I caught this snippet from Mark Zuckerberg, guru of Facebook:
There’s this stat that I always think is crazy. The average American, I think has, I think it’s fewer than three friends, three people that they’d consider friends and the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it’s like 15 friends or something.
If you’re familiar with Facebook, every personal contact you make on there is categorized as a “friend.” When you want to add someone to your Facebook page, you “friend” them. Alternatively, when you want to get rid of someone, you “unfriend” them.
Now, the typical Facebook user has roughly 200-300 “friends.” What Zuckerberg is unintentionally revealing in that snippet above is that Facebook “friends” aren’t real friends. They’re mostly acquaintances. People we’ve met once or twice, maybe even people we’ve never met. They’re not close friends, intimate friends, “real” friends.
So why call them “friends,” Facebook? For obvious reasons. Just about anyone would like more friends, and indeed I know people with over 2000 “friends” on Facebook. But, again, how many close or intimate friends can you really have?
That’s where Zuckerberg comes in, yet again, riding to the rescue with AI “friends.” Yes, he’s suggesting that the solution to loneliness in America, our lack of intimacy, is AI programs that will be your “friend,” a little bit like the movie “Her” with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson.
So, I suppose you’ll soon be able to buy AI “friends” from Mark Zuckerberg or someone like him. Or perhaps they’ll be offered for “free,” as Facebook is, with your most intimate data being sold to the highest bidder.
I really don’t want AI “friends.” I have a few real friends, people I’ve known for decades, people I do feel close to, and I’m lucky to have them. Two quick lessons come to mind. First, of course, friends aren’t perfect. They can be annoying, frustrating, maddening. (Guess what? I can be too.) Part of being a friend and keeping one is tolerance, acceptance, patience. The second lesson: To have a friend you have to be a friend. If you want people to be there when you need them, it’s a good idea to be there when they need you.
Sorry, Zuckerberg: I don’t think AI “friends” are the answer here. But thanks for debunking the whole idea of “friends” on Facebook.
I recently checked in with HAL 9000, actually ChatGPT and DeepSeek, to see what AI says about my writing on military policy. I’ll let ChatGPT go first:
William Astore, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian, has emerged as a prominent voice critiquing America’s militaristic culture and its pervasive influence on domestic and foreign policy. Through his essays on platforms like TomDispatch and Truthdig, Astore offers a candid examination of how militarism has become deeply embedded in American society, often to its detriment.
The Militarization of American Society
Astore argues that the United States has transitioned from a nation with a military to a militarized nation. He contends that this shift is not marked by overt displays of military power but by a subtle, pervasive presence of militaristic values in everyday life. This includes the normalization of war, the glorification of military service, and the integration of military imagery into civilian spaces. He warns that such normalization desensitizes the public to the realities of war and erodes democratic values.
The Business of War
In his critique of the military-industrial complex, Astore highlights how war has become a profitable enterprise for a select few. He references General Smedley Butler’s assertion that “war is a racket,” emphasizing that the true beneficiaries of war are often corporations and political elites, rather than the general populace. Astore suggests that this profit-driven approach to war leads to prolonged conflicts with little regard for their human or financial costs.
The Disconnect Between Military and Society
Astore points out the growing divide between the military and civilian sectors. He notes that the all-volunteer force, while composed of individuals who choose to serve, often does so out of limited economic opportunities rather than a deep-seated desire to fight. This creates a situation where the broader public remains detached from the consequences of war, leading to a lack of accountability and understanding.
A Call for Reflection and Change
Throughout his writings, Astore advocates for a return to a more restrained and reflective approach to military engagement. He urges Americans to critically assess the true costs of war and to reconsider the glorification of militarism in public life. By fostering a more informed and engaged citizenry, Astore believes the U.S. can move towards a foreign policy that prioritizes diplomacy and peace over conflict.
Astore’s insights challenge readers to confront the complexities of American militarism and its implications for both domestic society and international relations. His work serves as a reminder of the importance of maintaining a vigilant and informed public to ensure that the nation’s military endeavors align with its democratic ideals.
