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Externalizing the Cost of War
By Charles Sullivan
03/10/06 "ICH"
-- -- It must seem odd to the world that while our
nation is coming apart at the seams, and every last shred of decency
is being severed from the cloth of conscience, all we can do is
watch American Idol and Survivor. According to author Mike Green
(The Whole Truth about the U.S. War on Terror), there are one
hundred and ninety-two recognized nations on earth, and the U.S. has
troops stationed in one hundred and thirty-five of them. In total,
we have in excess of four hundred thousand troops occupying a
substantial majority of the world. The nation with the second
largest number of troops deployed is Great Britain with thirty-five
thousand, followed by France with twenty-three thousand. Apparently,
bringing democracy to the world requires an extensive presence and
lots of weapons. If only that were what this is about. It is really
about hegemony, domination, global empire.
Perhaps America’s insatiable demand for entertainment is in fact a
form of self medication whose delivery mechanism is television,
rather than the hypodermic needle. Mind-numbing, irrelevant,
sensory-depriving entertainment is a method to kill the pain of a
truth that laves ceaselessly upon the shores of our eroded
conscience—a truth so painful that we must suppress it at all cost.
It is American Idol, a program whose mass appeal I have never
understood, that keeps the white noise of reality at bay and allows
so many to ignore the world’s pain and misery.
Reality television does many things. But one thing I am quite
certain that it does not do is portray reality. Cheap and shallow
entertainment only dulls the senses, like imbibing alcohol in excess
to keep us comfortably numb, safely insulated from the reality that
our nation is foisting upon the world. For many of the world’s
people, America has reduced their reality to piles of broken rubble;
lonely hours of endless terror called Shock and Awe; the filth and
stench of secret gulags where torture is implemented on a scale
known only to the CIA. The disquieting loss of life and its impact
upon families is beyond the pale of comprehension. Genocide and
ethnic cleansing are not democracy and they never will be.
The cries of anguish can barely be heard above the din of our own
personal struggles in a society that values profits above people.
Better turn up the volume on the television to drown out the screams
of The New World Order’s democracy. We wouldn’t want to feel
uncomfortable about what the president is doing in our name. The
suffering and anguish of faceless, nameless people of other
nationalities is a small price to pay for the level of comfort we
enjoy. As long as we do not allow reality to come rushing at us all
at once, we can manage to live with ourselves. There is safety in
ignorance—the refuge of all self-loathing cowardice. Thank God, we
are a Christian nation steeped in a tradition of puritanical
religion, with only the blood of the native peoples on our grasping
white hands. Let us pray.
Ask no questions and you will receive no answers. Ask the wrong
questions and you will get the wrong answers. But with the right
questions everything comes into clear focus and understanding
becomes possible. Be warned, however, that if you choose to know
truth that it will frequently repulse you and make you sick to your
stomach. But truth alone will set us free—so know it we must.
The fact that our government spends so many of our tax dollars on
the implements of death, on militarism and weaponry, and so little
on humanitarian causes tells the story of America. Fifty two cents
of every tax dollar finds its way into the coffers of the Pentagon
in some form. The consequences are visible both at home and abroad.
This explains why America is seen as the Great Satan in the Middle
East and beyond. How would you feel if you and your kin were the
recipient of American democracy, delivered through the sites of an
AK-47 or a carpet bomb?
No matter how hard we try we cannot escape the truth and its
consequences. America is still the greatest purveyor of violence on
earth. We neglect our own poor even as we impoverish the rest of the
world, subjecting them to imperial rule and colonialism. We are the
only nation to have used the atomic bomb. If this is democracy, the
world can stand no more of it. So let us party as if there were no
tomorrow. Let us dance and have a good time as we ignore the ice
bergs that drift through the darkness in silence and pretend that
our Titanic is not sinking. We’ll have a wonderful time—right up
until the cold dark waves wash over us and carry us into the void.
Reality has been so altered here that speaking truth is akin to
living in an insane asylum. Behind the walls of empire speaking
truth equates to treason—an act of sedition. Either the inmates do
not realize they are out of their minds, or they pretend that
insanity is healthy and normal. Irrationality makes perfect sense to
them in their state of dementia and denial. Dwelling among the mad
is itself maddening for those who remain rational and intelligent,
and caring of the needs of others. It would be easy, even rational,
to leave them to their own self-destructive devices. But this is our
home and we have a moral obligation to set things right. We owe it
to the world to try.
We must cease to invest in death and destruction. A bad tree will
never bear good fruit. Let us invest in hope and life. Our military
should not be the iron fist of oppression acting at the behest of
capitalism and empire. It should exist purely for defensive
purposes. Let other people empower governments of their own
choosing. Our chief export should not be terrorism and militarism—it
should be our humanity and our reverence for life. The evil and
corrupt cabal at the head of this government is not representative
of the great majority of the American people.
Those who choose to serve in the military should only do so as
conscientious objectors. They should refuse to take up arms against
other people who pose no threat to them or their country, people
with whom in fact they share much in common. Let us send the chicken
hawks—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice and the other cheer leaders
for war—to assume their rightful place on the front lines of the
armed conflict they foment. Let their final resting place be in the
Arlington National Cemetery, where they have sent so many others.
When it is the blood of the ruling class that flows, rather than the
working class, there will be an abrupt end to war. No person of
conscience should serve empire in any capacity. It is easy to spill
the blood of other people; it is easy to borrow other people’s
courage when you have none of your own; however, when your own blood
is involved, war is no longer an abstraction. It becomes personal
and costly, as well as sobering. Externalizing the cost of war upon
others is an unforgivable act of moral cowardice. Let them do their
own damned fighting!
We should be able to live in such a way that we do not feel
compelled to apologize for being American. Most of us are good and
decent people who do not believe in world domination or the
subjugation of others. Many of us realize that we have more in
common with the average world citizen—the Iraqi, the Iranian, the
Chinese, the Brazilian and the Russian, than we have with our own
political leaders. It is the rulers who send their servants to do
horrible things to people who have never done us harm—people with
the same needs and desires that we have. Working people should not
wage war with other working people. We should wage war with the
plutocrats that have hijacked our country. If the rulers want war,
let them have it; but let them be the ones to do the fighting and
the dying. War making is easy for those who are insulated from its
consequences. We must make war as costly for our leaders as it is
for us. To internalize the cost of war upon those who wage it is to
end war.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, social activist and free lance
writer living in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He can be
contacted at
earthdog@highstream.net
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