The Ethics of War:
As the years of age mount up, I see so many things different than as a young more uninformed know it all. In the most sarcastic vein maybe in youth I thought I knew it all and now, as an older survivor of the two earliest stages of life----maybe now I know I know it all. Even I, in my most self absorbed moment can see the absurdity of that.
War is good example of an activity many view differently as time passes. As a kid war was not much different from a sport contest. The Cowboys were the good guys, the Indians were the bad guys. The Brooklyn Dodgers were the good guys, the Yankees were the bad guys. It was all cut and dried. As I recall, the only good Indian was Tonto---a sort of Indian Step-n-Fetch-It. Back then War seemed straight forward enough. If someone like Hitler sent armies to capture other countries it was necessary to organize armies to stop him and those soldiers who did so were genuine heroes. That war, with the exception of the more recent Balkan War and first Iraq war may have been the last legitimate war this country ever waged. War was different back then, there was no volunteer army and all segments of society got drafted. Furthermore everyone in the country was required to sacrifice in assorted ways, not just the soldiers. It was kind of a common cause with common sacrifice. Today, our armies consist of those who choose a career of fighting, for whatever the purported reasons given for any particular fighting----whose military adventures now comprise the biggest industry in the country---in reality the biggest economic engine, outside the War on Drugs, which generates jobs and economic prosperity. The ethics of war and guns and death have become increasingly irrelevant. Even when the costs of war exceed the capacity to pay, it is now of no matter---we borrow money from other countries, give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, and bail out fraudulent speculators so the mirage of 'everything is just fine' can continue a bit longer.
It took me many years to realize how wars increasingly served as a strong economic engine for prosperity. It became the one industry which this country used for economic domination of the world. The vast majority of weapons loose across the globe were made by, and distributed by, the United States. In my earlier years military marches, parades, and patriotic songs gave me goose-bumps along with a feeling that this country was always right. If our President said some leader was bad I believed it. Every time we invaded another country, always of course for their own good, I supported it. When our Presidents said we had to fight in Vietnam to save us from some sort of domino effect of Communism, which would domino itself right across the ocean somehow and our great nation would fall, I believed them. Like most everyone I thought this was going to be a cakewalk for we had the most powerful military equipment in the world. It did seem strange, since we were killing them like flies and literally bombing their communities back into the stone age, that we could not win. It is hard to recall exactly when I realized winning had absolutely nothing to do with saving our own country from anything, that the whole shameless slaughter was driven by blind patriotism and economic interests. It took even more years for me to realize our foreign policy was being driven more and more by our now mammoth military industrial complex. Our biggest industry had become dependent on war for it's insatiable economic appetite. It didn't seem to matter much that this economic appetite was responsible for the needless and shameless slaughter of increasingly vast numbers of innocent victims across the globe. The reality was that war had become an economic necessity, and like the domestic War on Drugs, a politically effective way to garner votes. If we would not, or could not, find jobs for kids in the urban and rural ghettos we could at least lock them up and any politician who promised to lock them up longer increased his/her vote total. With the availability of modern methods of manipulating the baser emotions of the public, it became increasingly easy to package for the public images of domestic urban and rural slime balls who needed to be put in jail for longer and longer periods of time, along with foreign slime balls all over the globe whose existence required military bases and men to hunt them down before they toppled a government we propped up with economic and military support, all such support which just happened to be good for our own economy.
Vietnam caused a lot of people to rethink the ethics of what we were doing to that country. As Ali stated, "I ain't got nothing against no Viet Cong and refuse to go over and kill them". With the passage of time the protests grew larger and eventually so widespread that our government had to back down, close down the war, and bring the troops back home. Lesson learned? Not really. In a really deft maneuver, the military industrial complex, with it's huge economic engine, created the concept of a voluntary army. By removing any threat of personal involvement or danger, the George Bushs' of the world, the religious and political right, and assorted patriots with braces on their brains, would energetically support empire building----a logical expansion of our 'manifest destiny'.Of course the empire would be built over the dead bodies of a volunteer army. A neat bonus to these sort of ventures would be domestic full employment, all kinds of jobs relating to this massive global military deployment. For the Dick Cheneys' of the world visions of lucrative government contracts danced in their heads. To keep the vast amount of money flowing required active military engagement, in various forms, all over the globe. It became no longer engagement in military activity which was difficult to sell to the American public, disengagement became the hard sell.