*****
That’s a fair assessment, I’d say. I do believe America is too war- and profit-driven, too adulatory toward the military, and also too disconnected from the grim realities of war. And I have called for a recommitment to and renewal of diplomacy. A “vigilant and informed public” is exactly what Ike called for in 1961 when he said that only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry could keep the military-industrial-congressional complex in check. I suppose that’s why the MICC works to keep Americans isolated from and ignorant about war. The last thing the MICC wants is alert and knowledgeable citizens who challenge it.
HAL 9000 (from the movie “2001”)
Let’s turn to DeepSeek and its summary, which isn’t quite as comprehensive as ChatGPT:
William Astore, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian, is a vocal critic of U.S. military policy and militarism. His key arguments include:
Excessive Militarization. Astore argues that the U.S. has become overly reliant on military solutions to geopolitical problems, leading to endless wars and bloated defense budgets. He critiques the “military-industrial complex” (a term popularized by Eisenhower) for perpetuating this cycle.
Militarism in Society. He highlights how militarism has seeped into American culture, with the glorification of the military. pervasive defense contracting, and the influence of retired generals in media and politics.
Failed Wars & Lack of Accountability. Astore condemns U.S. interventions (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan) as costly failures, driven by hubris and flawed assumptions, with little accountability for policymakers.
Erosion of Democracy. He warns that unchecked militarism undermines democratic values, as vast resources are diverted to the military while domestic needs (education, healthcare, infrastructure) are neglected.
Need for Reform. Astore advocates for a more restrained foreign policy, reduced defense spending, and greater public skepticism toward military leaders and war propaganda.
*****
Again, I think that’s a fair summary. I like the emphasis on lack of accountability. So-called experts are never called to account for advocating for disastrous wars; indeed, they’re usually promoted to higher positions. You can never go wrong by going “strong,” at least rhetorically. The worst thing in America is to argue for diplomacy and peace and being proven right, for you were right “for the wrong reasons,” i.e. sure, Iraq and Afghanistan were disastrous wars that killed, wounded, and displaced millions, but it would have been pusillanimous and “weak” of America not to slap around a few countries in the aftermath of 9/11. So put on your “big boy” warrior fatigues and start kicking ass, because that’s what real Americans do.
It’s interesting that AI programs probably wouldn’t write that last sentence but they can “write” sober and rational prose rather effectively.
ChatGPT and DeepSeek can be useful tools, I think, if used judiciously. I worry, however, about AI programs being used for decision-making, especially decisions related to life and death in war. So, for example, I’ve read about AI programs being used for target selection in places like Gaza. Just what we need—ever-more automated death.
You may recall that, late in 2022, I asked the AI platform ChatGPT to write a short critical essay on the military-industrial complex. That essay is here.
Recently, news out of China came of a new AI platform known as DeepSeek that reportedly is both cheaper and better than U.S. efforts. I asked DeepSeek for a 600-word critical essay on the MIC, and it complied with its human master (at least for now). Here’s the essay, which, you may agree, is quite good:
The Military-Industrial Complex: A Critical Examination [Written by DeepSeek]
The military-industrial complex (MIC) in the United States, a term popularized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address, refers to the symbiotic relationship between the nation’s armed forces, defense contractors, and the political institutions that support them. While Eisenhower warned of its potential dangers, the MIC has since grown into a colossal entity that wields significant influence over American society, economy, and foreign policy. This essay argues that the military-industrial complex is detrimental to the United States, perpetuating endless wars, distorting national priorities, and undermining democratic principles.
One of the most glaring consequences of the MIC is its role in perpetuating a state of perpetual war. The United States has been involved in military conflicts for the majority of its history, with the 21st century being no exception. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have been justified under the guise of national security, but they have often served the interests of defense contractors more than the American people. Companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon profit immensely from the production of weapons and military technology, creating a perverse incentive to maintain and escalate conflicts. This cycle of war and profit not only drains national resources but also results in the loss of countless lives, both American and foreign. The human cost of these wars is immeasurable, and the moral implications of prioritizing profit over peace are deeply troubling.
Moreover, the MIC distorts national priorities by diverting vast sums of money away from critical domestic needs. The United States spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined, with the defense budget often exceeding $700 billion annually. This staggering expenditure comes at the expense of underfunded sectors such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, and climate change mitigation. While the country boasts an unparalleled military capability, it lags behind other developed nations in key areas of social and economic well-being. For instance, the U.S. faces a crumbling infrastructure, a lack of universal healthcare, and a growing wealth gap. The prioritization of military spending over these pressing issues reflects a skewed set of values that favors corporate interests over the welfare of citizens.
