big business in America or, as General Smedley Butler so memorably put it 90 years ago, a first-class “racket.”

Worse yet, war, however prolonged and even celebrated, may be the very definition of insanity, a deadly poison to democracy. Don’t tell that to the MICC and all its straphangers and camp followers, though.

Ironically, the two countries, Germany and Japan, that the U.S. took credit for utterly defeating in World War II, forcing their unconditional surrender, have over time emerged in far better shape. Neither of them is perfect, mind you, but they largely have been able to avoid the militarism, nationalism, and constant warmongering that so infects and weakens American-style democracy today. Whatever else you can say about Germany and Japan in 2024, neither of them is bent in any fashion on either regional or global domination, nor are their leaders bragging of having the finest military in all human history. American presidents from George W. Bush to Barack Obama have indeed bragged about having a matchless, peerless, “finest” military. The Germans and Japanese, having known the bitter price of such boasts, have kept their mouths shut.

My brother Stevie once memorably said: “No brag, just facts.”

My brother has a saying: no brag, just facts. And when we look at facts, the pursuit of global dominance has been driving the American empire toward an early grave. The “finest” military lost disastrously, of course, in Vietnam in the last century, and in Afghanistan and Iraq in this one. It functionally lost its self-proclaimed Global War on Terror and it keeps losing in its febrile quest for superiority everywhere.

If we met a person dressed in a military uniform who insisted he was Napoleon, boasted that his Imperial Guard was the world’s best, and that he could rule the world, we would, of course, question his sanity. Why are we not questioning the collective sanity of America’s military and foreign-policy elites?

This country doesn’t need to be made great again, it needs to be made sane again by the rejection of wars and the weaponry that goes with them. For if we continue to follow our present pathway, MADness could truly lie in wait for us, as in the classic nuclear weapons phrase, mutually assured destruction (MAD).

Another form of madness is having a president routinely implore God — yes, no one else! — to protect our troops. This is not a knock on Joe Biden alone. He’s just professing a nationalist piety that’s designed to win applause and votes. Assuming Biden has the Christian God in mind, consider the irony, not to say heresy, of functionally begging Christ, the Prince of Peace, to protect those who are already armed to the teeth. It’s also an abdication of the commander-in-chief’s responsibility to support and defend the U.S. Constitution while protecting those troops himself. Who has the biggest impact, God or the president, when it comes to ensuring that troops aren’t sent into harm’s way without a justifiable cause supported by the American people through a Congressional declaration of war?

Consider the repeated act of looking skyward to God to support military actions as a major league cop-out. But that’s what U.S. presidents routinely do now. Such is the pernicious price of pursuing a vision that insists on global reach, global power, and global dominance. America’s leaders have, in essence, elevated themselves to a god-like position, a distinctly angry, jealous, and capricious one, far more like Zeus or Ares than Jesus. Speaking of Jesus, he is alleged to have said, “Suffer the children to come unto me.” The militarized American god, however, says: suffer the children of Gaza to die courtesy of bombs and shells made here in the U.S.A. and shipped off to Israel at a remarkably modest price (given the destruction they cause).

To echo a popular ad campaign, Jesus may “get” us, but our leaders (self-avowed Christians, all) sure as hell don’t get him. I may be a lapsed Catholic, not a practicing one like Joe Biden, but even I remember my catechism and a certain commandment that Thou shalt not kill.

Governor Tim Walz’s Military Record

W.J. Astore

Questionable Assertions, but Not “Stolen Valor”

Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, has come under fire about his military record. Leading the charge has been another Vice President nominee, J.D. Vance of the Republican Party, who served in the Marines and deployed to Iraq.

A young Tim Walz. Little did that young man know how this photo and his military service would become yet another battleground in American politics, generating plenty of heat but very little light

Let’s use the Army acronym of BLUF (bottom line up front); in other words, let’s cut to the chase:

  1. Tim Walz has said he retired as a command sergeant major (CSM) after 24 years of service in the Army National Guard. While he did serve as CSM for his battalion, he didn’t attend the Sergeants Major Academy and therefore he retired a step down as a master sergeant (MSG).
  2. When Tim Walz retired in 2005, he was preparing to run for Congress. His unit was also preparing to deploy to Iraq, which it eventually did in March of 2006. Walz was well within his rights as a soldier to retire when he did. Whether he did so to avoid war service in Iraq is known only to Walz. He claims he’d made his decision to retire before his unit was notified of its overseas deployment to Iraq.
  3. Tim Walz has talked loosely about using weapons of war “that he carried in war,” implying he’d seen combat service when he hadn’t. I don’t see this as a case of “stolen valor.” He wasn’t boasting about being some kind of badass hero in war. Obviously, in 24 years of service in the Army National Guard, he’d carried weapons of war and trained with them under simulated combat conditions “down range.” He should have simply said: “I’ve trained extensively with weapons of war.” Period.

