The militarization of everything (2)

Donald Trump, notorious for his dubious statements, says one thing and does another, which means his talk of reduction of American troops abroad should not be taken seriously, as is evident by the astronomical increase in everything warmongering, not just related to the US army, but to sports, films, advertisements, etc.

The following is the second and last part of an article, titled “The Militarization of Everything” for the ‘TomDispatch’ site by William J. Astore, a retired US lieutenant-colonel and history professor.

Point No. 6. US foreign aid is increasingly military aid. Consider, for instance, the current controversy over the aid to Ukraine that Trump blocked before his infamous phone call, which was, of course, partially about weaponry. This should serve to remind us that the US has become the world’s foremost merchant of death, selling far more weapons globally than any other country. Again, there is no real debate here about the morality of profiting from such massive sales, whether abroad ($55.4 billion in arms sales for this fiscal year alone, says the Defense Security Cooperation Agency) or at home (a staggering 150 million new guns produced in the USA since 1986, the vast majority remaining in American hands).

Point No. 7. In that context, consider the militarization of the weaponry in those very hands, from .50 caliber sniper rifles to various military-style assault rifles. Roughly 15 million AR-15s are currently owned by ordinary Americans. It is a gun designed for battlefield-style rapid shooting and maximum damage against humans. In the 1970s, when I was a teenager, the hunters in my family had bolt-action rifles for deer hunting, shotguns for birds, and pistols for home defense and plinking. No one had a military-style assault rifle because no one needed one or even wanted one. Now, worried suburbanites buy them, thinking they’re getting their “man card” back by toting such a weapon of mass destruction.

Point No. 8. Paradoxically, even as Americans slaughter each other and themselves in large numbers through mass shootings and suicides – nearly 40,000 gun deaths in 2017 alone – they largely ignore Washington’s overseas wars and the continued bombing of numerous countries. But ignorance is not bliss. By tacitly giving the military a blank check, issued in the name of securing the homeland, Americans embrace that military, however loosely, and its misuse of violence across significant parts of the planet. Should it be any surprise that a country that kills so wantonly overseas over such a prolonged period would also experience mass shootings and other forms of violence at home?

Point No. 9. Even as Americans “support our troops” and celebrate them as “heroes,” the military itself has taken on a new “warrior ethos” that would once – in the age of a draft army – have been contrary to this country’s citizen-soldier tradition, especially as articulated and exhibited during World War II.

What these nine items add up to is a paradigm shift as well as a change in the zeitgeist. The US military is no longer a tool that a democracy funds and uses reluctantly. This embrace of the military is precisely what I would call soft militarism. Jackbooted troops may not be marching on US streets, but they increasingly seem to be marching unopposed through and occupying our minds.

As Americans embrace the military, less violent policy options are downplayed or disregarded. Consider the State Department, the US diplomatic corps, now a tiny, increasingly defunded Pentagon branch led by former CIA Chief Mike Pompeo.

Consider President Trump as well, who’s been labeled an isolationist, and his stunning inability to truly withdraw troops or end wars. In Syria, US troops were recently redeployed, not withdrawn, not from the region anyway, even as more troops are being sent to Saudi Arabia. In Afghanistan, Trump sent a few thousand more troops in 2017, his own modest version of a mini-surge and they’re still there, even as peace negotiations with the Taliban have been abandoned. That decision, in turn, led to a new surge (a “near record high”) in US bombing in that country in September, naturally in the name of advancing peace. The result: yet higher levels of civilian deaths.

How did the US come to reject diplomacy and democracy for militarism and proto-autocracy? Partly, I think, because of the absence of a military draft. Precisely because military service is voluntary, it can be valorized. It can be elevated as a calling that’s heroic and sacrificial. Even though most troops are drawn from the working class and volunteer for diverse reasons, their motivations and their imperfections can be ignored as politicians praise them to the rooftops. Related to this is the Rambo-like cult of the warrior and warrior ethos, now celebrated as something desirable in the US. Such an ethos fits seamlessly with the US’ generational wars. Unlike conflicted draftees, warriors exist solely to wage war. They are less likely to have the questioning attitude of the citizen-soldier.

Don’t get me wrong: reviving the draft isn’t the solution; reviving democracy is. We need the active involvement of informed citizens, especially resistance to endless wars and budget-busting spending on American weapons of mass destruction. The true cost of our previously soft (now possibly hardening) militarism isn’t seen only in this country’s quickening march toward a militarized authoritarianism. It can also be measured in the dead and wounded from our wars, including the dead, wounded, and displaced in distant lands. It can be seen as well in the rise of increasingly well-armed, self-avowed nationalists domestically who promise solutions via walls and weapons and “good guys” with guns. (“Shoot them in the legs,” Trump has said about immigrants crossing into the US).

Democracy shouldn’t be about celebrating overlords in uniform. A now-widely accepted belief is that America is more divided, more partisan than ever, approaching perhaps a new civil war, as echoed in the rhetoric of our current president. Small wonder that inflammatory rhetoric is thriving and the list of this country’s enemies lengthening when Americans themselves have so softly yet fervently embraced militarism.

With apologies to the nation, the US is killing itself softly with war songs.

AS/MG