The influence of the MIC also undermines democratic principles by eroding the separation of power and fostering corruption. Defense contractors spend millions of dollars annually on lobbying and campaign contributions, ensuring that politicians support policies favorable to the industry. This creates a feedback loop where elected officials are incentivized to approve bloated defense budgets and authorize military interventions, regardless of their necessity or public support. The result is a government that is increasingly beholden to corporate interests rather than the will of the people. Furthermore, the revolving door between the Pentagon, Congress, and defense contractors exacerbates this issue, as individuals move seamlessly between public service and lucrative private sector positions. This blurring of lines between public and private interests erodes trust in government and undermines the democratic process.
Critics of the MIC often face significant backlash, as questioning the necessity of military spending or the morality of war is frequently framed as unpatriotic or naive. This stifling of dissent is another way in which the MIC exerts its influence, creating a culture where alternative perspectives are marginalized. The media, too, plays a role in perpetuating this status quo, often uncritically echoing government narratives and failing to hold policymakers accountable. This lack of critical scrutiny allows the MIC to operate with minimal oversight, further entrenching its power.
In conclusion, the military-industrial complex represents a profound threat to the United States, perpetuating endless wars, distorting national priorities, and undermining democratic principles. Eisenhower’s warning about the dangers of the MIC remains as relevant today as it was in 1961. To address these issues, the United States must reevaluate its priorities, reduce its reliance on military solutions, and invest in the well-being of its citizens. Only by challenging the entrenched power of the MIC can the nation hope to achieve a more just, peaceful, and equitable future. The stakes are high, and the time for action is now. [End of essay.]
*****
Amen to that, DeepSeek! There are a few edits I’d make here. Raytheon is now RTX. The defense war budget is now $900 billion and rising, not $700 billion. I wouldn’t use the word “symbiotic” to describe relations among the Pentagon, the weapons makers, and Congress; more like “toxic,” corrupted as it is by greed, money and self-interest. I do very much like this line: “the moral implications of prioritizing profit over peace are deeply troubling.” Deeply troubling indeed!
Anyhow, if you’re interested, go to DeepSeek.com, create an account, and ask our future AI overlord a question. Perhaps you’ll be surprised by the result.
In The Matrix, Neo (played memorably by Keanu Reeves) saves Morpheus by breaking into a heavily fortified facility guarded by special agents. When asked what he’ll need to pull off this longshot rescue, Neo says, simply: “Guns — lots of guns.” It could serve as America’s new national motto. In God we trust? No — guns. And lots of them. Somewhere north of 300 million guns are currently in private hands, enough to arm each and every American, the tall and the small, with at least one firearm.
So it’s not surprising when Donald Trump references Second Amendment rights. (It seems the only amendment he knows.) He likes to assert these “rights” are in danger of being curtailed, but gun sales are still booming and there are no serious efforts at gun control.
As one of my friends whose barbed humor I enjoy put it: “There is only one amendment — the second amendment.” Mull that conundrum for a moment.
Back in World War II, America was known as the arsenal of democracy for all the weapons we supplied to allies like Britain and the Soviet Union. Now it’s just an arsenal.
The brutal truth is we’re stuck with all these guns. There is no political will to buy them back, even military-style assault weapons, and indeed what will there is centers on selling more of them. Back in 2017, several articles appeared noting how black women were buying guns in increasing numbers. Last week, NBC Washington ran a report on women of color becoming licensed gun owners in increasing numbers, partly as a response to police violence. “Peace of mind” is bought with a gun. Talk about racial and gender progress!
Speaking of the police, small wonder that America’s cops are edgy. When we talk about police violence, which is all-too-real and all-too-deadly, a factor we should consider is the reality that America is awash in guns, making every police call a potentially deadly one.
So, as much as Trump tweets about “LAW&ORDER,” what really rules America is money — the money to be made by selling lots of guns and ammo, as well as the cultural ammo you can always count on when hippy-dippy liberals like me start rattling rhetorical sabers about gun control.
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but an AR-15 trumps both in this man’s America.