Does any of this matter? Not to me. Tim Walz, by all accounts, served honorably, reaching the senior enlisted ranks. If the Army had wanted him to stay instead of retiring, he could have been stop-lossed or his retirement request could have been denied. He moved on to Congress, winning his election in 2006. He seems to be a person motivated by public service.

The issues that really matter here aren’t mentioned by the Republicans or the corporate-owned news (the CON). Here are those issues:

  1. Tim Walz is a strong supporter of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
  2. Tim Walz is a strong supporter of massive military aid to Ukraine.
  3. To my knowledge, Tim Walz has not criticized the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) in meaningful ways, though he has spoken out against the idea of China being an inevitable U.S. enemy.

Tim Walz, in short, is a typical pro-Israel, pro-Ukraine, generally pro-MICC, Democrat.

The most important issue of all is the whole idea that one must go to war—to serve in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and, more likely than not, to kill other human beings, to prove one’s “valor” in uniform. Why is carrying and using a gun in war such a great and glorious thing? Especially wars like those in Afghanistan and Iraq that were based on lies? Would we respect Tim Walz more if he’d gone to Iraq in 2006 and shot up some Iraqis in the cause of “freedom”?

As a candidate for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump famously denounced the Iraq War, using words like “stupid,” “dumb,” a “total disaster.” and a “big fat mistake.” The war was based on a lie, Trump said, about weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Even worse, the Bush/Cheney administration was behind the lie, leading to a war that destabilized the Middle East, costing the U.S. military thousands of lives and U.S. taxpayers $2 trillion, Trump concluded.

Under that bright blaze of honesty from Trump (yes, you read that right), we might question anyone who wants to trumpet service in Iraq as praiseworthy in the sense of “bringing freedom” or “spreading democracy.”

Selling the Russia-Ukraine War to Trump

W.J. Astore

This Week in U.S. Militarism

During his one debate with Joe Biden, Donald Trump made the audacious claim that if reelected in November he would end the Russia-Ukraine War before his inauguration in January. While it’s doubtful he could do that, the boast certainly disturbed self-styled supporters of Ukraine like Senator Lindsey Graham.

Graham recently made an appearance to highlight strategic minerals in Ukraine. He said Ukraine is sitting on $10-$12 trillion in various “critical” minerals and metals and that Putin must not be allowed to seize, mine, sell, or otherwise share them with China.

Mr. President, we cannot allow a strategic minerals gap!

Trump, in general, has been skeptical of providing an almost open-ended commitment to Ukraine, to the tune of roughly $200 billion in aid since Russia launched its “special military operation.” This new emphasis on Ukraine as a business partner sitting on a “gold mine,” a mine that could be stolen by Putin, seems tailor-made to convince Trump, a businessman with an affinity for gold, to keep funneling weapons and money to Ukraine if he does indeed win reelection in November.

A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.

*****

This week in U.S. militarism: I was scrolling through my CNN email feed this morning and noticed this headline:

Army officer wins Miss USA
Michigan’s Alma Cooper was crowned the new Miss USA on Sunday, capping a tumultuous year of pageant controversy.

A U.S. Army officer is Miss USA. At least she’s used to obeying orders. 

Back in January at CNN, I noted this headline: US Air Force officer crowned as 2024 Miss America.

Miss America, 2Lt Madison Marsh (from the AF Website). Taken at the Daytona 500 Speedway, where she was engaged in recruitment and PR

This truly must be a first. Both Miss USA and Miss America are serving U.S. military officers. My only question is this: What’s wrong with the Navy? How come the Army and the Air Force are dominating the beauty pageants?

In all seriousness, public relations teams for the U.S. military must think this is a major coup, but it seems so strange to me to mix beauty pageants with military service. I recently caught Miss America on NESN (New England Sports Network) doing an on-air interview wearing mufti and a tiara. She attended the Air Force Academy, where I taught for six years. She’s smart, ambitious, accomplished, and obviously pretty.

She may yet fulfill her dream of becoming an Air Force pilot. Will she then launch missiles and drop bombs, perhaps on whatever country is threatening Israel in the Middle East? At least those on the receiving end of those missiles and bombs can say they were killed by a former Miss America.

There’s something very strange going on here.

“Generation Warfighter” Needs to End

W.J. Astore

Empty Boasts of Having the “World’s Best” Military Hide Rot, Waste, and Stupidity

Sixteen years ago, I made a plea to my fellow citizens to banish the word “warfighter” from our vocabulary. I asked that we stop referring to the U.S. military as the “world’s best,” an empty boast then and, after twin disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, an emptier one today. (If something can indeed be “emptier,” it’s certainly bellicose boasts of alleged military brilliance.) Today’s military is overstretched, busy guaranteeing Israel’s security as the Israeli Defense Forces demolish and depopulate Gaza. Facing recruiting shortfalls, open-ended imperial commitments across the globe, and fears of hostilities with Russia, China, Iran, or an almost unimaginable and certainly unbeatable combination of the three, the U.S. military faces grim times.  If leaders like President Biden truly want to protect “our” troops, they should look not to God but in the mirror. They should pursue peace through diplomacy while downsizing an unsustainable empire. Isn’t it finally time for “Generation Warfighter” to come to an end before the U.S. military is utterly hollowed out — and America with it?