MANIFEST DESTINY. This seemed so noble, so harmless, so sensible, so necessary back when America first began to use the term. We were here, we wanted the land, the Indians were in the way, they had to go and we had guns. I have often thought about the ethics involved. What about 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'? Let's face it, sometimes religious principles are useful and fit neatly into our activities and other times they become an impediment. America, at the time Europeans found it, was not really a sovereign nation with any singular government, singular army, centralized control over anything. In addition, it was a vast unpopulated country. Using reason to formulate an ethical solution is not particularly hard for a situation like that. With so much land there is no reason why one group could not have had sovereign control over part of the land and the other group have control over the rest. Let's just admit the Indians deserved statehood, their own sovereign nation, just a surely as displaced Palestinians deserve their own sovereign nation. Furthermore, if one group is going to displace another---for logical reasons, the group doing the displacing owes the displaced group assistance to develop a prosperous existence. With time, manifest destiny extended to South America for whom we then declared ourselves some sort of big brother protector. All of South America was declared off limits to foreign interference---except for us of course---whose manifest destiny gave us a sort of a God bestowed right to determine the political and economic destiny of the entire South American continent. The result is not very impressive.
No one could argue America did not have a hell of a lot of which to be proud, and the Statue of Liberty became a symbol of hope for others all across the globe. Practically every large society in history which became a prosperous and military power evolved two mentalities: One was that they were particularly blessed by God, singled out by God for the good blessings; and second the nation then embarks on some form of empire building. Reason and history should serve to put the brakes on both, but reason never prevails. Where is any evidence that God has ever had any long term favored nation or favored group? There simply is none. If there are no long term favored groups then one would have to postulate God favors this group for a while and then another group for a while and thus it continues like some sort of flavor of the times. Why is there this human need to construct a God Who is some sort of petulant temperamental prejudicial puppeteer responsible for all the good and bad things that happen to individuals or nations? The advantage humans have in the created evolutionary process is the ability to reason. What kind of future lies in store for humans as this evolutionary process proceeds depends on the extent to which human reason can deal with ever changing times.
In the context of the thoughts above I no longer feel the same way about "God Bless America', 'under God we trust', 'with God's help we can win this or that war', 'may God help this or that person or nation', or any other contrived statements which implies God is on this side or another side. The only legitimate question left is whether God ever interferes with His created evolutionary process. If reason can generate any answer here it is beyond my reasoning ability. Killing, as a defensive measure to protect oneself or a nation from an unprovoked military attack, is logically defendable. War, to help defend another country from external attack is defensible. War, to protect genocide within another country is defensible as long as there is a fair process to characterize the killings as genocide. After that war is not defensible. Deliberate interference with the politics or economics of another sovereign nation, which obviously could lead to war, is indefensible. In the early history of this country, certainly in the minds of the founding father's, meddling in the affairs of other sovereign countries was a big no-no. With the exception of Teddy Roosevelt and the Mexican Wars this concept of non meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations held up until after World War II.
After World War two, for maybe innocent enough notions, America decided we needed military bases across the globe. We kind of insisted we needed to be the policeman of the world, for the good of the rest of the world, and to protect ourselves from Communism. Never, in the entire history of our world, has any nation ever really benefitted very long from empire building. There is no population of any sovereign nation who appreciates military occupation via military bases and the subsequent propping up of some externally favored government by the occupying military forces. Many of the attacks on Americans across the globe, including 9/11 were not exactly unprovoked attacks. Al Qaida only came into existance after we established military bases in Saudi Arabia. The idea that we are over here minding our own business and others are attacking us is simply nonsense.
Based on the principles upon which this country was founded:
There is no country in the world with designs on capturing the U.S. and taking over our country, therefore why are we attacking other countries?
We have no business attacking sovereign countries because we don't like their form of government (which more accurately means not the form of government but whether they follow our economic agenda).
We have no business planting military bases across the globe in sovereign countries. (Like we would ever allow that, especially military forces from countries of a different religion).
We have no business with pre-emptive military attacks on other nations. If we do this then other countries have the same right, including terrorist groups.
We have no business selling military equipment across the globe so that third world governments can terrorize their own people with the weapons.
Nuclear weapons should be banned, for ethical reasons, period. That means all countries, not us deciding who can or who cannot have nuclear weapons.
If any country refuses to sell us goods at market prices we do have the right then to use military force to force free trade. That takes care of the oil nonsense.
There is no moral basis for attacking poor countries, leveling their communities, creating chaos so that thugs terrorize their population while we drop bombs which kill civilians almost indiscriminately.
We have no business torturing suspected anybodies. The info gained is rarely worth much, is often downright misleading---which generates even more unjust arrests, and gives the green light for other groups to follow suit. What really is the difference between beheading someone vs launching some sort of missile bomb which blows up a bunch of people. At least the beheaders know exactly who they are killing.
Live and let live was the foreign policy motto of our country's founders and we need return to that wonderful philosophy.
We desperately need to lead by example in the world, not demanding things right and left at bomb-point.
We need to focus our money and efforts on humanitarian and environmental needs, not spending most of our money on maintaining a military industrial complex whose function today is mostly to keep the pockets of the well connected peddlers of govt military contracts brimming with absurd profits, fostering religious and political intolerance, and creating an ever increasing number of terrorist groups determined on revenge for the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by our 'freedom' fighters'. We are spreading freedom alright, the kind of freedom which means 'nothing left to lose'. Ask the Iraqis.
Part 2 to be continued.