I’ve owned guns myself and have shot everything from a pellet pistol to a .44 magnum, but I’ve defunded my modest gun collection, so to speak. I decided happiness is not a warm gun and that there are amendments other than the 2nd one.
For once you start shooting bullets, there’s no way to recall them. And, as far as I know, the only guy able to dodge bullets is Keanu Reeves as Neo.
A recent article in The National Interest captured an open secret: Donald Trump has been using drone strikes far more than Barack Obama ever did.
The Pentagon likes to depict such strikes as incredibly accurate, with few or even no innocents killed. Such a portrayal is inaccurate, however, since “precision” bombing isn’t precise. Intelligence is often wrong. Missiles don’t always hit their targets. Explosions and their effects are unpredictable.
Recognizing those realities, are drone strikes also cowardly?
America likes to fancy itself the “home of the brave,” a land of “heroes” and “warriors.” But how heroic is it to launch a Hellfire missile from a drone, without any risk to yourself? Aren’t warriors supposed to be on the receiving end of elemental violence as well as being the inflictors of it?
Experiencing violence, even reveling in it while enduring war’s passions and horrific results was part of what it meant to be a warrior. Think of Achilles versus Hector in ancient days, or knights jousting with knights in the Middle Ages, or men not firing until they saw the white of the enemy’s eyes at Bunker Hill. Even when machines intruded, it wasn’t just T-34 tanks versus Tigers at Kursk in 1943, or B-17 bombers versus Focke-Wulf Fw 190s over Berlin in 1944: it was the men operating those machines who mattered — and who demonstrated heroism and warrior spirit.
But when war becomes robotic and routine for one side, action at a great distance and indeed at total remove from violence and its effects, can that be heroic in any way? Isn’t drone warfare a form of denatured war, war without passion, war without risk to U.S. drone operators?
Don’t get me wrong. Drone warfare has its pains for its “operators.” PTSD exists for these men and women who pilot the drones and launch the missiles; watching other people die on video, when you’re responsible for their deaths, carries a cost, at least for some. But is it not all-too-tempting to smite and kill others when they have no way of smiting you back?
It is not well that war grows less terrible for us – for we are growing much too fond of it.”
That the Trump administration is turning so fondly to drone strikes (following the example of Obama, for once proudly) is yet another sign that America is far too devoted to war. Is it not because war is so profitable for a few, and so painless for the rest of us?
There is no direct pain to America from drone warfare, but there’s also little recognition of war’s horrific costs and the need to end them; there is no immediate risk, but there’s also little recognition that there are ways to triumph other than simply killing one’s perceived enemies.
A final, heretical, question: Are Americans so eager to celebrate their warriors as heroes precisely because they so often practice a form of warfare that is unheroic and even cowardly? If Americans were routinely on the receiving end of drone strikes by a distant foreign power, I think I know how we’d answer that question.
Today, access to technology and its services is often associated with equality of opportunity in society. In education, for example, getting computers and Internet service to low-income students is considered a vitally important step to students’ maturation and their skill sets in a competitive global marketplace. The “digital divide” must be bridged, else disadvantaged students will be stuck in the dark ages and left behind. Focusing on technology as both “bridging” mechanism and source of enlightenment has the added benefit of being easily measurable and “correctable,” e.g. by increasing the number of computers per class, the number of connected classrooms, and so on.
Spending (or, as they say, “investing”) money on classroom technology, moreover, is obviously favored by tech companies both for present and future profits (raise a child on Apple devices and perhaps as adults they’ll always favor Apple). Parents like it too: perhaps Johnny and Susie mainly play games on their school-provided iPads, but at least they’re occupied while “learning” computer skills.
Of course, the digital divide does exist, and computer skills are valuable. But hyping access to technology is often a distraction from much bigger issues of inequality, as George Orwell noted back in the early 1930s in “The Road to Wigan Pier.”
Back then, Orwell was concerned with electricity rather than computers and connectivity. But what he says about electrification could be said about any technology presented as a panacea for social ills.
Here’s what Orwell wrote at the end of chapter 5 of his book:
And then there is the queer spectacle of modern electrical science showering miracles upon people with empty bellies. You may shiver all night for lack of bedclothes, but in the morning you can go to the public library and read the news that has been telegraphed for your benefit from San Francisco and Singapore. Twenty million people are underfed but literally everyone in England has access to a radio. What we have lost in food we have gained in electricity. Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life.