Having the “Best Military” Is Not Always a Good Thing 
Reclaiming Our Citizen-Soldier Heritage 
By William J. Astore

[Originally posted at TomDispatch in July of 2008]

When did American troops become “warfighters” — members of “Generation Kill” — instead of citizen-soldiers? And when did we become so proud of declaring our military to be “the world’s best”? These are neither frivolous nor rhetorical questions. Open up any national defense publication today and you can’t miss the ads from defense contractors, all eagerly touting the ways they “serve” America’s “warfighters.” Listen to the politicians, and you’ll hear the obligatory incantation about our military being “the world’s best.”

All this is, by now, so often repeated — so eagerly accepted — that few of us seem to recall how against the American grain it really is. If anything — and I saw this in studying German military history — it’s far more in keeping with the bellicose traditions and bumptious rhetoric of Imperial Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II than of an American republic that began its march to independence with patriotic Minutemen in revolt against King George.

So consider this a modest proposal from a retired citizen-airman: A small but meaningful act against the creeping militarism of the Bush years would be to collectively repudiate our “world’s best warfighter” rhetoric and re-embrace instead a tradition of reluctant but resolute citizen-soldiers.

Becoming Warfighters

I first noticed the term “warfighter” in 2002. Like many a field-grade staff officer, I spent a lot of time crafting PowerPoint briefings, trying to sell senior officers and the Pentagon on my particular unit’s importance to the President’s new Global War on Terrorism. The more briefings I saw, the more often I came across references to “serving the warfighter.” It was, I suppose, an obvious selling point, once we were at war in Afghanistan and gearing up for “regime-change” in Iraq. And I was probably typical in that I, too, grabbed the term for my briefings. After all, who wants to be left behind when it comes to supporting the troops “at the pointy end of the spear” (to borrow another military trope)?

But I wasn’t comfortable with the term then, and today it tastes bitter in my mouth. Until recent times, the American military was justly proud of being a force of citizen-soldiers. It didn’t matter whether you were talking about those famed Revolutionary War Minutemen, courageous Civil War volunteers, or the “Greatest Generation” conscripts of World War II. After all, Americans had a long tradition of being distrustful of the very idea of a large, permanent army, as well as of giving potentially disruptive authority to generals.

Our tradition of citizen-soldiery was (and could still be) one of the great strengths of this country. Let me give you two examples of such citizen-soldiers, well known within military circles because they wrote especially powerful memoirs. Eugene B. Sledge served in the U.S. Marines during World War II, surviving two unimaginably brutal campaigns on the islands of Peleliu and Okinawa. His memoir With the Old Breed is arguably the best account of ground warfare in the Pacific. After three years of selfless, heroic service to his country, Sledge gladly returned to civilian life, eventually becoming a professor of biology. His conclusion — that “war is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste” — is one seconded by many a combat veteran.

Richard (Dick) Winters is better known because his exploits were captured in the HBO series Band of Brothers. He rose from platoon commander to battalion commander, serving in the elite 101st Airborne Division during World War II. A hero beloved by his men, Winters wanted nothing more than to quit the military and return to the civilian world. After the war, he lived a quiet life as a businessman in Pennsylvania, rarely mentioning his service and refusing to use his military rank for personal gratification. In Beyond Band of Brothers, he recounts both his service and his ideas on leadership. It’s a book to put in the hands of any young American who wishes to understand the noble ideas of service and sacrifice.

Sledge and Winters were regular guys who answered their country’s call. What comes across in their memoirs, as well as in the many letters I’ve read from World War II soldiers, was the desire of the average dogface to win the war, return home, hang up the uniform, and never again fire a shot in anger. These men were war-enders, not warfighters. Indeed, they would’ve been sickened by the very idea of being “warfighters.”

The term “warfighter” — a combination, I suppose, of “warrior” and “war fighting” — suggests a person who lives for war, who spoils for a fight. Certainly, the United States has fought its share of ruthless wars. But traditionally our soldiers have thought of themselves as civilians first, soldiers second. Equally as important, the American people thought of their troops that way.

Why are we now, with so little debate, casting aside an ethos that served us well for two centuries for one that straightforwardly embraces war and killing? Possibly because we’ve invented a distinctly American product: sanitized militarism. I bumped into it last week at a most unlikely place.

