(Photo by Bradley J. Boner, Jackson Hole Daily)
I stand with our Quaker Friends on matters of war. I have often written on the topic, as in one 2015 essay, "Rumors of War" in which I took the Obama Administration to task for its continuation of war in Iraq when our military efforts had failed to bring any stability to the region. With the U.S. now ending its longest war, we have an opportunity to reflect upon what we have achieved with our strategies of war.
In late August as U.S. troops were leaving Afghanistan, there were reports lamenting the death of 20-year-old Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum who was on his first tour of duty and whose wife is pregnant with their first child. He was nine months old on 9/11 and one of the last soldiers to die in Afghanistan. Like most of us, I am saddened by this event, but I was even more saddened by what Anderson Cooper on CNN recounted about the soldier. He said that McCollum’s older sister told of how McCollum wanted to be a soldier all his life, and even as a toddler in diapers he loved to carry around a toy rifle. Cooper told it as though it were such an endearing thing, but it highlighted for me how we needlessly groom our young to be fodder for the war machine. There are so many other ways we could guide our young people to serve their country and their society.
“We perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifice”
I am reminded of a scene from the 1964 movie, The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews. I recounted it on my blog ten years ago*. In the film, Charlie Madison, James Garner’s character, appears to be a quite cynical participant in WWII. The movie is set in London in the days preceding D-Day. Charlie Madison is a “dog-robber,” an assistant to the admiral of the Navy. A dog-robber’s job was to “keep his general or admiral well-clothed, well-fed, and well-loved during battle,” and Charlie Madison was apparently the best at what he did. Emily Barham, played by Julie Andrews, is offended by Charlie’s cavalier attitude and the American military officers’ opulent acquisitions of the finest clothes, food, liquor, and perfume when her countrymen are doing without basic necessities in the midst of war. But then they fall in love and everything changes for them.
Emily is a young British driver in the military motor pool. We learn that she has lost many of the people close to her in wartime. Her father, her brother, and her husband – all soldiers, all killed in the line of duty. Charlie is a self-proclaimed coward and will go to any length to stay out of the heat of battle. In a conversation with Emily and her mother, Charlie tells what he really thinks about war:
“I’m not sentimental
about war. I see nothing noble in widows,” he tells Emily’s mother. “Wars are
always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny.
Always against tyranny and in the interest of humanity. So far in this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity.”
Charlie explains that we make things worse by making heroes of the war dead.
His own brother died in battle, “an everyday soldier’s death, no special
heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother
insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. .. Now my other
brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age.”
“We perpetuate war by
exalting its sacrifice,” Charlie Madison says. “It may be the ministers and
generals who blunder us into war, but the least the rest of us can do is to
resist honoring the institution.”
Moving from cinema back to reality, we continue to send our youth to be maimed, and scarred, or killed as in this latest 20-year exercise in which we pour lives and treasure into efforts that have only disrupted and destabilized the region. And it is not just American lives that pay the cost. Think of the entire generation of children in the Middle East who have grown up knowing nothing but war.
In the Interest of Empire
I think the truest
thing our president said when he announced the U.S. military exit was that it is no longer in our best
interest to stay in Afghanistan. The truth is, it was never about
establishing democracy, it was all about U.S. interest. We must realize that The U.S. is an empire and our actions more reflect empire and its preservation
than any so-called democratic values. We weren't thinking democracy when we funded
Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to pester the Russians.
When we planted our empire boots squarely in their country, we said we were hunting down our enemy, the same Osama Bin Laden whom we befriended in our late Cold War strategy against Russia. We also called our invasion of Afghanistan an attempt to let the people form their own government through democratic elections in the interest of freedom. That was just the answer that sounded good. We were actually there for our own interest which was to demonstrate the power of our empire, thereby securing our station in the world and telling ourselves we were safer for it. Ironically, according to an article from the Brookings Institution, our 20-year war in Afghanistan may have contributed to our national decline.
Now that Afghanistan is more of a drain than a promotion of empire, it is no longer in our interest to be there. We can move on and leave the rubble of our bootprints behind for the pawns in our game to deal with.
Make no mistake, though. We are still vitally interested in demonstrating our military power. We will move to another location with our guns and our empire-boasting at the next opportunity. It's what empires do.
It is the way of Empire, but the way of Empire is not the way of life. A young rabbi from Nazareth tried to tell us that over 2,000 years ago.
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*My commentary on The Americanization of Emily is taken from a blog post in 2010, "Charlie Madison's War."
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