Orwell was rightly skeptical of technological “miracles” like electricity that were sold as mitigating fundamental inequalities such as access to healthy food and warm and adequate housing. Empty bellies and empty prospects are not filled by instant news, whether via the telegraph and wireless radio or via the Smart phone and wireless LANs.
The point is not to blame technology. The point is to highlight technology as a choice, one that often doesn’t address fundamental inequities in society.
He doesn’t speak softly, even as he now inherits a very big U.S. military stick. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
W.J. Astore
I’d never watched a U.S. presidential candidate who scared me – truly scared me – until the Republican debate on March 3, 2016. This candidate literally gave me the creeps. As a historian and as a retired U.S. military officer, his answer to a question on torture and the potential illegality of his orders if he became the military’s civilian commander-in-chief horrified me. The next day, I wrote a short blog post in which I argued that this candidate had disqualified himself as a candidate for the presidency. That candidate’s name was Donald Trump.
What did candidate Trump say that so horrified me? He said this: They [U.S. military leaders] won’t refuse [my illegal orders]. They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me. After again calling for waterboarding and more extreme forms of (illegal) torture, as well as not denying he’d target terrorists’ families in murderous reprisal raids, candidate Trump then said this: I’m a leader. I’m a leader. I’ve always been a leader. I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about.
As I wrote at the time, “Our military does not follow blindly orders issued by ‘The Leader.’ Our military swears an oath to the Constitution. We swear to uphold the law of the land. We don’t swear allegiance to a single man (or woman) as president.”
“Trump’s performance … reminded me of Richard Nixon’s infamous answer to David Frost about Watergate: ‘When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.’ No, no, a thousand times no. The president has to obey the law of the land, just as everyone else has to. No person is above the law, an American ideal that Trump seems neither to understand nor to embrace.”
“And that disqualifies him to be president and commander-in-chief.”
Yes, I wrote those words just before the Ides of March. And yet here we are, with Trump as our president-elect and, come January 2017 the U.S. military’s next commander-in-chief. What the hell?
Confronted with criticism of his remarks that the U.S. military would follow his orders irrespective of their legality, Donald Trump soon walked them back. But for me his dictatorial instincts, his imperiousness, and, worst of all, his ignorance of or indifference to the U.S. Constitution, stood revealed in horrifyingly stark relief. Little that Trump said or did after this major, to my mind disqualifying, gaffe convinced me that he was fit to serve as commander-in-chief.
Here’s what I wrote back in March about the prospect of Trump serving as commander-in-chief:
Donald Trump: Lacks an understanding of the U.S. Constitution and his role and responsibilities as commander-in-chief. Though he has shown a willingness to depart from orthodoxies, e.g. by criticizing the Iraq War and the idea of nation-building, Trump’s temperament is highly suspect. His bombast amplified by his ignorance could make for a deadly combination. Hysterical calls for medieval-like torture practices are especially disturbing.
Another disturbing tack he took was to suggest that he’d clean house among the military’s senior ranks — apparently, America today doesn’t have enough men like George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, Trump’s all-time favorite generals. Patton was a notorious hothead, and MacArthur was vainglorious, egotistical, and insubordinate. Leaving that aside, Trump doesn’t seem to understand that the president is not a dictator who can purge the military officer corps. Officers are appointed by Congress, not by the president, and they serve at the will of the American people, not at the whim of the president.
Combine Trump’s ignorance of the U.S. Constitution with his cavalier attitude toward nuclear weapons and you truly have a combustible formula. Clearly, Trump had no idea what America’s nuclear triad was during the Republican primary debates, but few people in the media seemed to care. (Gary Johnson, meanwhile, was pilloried by the press for not knowing about Aleppo.) Trump gave statements that seemed to favor nuclear proliferation, and seemed to suggest he saw nuclear weapons as little different from conventional ones. He also repeated that hoary chestnut, vintage 1960, that some sort of “missile gap” existed between the U.S. and Russia: the lie that Russia was modernizing its nuclear forces and the USA was falling hopelessly behind. Again, there was little push back from the press on Trump’s ignorance and lies: they were enjoying the spectacle and profits too much.