Visiting Gettysburg

Last week, I finally made it to Gettysburg, site of the great three-day battle between Union and Confederate forces in July 1863 that ended with the defeat of General Robert E. Lee’s army. Walking the battlefield was a sobering experience. I found myself on Little Round Top at 5:00 PM, just about the time of day that Union generals rushed men to reinforce the hill against a determined Confederate assault at the close of the battle’s second day. Earlier, I was at the Angle, just when, almost a century and a half ago, Pickett’s Charge failed to pierce the Union center, sealing Lee’s fate on the third day.

The Devil’s Den at Gettysburg

As these events played through my mind, I marveled that I had the battlefield largely to myself. Not that I was alone, mind you. Tour buses circled; cars, trucks, and SUVs whizzed about, but many, perhaps most, Americans who visit Gettysburg get surprisingly little tactile or sensory experience of its difficult topography. Yes, a few kids (and fewer adults) joined me in clambering about the huge, claustrophobically placed boulders of Devil’s Den, and I did spy a couple of guided tour groups on foot. But at the site of a bloodcurdling, distinctly septic nineteenth century battle, most visitors were clearly having a distinctly bloodless, even antiseptic, twenty-first century experience.

That day, I learned a lot about Gettysburg the battle — and maybe a little about us as well. As surely as my fellow tourists were staying in their cars and buses, we, as a people, are distancing ourselves from the realities of war. As we seal ourselves away from war’s horrors, we’re correspondingly finding it easier to speak of “warfighters” and to boast of having the world’s best military.

As we catch a glimpse, from the comfort of our living rooms, of a suicide bombing in Iraq or an American outpost attacked, then abandoned, in Afghanistan, are we not like those tourists in buses at Gettysburg, listening to sanitized recordings telling us what to see and think about the (expurgated) reality in front of us? And who dares challenge the “expert” commentary? Who dares turn off the canned talking heads and stare into the face of war?

But if we are to end our militaristic, yet curiously sanitized, “warfighter” moment, if we are ever to return to our citizen-soldier ethos and heritage, this is just what we must do.

After all, it’s later than you think. Our military now relies not only on a volunteer (if, at times, “stop-lossed”) Army, but increasingly on tens of thousands of hired guns, consultants, interrogators, interpreters, and other paramilitary camp followers. Private, for-profit “security contractors” — companies like Blackwater and Triple Canopy — give a disturbing new meaning to our “warfighter” terminology and the rhetoric that marches in step with it. As even casual students of history will recall, a clear sign of the Roman Empire’s decline was its shift from citizen-soldiers motivated by duty to mercenaries motivated by profit.

Replacing “warfighters” with true citizen-soldiers in the mold of Sledge and Winters would hardly be a solve-all solution at this late date, but it might be a step in the right direction — however unlikely it is to happen. For when we look at our troops, if we don’t see ourselves, then we see aliens or, worse yet, superiors (“warfighters”) in need of “support.” And that’s a clear sign of trouble for the republic.

Want to Be in the “World’s Best Military”? Ask German Veterans

It may come as a shock to some, but the American army wasn’t the best in the field in World War I, or World War II either. And thank heavens for that.

The distinction falls to the Kaiser Wilhelm’s army in 1914, and to Hitler’s Wehrmacht in 1941. Even toward the end of World War II, the American army was still often outmaneuvered and outclassed by its German foe. Because victory has a way of papering over faults and altering memories, few but professional historians today recall the many shortcomings of our military in both world wars.

But that’s precisely the point: The American military made mistakes because it was often ill-trained, rushed into combat too quickly, and handled by officers lacking in experience. Put simply, in both World Wars it lacked the tactical virtuosity of its German counterpart.

But here’s the question to ponder: At what price virtuosity? In World War I and World War II, the Germans were the best soldiers because they had trained and fought the most, because their societies were geared, mentally and in most other ways, for war, because they celebrated and valued feats of arms above all other contributions one could make to society and culture.

Being “the best soldiers” meant that senior German leaders — whether the Kaiser, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, that Teutonic titan of World War I, or Hitler — always expected them to prevail. The mentality was: “We’re number one. How can we possibly lose unless we quit — or those [fill in your civilian quislings of choice] stab us in the back?”

If this mentality sounds increasingly familiar, it’s because it’s the one we ourselves have internalized in these last years. German warfighters and their leaders knew no limitations until it was too late for them to recover from ceaseless combat, imperial overstretch, and economic collapse.

Today, the U.S. military, and by extension American culture, is caught in a similar bind. After all, if we truly believe ours to be “the world’s best military” (and, judging by how often the claim is repeated in the echo chamber of our media, we evidently do), how can we possibly be losing in Iraq or Afghanistan? And, if the “impossible” somehow happens, how can our military be to blame? If our “warfighters” are indeed “the best,” someone else must have betrayed them — appeasing politicians, lily-livered liberals, duplicitous and weak-willed allies like the increasingly recalcitrant Iraqis, you name it.