When it comes to nuclear war, ignorance and lies are not bliss. Can Trump grow up? Can he become an adequate commander-in-chief? America’s future, indeed the world’s, may hinge on this question.
This August marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. That “Great War” was many things, but it was most certainly a war of machines, of dreadnought battleships and “Big Bertha” artillery, of newfangled airplanes and tortoise-like tanks. Industrial juggernauts like Great Britain, France, and Germany succeeded more or less in mobilizing their economies fully for war; their reward was reaping the horrors of death-dealing machinery on a scale theretofore thought impossible.
In that summer of 1914, most experts expected a short war, so plans for sustaining machine-age warfare through economic mobilization were lacking. Confronted by trench warfare and stalemate on the Western Front which owed everything to modern industrialism and machinery, the “big three” antagonists strove to break that stalemate using the means that had produced it: weapons and munitions. Those empires caught up in the war that were still industrializing, e.g. Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, found themselves at a serious disadvantage.
Together, Britain and France forged an industrial alliance that proved (with help from the U.S.) to be a war-winning “arsenal of democracy.” Yet this alliance contributed to an overvaluing of machines and munitions at the soldiers’ expense. For Entente leaders — even for old-school cavalry officers like Britain’s Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig — new artillery with massive stockpiles of shells promised to produce the elusive breakthrough and a return to mobile warfare and glorious victory.
Thus it was that at the Battle of the Somme that began on July 1, 1916, British soldiers were reduced to trained occupiers. Lengthy pre-battle artillery barrages, it was believed, would annihilate German defenders, leaving British troops to slog uncontested across no-man’s land to occupy the enemy’s shattered and empty trenches.
But those trenches were not empty. Germany’s defenses survived Britain’s storm of steel largely intact. And Britain’s soldiers paid the price of misplaced faith in machine warfare: nearly 20,000 dead on that first day, with a further 40,000 wounded.
The Somme is but one example of British and French commanders being overwhelmed by the conditions of machine warfare, so much so that they placed their faith in more machines and more munitions as the means to victory. After underestimating the impact of technology on the battlefield up to 1914, commanders quickly came to overestimate it. As a result, troops were inadequately trained and tactics inadequately developed.
As commanders consumed vast quantities of machinery and munitions, they became accustomed to expending lives on a similarly profligate scale. Bodies piled up even as more economic means were tapped. Meanwhile, the staggering sacrifices required by destructive industrialism drove nations to inflate strategic ends. Industrialized warfare that spat out lead and steel while consuming flesh and bone served only to inflame political demands, negating opportunities for compromise. Total victory became the only acceptable result for both sides.
In retrospect it’s remarkable how quickly leaders placed their faith in the machinery of war, so much so that military power revved uncontrollably, red-lined, then exploded in the faces of its creators. Industrialized destruction and mass slaughter were the predictable outcomes of a crisis whose resolution was driven by hardware — more weaponry, more machinery, more bodies. The minds of the men who drove events in that war could not sanction negotiation or compromise; those were forms of “weakness” that neither side could accept. Such murderous inflexibility was captured in the postwar observation of novelist Virginia Woolf that “It was a shock to see the faces of our rulers in the light of the shell fire. So ugly they looked — German, English, French — so stupid.” Note how she includes her own countrymen, the English, in the mix of the ugly and the stupid.
In World War I, Carl von Clausewitz’s dictum of war as an extreme form of politics became tragically twisted to war as the only means of politics, with industrialized mass destruction as the only means of war. The resulting failure to negotiate a lasting peace came as no surprise since the war had raced not only beyond politics, but beyond the minds of its military and political leaders.
The Great War had unleashed a virus, a dynamic of destruction, that would only be suppressed, and even then only imperfectly, by the wanton destruction of World War II. For what was Auschwitz but a factory of death, a center for mass destruction, a mechanized and murderous machine for efficient and impersonal slaughter, a culmination of the industrialized slaughter (to include mass gassing) of World War I?
The age of mass warfare and mass destruction was both catalyst for and byproduct of the age of machinery and mass production. Today’s age is less industrial but no less driven by machinery and mass consumption (which requires a form of mass destruction inflicted largely on the environment).
Aerial drones and cyber warfare are already providing disturbing evidence that the early 21st century may yet echo its predecessor in introducing yet another age of misplaced faith in the machinery of warfare. The commonality remains the vulnerability of human flesh to steel, as well as human minds to manipulation.