Today, our military is arguably the world’s best. Certainly, it’s the world’s most powerful in its advanced armaments and its ability to destroy. But what does it say about our leaders that they are so taken with this form of power? And why exactly is it so good to be the “best” at this? Just ask a German military veteran — among the few who survived, that is — in a warrior-state that went berserk in a febrile quest for “full spectrum dominance.”

Fighting to End Wars

Words matter. Let’s start by banishing the word “warfighter,” and, while we’re at it, let’s toss out that “world’s best” boast as well. Boasting about military prowess is more Spartan than Athenian, more Second and Third Reich Germany than republican and democratic America.

Indeed, imagine, for a moment, a world in which the U.S. is no longer “number one” in military might (and, at the same time, no longer fighting endless wars in the Middle East and Central Asia). Would we then be weak and vulnerable? Or would we become stronger precisely because we stopped boasting about our ability as “warfighters” to dominate far from our shores and instead redirected our resources to developing alternative energy, bolstering our education system, reviving American industry, and focusing on other “soft power” alternatives to weapons and warriors? In other words, alternatives we can actually boast about with the pride of accomplishment.

Think about it: Must our military forever remain “second to none” for you to feel safe? Our national traditions suggest otherwise. In fact, if we no longer had the world’s strongest military, perhaps we would be more reluctant to tap its strength — and more hesitant to send our citizen-soldiers into harm’s way. And while we’re at it, perhaps we’d also learn to boast about a new kind of “warfighter” — not one who fights our wars, but one who fights against them.

Copyright 2008 William Astore.

A Largely Issueless Campaign Season?

W.J. Astore

Kamalove versus MAGA

Are you feeling “Kamalove” for Kamala Harris? Are you gaga for MAGA and Donald Trump? Or maybe you’re angry J.D. Vance once made a comment about “childless cat ladies.” This is the preferred narrative being pushed by the great CON, the corporate-owned news.* 

It wasn’t that long ago that, thanks to Bernie Sanders, among others, Americans were talking about real issues. Affordable health care for all. A $15 federal minimum wage. Sweeping student loan debt relief. Tax reforms that would favor the working classes rather than the richest among us. Campaign finance reform that would get “big money” out of politics.

This is the madness of war. (Mourners from the Druze minority carry the coffins of some of the 12 children and teenagers killed in the rocket strike in the village of Majdal Shams. Photograph: Léo Corrêa/AP)

Another vital issue, of course, is America’s seemingly permanent state of war and its slavish support of Israel in its ongoing demolition of Gaza. As expected, that genocidal act is beginning to spin out of control as it appears Israel is preparing to strike Hezbollah in Lebanon in the aftermath of a deadly missile strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

When will the madness of war in the Middle East end? And is it the intent of the U.S. government to continue to provide all the weapons Israel needs to continue its campaign of mass killing? (Always done in the name of “defense” and “security,” naturally.)

In his recent address to America, President Biden declared that under him U.S. troops weren’t at war for the first time this century. His exact words were: “I’m the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” This boast came as U.S. forces were bombing Yemen in support of Israel’s operations in Gaza. Meanwhile, America leads the world in selling weapons and spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined, most of those being U.S. allies.

When does the U.S. get to become a normal country in normal times, rather than a nation permanently at war and forever preparing for it, even for nuclear Armageddon? Why are we spending possibly as much as $2 trillion on “modernizing” a nuclear triad that, if used, could easily destroy life on earth as well as several other earth-sized planets? When are we going to end this insanity?

We need to challenge Democrats and Republicans as well as the media to cover real issues, issues of life and death, rather than writing puff pieces about Kamalove and MAGA.

*Thanks to John R. Moffett for the CON acronym.

Lies

W.J. Astore

They’re Everywhere in America

Soon after Joe Biden took office as president in 2021, I remember hearing that his VP, Kamala Harris, was put in charge of immigration, informally known as the “border czar.” Yesterday, the House passed a resolution condemning Harris for her handling of the border crisis. Yet I’ve also been hearing from Democrats and the media that Harris never was the border czar, even as there’s plenty of video evidence of networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC referring to her using that term.

Denying that Harris was the border czar is a fairly small lie immersed in much larger sea of lies, and of course it’s a bipartisan effort. Donald Trump exaggerates and lies just to stay in shape. Democrats love to attack Trump for lying even as they lie themselves. Truly, it’s hard to run a government and a country when lies confuse every issue.

Another lie being told about Kamala Harris is that her candidacy is the result of democracy in action. She’s the people’s choice! Except almost nobody voted for her as a presidential candidate. She’s been elevated and selected by the DNC and the donor class. She is a packaged product of the so-called elites within the party, the very opposite of a candidate chosen by the people. And yet I’m told this packaged product is going to “save democracy” from Trump, who was actually selected as a candidate in a more democratic process.