A century has passed, yet we’re still placing far too much faith in the machinery of war.
You’ve probably seen the headline: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is gutting the Army to numbers not seen since the sleepy days before Pearl Harbor! Senior Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain have already declared that these cuts are DOA (dead on arrival) in the Senate. Why? Allegedly because they endanger our national defense. Naturally, such claims are often politically-motivated. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has already gone on record as claiming that President Obama prefers to fund food stamps and other social entitlement programs to funding the military at adequate levels.
Should we be worried? Conor Friedersdorf has an excellent article at The Atlantic to explain why Hagel’s proposed cuts to today’s Army should not be compared to the Army’s end strength in 1940. The U.S. military has obviously changed greatly since then. Today, the military relies much more on technology as “force multipliers.” There is simply no military on the planet as high-tech and capable of projecting power as the U.S. military. Moreover, because we’re not fighting simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we simply no longer need as many soldiers in the Army as we did during the Surge years.
Today’s military is far less concerned with end strength than it is with capabilities. I recall talking to an Army lieutenant colonel and experienced battalion commander in Iraq. He explained that one of his infantry companies (of approximately 100 men) could easily defeat an enemy battalion (of approximately 500 men). He wasn’t boasting; just stating facts. An American company, assuming it could tap its technology as well as all of its fire support units (artillery, helicopters, and close air support from the U.S. Air Force), would simply move faster and hit harder and more accurately than its enemy. Again, it’s not about numbers; it’s about capabilities.
The US military is enormously powerful. Its naval and air assets are second to none. So is its ability to hit hard at a distance. So is its equipment — its force multipliers — from divisional/brigade levels down to the platoon/squad level. Reversing the old Soviet dictum, in this case quality has a quantity all its own.
To suggest that Hagel’s proposed retrenchment in Army end strength would return us to 1940 is the ultimate in ignorance — or the ultimate in deliberate disinformation for political gain.
America’s weakness has nothing to do with its military. America’s weakness is the rampant dishonesty of its political discourse. Even adding a million soldiers to our Army’s rolls won’t fix that.
A concern I have about the new borderless digital world is its ephemeral nature. Even though I keep a blog and write a lot online, I still prefer books and hardcopy. I clip newspaper articles. I file them away and then occasionally resuscitate them and use them in class when I teach.
Hardcopy has a sense of permanence to it. A certain heft. Whereas our new digital world, as powerful as it is for instant access and personal customization, seems much more ephemeral to me.
I know similar complaints have been made throughout history. The proliferation of books was deplored as leading to the decline of visual memory skills. Television was equated with the end of civilization, with the medium becoming the message.
Perhaps what I’m truly lamenting is the slow decline of context, together with the erosion of deep memory. The digital world we increasingly inhabit seems to encourage an ephemeral outlook in which history just becomes one damn thing after another.
To switch metaphorical images, the dynamism and flash of the digital world is much like a landscape with lots of beautiful shiny leaves and glistening flowers to attract our attention.
Yet, at least in our minds, the landscape is rootless. Our gaze is enraptured, our minds are intrigued, but the moment is fleeting, and we fail to act. We fail to act because we are entertained without being nurtured.
Let’s take smartphones, for example. With their instant access to data, they seem to make us very smart indeed. But access to knowledge (data recall) isn’t intelligence. There’s simply no substitute for deep-seated intellectual curiosity and the desire to learn.
Smart phones are useful tools — a gateway to a dynamic digital world. But they’re not making us any smarter. Perhaps they’re helping us to connect certain dots a little faster. But are we connecting them in the right way? And are they the right dots to connect?
Those are questions that smartphones can’t answer. Those are questions that require deep, contextual, thinking. And group discussion. Think Socrates and his followers, debating and discoursing. And acting.
Sometimes it’s best to disconnect from the matrix, find a quiet place for reflection, sink down some roots, and hit the books. Then find other informed people and bounce your ideas off them. Collisions of minds in informed discourse. Competing ideas feed the completing of actions for the common good.
As the Moody Blues might say, it’s a question of balance. The astral planes of the digital world can open new vistas, but let’s not forget the need to return to earth and get things done.
Bracing Views 