Of course, there are far bigger and more serious lies than whether Harris was the border czar or whether she’s the people’s choice as the savior of democracy. U.S. troops’ deadliest enemies, I’d argue, are most often the lies told by the U.S. government, abetted and amplified by senior officers in the military. Think here of Iraq and Afghanistan, or go back further to Vietnam.

Daniel Ellsberg, truth-teller about the Vietnam War and so many other things

Knowing (or sensing/feeling) you killed for lies, or knowing your friends died for lies, is surely a contributing cause to a rash of suicides in the U.S. military today. The sacrifices and horrors of war may be eased by a “just” war, like World War II, but they are aggravated by unjust wars.  And they are further aggravated when you try to get help through the VA only to be turned away or stonewalled.

All this is prologue to a note I received from a regular reader of Bracing Views about lies in America. I’ve decided to retain the profanity because it’s more than appropriate:

I don’t know about you, but I find it quite amazing that, despite decades of bold-faced lying about US wars, all of it proven and even reported in the NYT and other mainstream media, the narrative of the each subsequent war is always accepted as true, until it too is exposed as being nothing but lies.

Let’s look at the recent record:

1) Vietnam–exposed as nothing but lies by the Pentagon Papers.

2) Iraq–exposed as lies when the infamous WMD were never found and there was nothing found to back up the claim of links to Al Qaeda.

3) Afghanistan–exposed as pure fiction as revealed by the Washington Post “Afghanistan Papers” which said that “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

Add to the above list the fact that the Mueller report investigating the Russiagate hoax came up with nothing, ZERO.

Currently, there are a couple of new false narratives duly reported by the mainstream media and, for the most part, swallowed by most people. First is the false narrative about the US war in Ukraine, that NATO expansion has nothing to do with it but rather was caused by naked Russian aggression and Putin’s plans to re-create the Soviet Union and take over the rest of Eastern Europe. Second, the false narrative that Israel is just defending itself against Palestinian terrorism rather than committing grotesque war crimes, completely ignoring the fact that the Israelis have been keeping the Palestinians under illegal occupation for over 50 years, since June 1967. 

Lie after lie after lie after lie. And yet none of it matters. It is all sent down the memory hole as if it never happened. And then it is on to the next war, when the official narrative spewed out by the DC blob will once again be swallowed hook, line and sinker. It appears to be never ending. No matter how much lying is exposed, it simply does not matter.

I think it is pretty fucking amazing. What will it take to get people to come out of their coma and realize what the fuck is going on?

And keep in mind…..it has nothing to do with party affiliation. The lying is endemic, it’s in the DNA of the National Security State. Presidents come and go, but the lying for war-making never stops. And no one is ever held accountable either. 

It’s pretty fucking impressive, when you think about it.

Keep this is in mind……one would think that, after this abhorrent track record, the appropriate response would be to assume that the narrative justifying the new war of the moment was not true and nothing but more of the same lying. But that NEVER happens. NEVER.

How is that possible? Is it just a serious form of denial? Is it due to mental illness? Is it just some perverted form of patriotism? In what other realm is it possible to lie non-stop and never be held accountable? Even worse, to continue to have credibility despite a track record of pathological lying? 

A friend of mine pointed out that, in the old USSR, people knew that the official news on their TV every night was nothing but lies. 

So, this begs the question: Which system is more pernicious and has more effectively brainwashed its people? The one where people are controlled but they are aware that they are being fed nothing but lies, or the one that is constantly lied to but the people still believe they are being told the truth?

To those keen insights, I made this reply:

Our [American] system of lying is better! We have state/corporate media too, it’s just more subtle and advertised as “free.” We have our own “Pravda” except it rarely tells the truth, unless that “truth” is in the interests of the powerful.

To which our BV keen reader replied:

Exactly. But to suggest that we have our own version of “Pravda,” only worse because it has the cover of supposedly being “free,” is tantamount to treason, you realize.

This is the reason why Julian Assange/Wikileaks was such a threat…for actually challenging the right of the National Security State to lie non-stop about its war making and never be exposed for its lying or held accountable.

Of course, that is exactly why Assange was locked away in prison for so long and tortured, not because he was spreading lies but because he was revealing truths.

And we can’t have that in America!

*My hearty thanks to this Bracing Views keen reader for allowing me to cite this. I always say I learn so much from my readers, and I mean it.

Netanyahu and Biden Speak

W.J. Astore

A Grim Day in Washington, DC, and Across the World

I was wrong about Congress and its subservience to Bibi Netanyahu. I had set the over/under at 50 for the number of ovations he would receive, and 25 as the number of standing ovations. Apparently, he received 58 standing ovations in his address to Congress yesterday. Though not every member of Congress joined the orgy.

With respect to what Netanyahu said, Caitlin Johnstone covers it well. I’m less interested in what he said than what the orgy of applause says about America. Stormy applause for a foreign leader engaged in a genocide in Gaza: you can draw your own conclusions here. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the power of AIPAC and similar Zionist lobbies.

At 8:00PM EST, my wife and I tuned in to President Biden’s first speech since his surprise withdrawal by tweet from the 2024 campaign. I sure wish politicians could speak simply, clearly, and sincerely. How about a short speech like this?

My fellow Americans, thank you for your confidence in me, thank you for allowing me to serve for more than fifty years, and thank you for your patience as I recovered from COVID. After much reflection, I’ve decided I’m simply too old, too compromised, to be president after my current term ends in January 2025. In my stead, I heartily endorse my vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. I have complete confidence in her. With that said, I want to thank everyone watching, here and around the world, for the best wishes you’ve shared with me. I will continue to work tirelessly for peace and for the betterment of the human condition everywhere, not forgetting the health of our environment as well. Thank you all again, and good night.

A person can dream, right?

Instead, Biden plodded through a speech that lasted about fifteen minutes but which seemed much longer. I was a bit surprised at how long it took him to mention Kamala Harris by name. There were the usual blessings extended to America and the troops, and the usual rhetoric that nothing is impossible to America and Americans, though I’m not sure of that. High-speed rail seems impossible, to cite one example.

All in all, the Congressional orgy for Bibi together with Biden’s sad withdrawal speech made for a very grim day in Washington, D.C. and indeed across the globe. For what happens here in America doesn’t stay here. It ripples to places like Gaza, Russia, China, powerfully and unpredictably.

As I said, yesterday was grim, and the prospect of a Trump/Harris race makes the future even grimmer for meaningful change toward a less militaristic and more peaceful world.

Don’t Embarrass Joe Biden

W.J. Astore

And the Upcoming Visit by Bibi Netanyahu

A couple of snippets from Reuters captures the weirdness of this American moment. The first involves President Joe Biden and his status as a candidate for 2024:

Some officials think it’s only a matter of time before Joe Biden takes himself out of the race, though nobody can say how the party’s presidential-nomination process will unfold if he drops out. Reports say he’s taking seriously calls within the party to quit because of concerns about his cognitive ability, his age and his health. Fundraisers are on hold and July donations plummeted, sources say.

That last part is likely to be fatal. It’s money that talks in American politics, and if Biden can’t raise any, and he’s hurting the bottom line at the DNC, they’ll find a way to get rid of him.

Remarkably, I keep reading articles about how Democrats shouldn’t do anything to embarrass Biden. As if personal embarrassment is the leading issue here. The leading issue is whether Biden is physically and mentally fit to be president this very moment. Is anyone confident that Biden could handle a crisis akin to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962? Does he have the physical stamina and mental acumen to make critical decisions under extreme pressure? It doesn’t appear so. Isn’t this issue a lot more important than Biden’s feelings?

The second snippet involves Israel’s destruction of Gaza, a topic which has become far less salient lately in U.S. corporate media. Here’s the update from Reuters:

Israel’s aerial and tank shelling of central Gaza intensified while fighting raged in Rafah. Israel’s military is set to issue call-up notices to 1,000 members of the ultra-Orthodox community after the Supreme Court ended their longstanding exemption for Jewish seminary students from service. Netanyahu will address the U.S. Congress next week and might meet President Biden.

I’d set the over/under on Congressional ovations for Bibi Netanyahu at 50; standing ovations at 25.

There are few things more appalling than inviting Netanyahu to address Congress while Israel prosecutes a genocide in Gaza with American-made weaponry. It tells you everything you need to know about the “rules-based order” promoted by U.S. leaders.

Harris has been deployed to calm “jittery” donors. Good luck with that.

With Biden in free-fall and Kamala Harris still not ready for primetime, perhaps the Democrats can draft Bibi Netanyahu to run against Donald Trump.* No man seems to unite Congress in rapturous applause like Bibi. Bibi would certainly revive DNC fundraising as well. Stranger things have happened …

*Yes, I know Bibi can’t run to be POTUS. Why should he bother, when he’s already dictating U.S. policy in the Middle East?

“Peace” Seems to Be the Hardest Word

W.J. Astore

Bipartisan Support in America for More War

With apologies to Elton John and Bernie Taupin, “peace” seems to be the hardest word, for both Democrats and Republicans.

This is hardly surprising. The National Security State is the unofficial fourth branch of government and arguably the most powerful. Presidents and Congress serve it, and the SCOTUS carves out special exceptions for it. Back in the days of a bit more honesty, it was called the Department of War. And so it remains.

Let’s say you’re like me and you see war as humanity’s greatest failing. We kill and maim each other, we scorch and kill every living thing in the path of our weapons, we destroy the environment, we even have the capacity to destroy life on earth via nuclear weapons. War—it really is good for absolutely nothin’, unless, of course, you profit from it.

Gaza after an Israeli bombing attack. Anyone want more war?

So, who are you going to vote for in America who sees the awfulness of war and who’s willing to pursue diplomacy and peace instead? Democrats? Republicans?

Generally speaking, Democrats are fixated on war with Russia. They support massive aid to Ukraine and are against negotiations. They also support massive aid to Israel in its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. And they fully support the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) and soaring spending on weapons and war, including “investing” in new nuclear weapons.

Republicans are much the same, except they tend to see China rather than Russia as the main threat, e.g. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are willing to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine War. But, in the main, Republicans fervently support Israel in its genocide, are outspoken critics of Iran (Got to punch them hard, Vance recently said), are willing enablers of the MICC, and also vote for massive spending on weaponry and war, including nuclear weapons.

Neither major U.S. political party, the red or blue teams, is pro-peace. Both are pro-aggression and pro-empire. They just occasionally choose different targets for their ire, even as they accuse the other team of “weakness,” of being “Putin puppets” or “Manchurian candidates.” 

As I’ve said before, the only word or sentiment apparently forbidden among the red and blue teams is “peace.” If you want an antiwar candidate in America, you have to go outside the two main parties to the Greens or similar fringe parties.

In America, “antiwar” is defined by America’s propaganda machine, otherwise known as the corporate media, as weak and unAmerican, because “the health of the state” is war.  Every election, whether the red or blue team prevails, the National Security State, the old War Department, wins. And humanity loses. 

The last mainstream candidate for the presidency who spoke consistently of peace was George McGovern in 1972. Unless we the people demand peace, we will continue to get war. In fact, in a bizarrely Orwellian way, colossal military spending and incessant wars are sold to us as keeping America safe. “War is peace” is quite literally the message of the National Security State and its Ministry of Truth, the corporate-owned media.

What is the solution? Here’s one possible approach: Whenever America deploys troops overseas, those troops most immediately in harm’s way must be drawn from the ranks of America’s most privileged and their children. So, corporate CEOs, Members of Congress, lawyers at White Shoe firms, private equity billionaires and millionaires and their progeny, Hollywood celebrities and America’s best-known sports stars: those Americans who prosper and profit the most from empire should be the first to serve it. And that service must be made mandatory, no exceptions, no way to buy your way out or plead that you have “higher” priorities.

Those who want war should serve in war, leaving the rest of us alone. This rule, more than any other, might just keep the chickenhawks from screeching for more war with Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea, or Syria, or somebody. A few minutes at the front, facing bullets and shells and cluster munitions while hearing the screams of the dying, might just cure these wannabe “warriors” of their fever.

Want a war? Go to war. And leave the rest of us in peace.

The Distraction of Joe Biden

W.J. Astore

What genocide? What war? What militarism?

Joe Biden has become a major distraction. Much like Donald Trump, he’s demanding far too much attention.

As genocide continues in Gaza, as war continues to rage in Ukraine, as America continues to pursue militarism both at home and abroad, all the press can talk about is whether Biden should stay or go.

The answer is obvious: he should go.

Sure, Biden remains capable of having a “good” day in the sense of doing OK at a rally while reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter. Yet it’s impossible to ignore brain glitches where he introduces Zelensky of Ukraine as President Putin and suggests his vice president’s name is Trump instead of Harris.

America faces serious issues, especially working- and middle-class Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. Their stories are rarely told in the corporate-owned media as Biden’s flubs and stubbornness and Trump’s lies and showboating grab nearly all the attention.

A new (and desperate) ploy I’ve seen on Twitter/X is Biden supporters arguing that a failing older man is better than a lying one as president. That argument assumes Biden has a strong record as a truth-teller when it was gratuitous lies and flagrant plagiarism that ended his presidential campaign in 1988. Besides, is it really true that Biden, a man visibly in mental and physical decline, is the only choice Democrats can muster to defeat Trump in 2024?

Let’s look at one chart that shows Biden’s record. Since he became President, military spending has soared as social spending has dipped.

And this man, Democrats say in reverent tones, is the new FDR?

I suppose their counter would be: Trump will be worse! So, it’s the old “lesser of two evils” argument.

Biden and Harris continue to run a campaign devoid of any message other than vote for us because Trump will be worse. That empty message, and Biden’s visible decline, produce images like this:

Exactly. Which “job” is the Biden/Harris team so intent on finishing? No one knows since they’re not saying. Vague messaging and a confused candidate are almost certain to lead to a Trump victory in November.

And if that happens, those to blame will be clear, starting with Biden, the DNC, and all the scheming powerbrokers behind the scenes like the Obamas and the Clintons.