WORLD PEACE OR PATRIOTISM?

WORLD PEACE OR PATRIOTISM?
Ryan “BUGS” Williams- Virden
11-7-10

It’s a fairly normal Sunday for me, straighten up the house a bit, grocery shopping, and settle in to watch some football. As I sat down on my couch and flipped the channel to ESPN’s NFL Countdown Chris Berman greeted me with a task, to reflect on our veterans serving over seas in honor of Veterans Day. I took Boomer up on his challenge and reflected. I want to share those reflections with you.

Let me begin by stating plainly, as a sort of disclaimer, I wish no harm upon anybody, I am also not attacking any one individuals character or motivation. With that being said I find the hyper-patriotism of this week, and truthfully of our society generally extremely disturbing. Let’s take Berman’s challenge seriously, the fact of the matter is we have our military engaged in an illegal occupation of two countries, we have military bases in over 150 countries around the globe (imagine the idea of another country having a military base inside our borders), we are bombing Pakistan, and have aggressively attempted to make war as inconsequential as playing a video game. There is something wrong with this. War is death. In no way, shape, or form should that be celebrated, and I don’t feel that is a very radical stance. Regardless of your political leanings I believe most people would agree violence and death are not things worth elevating. However, what some will say is those things are necessary evils in order to preserve our freedoms, and those that participate in such endeavors should be honored as heroes. Unfortunately this could not be further from the truth. Beyond the legit moral antiwar stance (that should be honored and valued) if we honestly reflect on our military and its role we can see that the United States military has been used solely as a tool for expansion and the securing of American economic interest.

From the Revolution to Afghanistan and everything in-between the ability of the rich to get richer has been a major motivator for US involvement in conflict. I am not writing a book here so I will not go in to great detail but will offer some evidence to support my perspective. During the Revolutionary War only those White males who owned property had a voice, those few WASP’s that we so affectionately refer to as “founding fathers” were not concerned with freedoms in general as much as they were concerned with the freedom to not have to answer to England, and not insignificantly, not pay taxes to the crown. When they won independence they were quick to serve their own interests, and cared little about those left out. The Civil War was fought not because Lincoln was a great humanitarian that wanted to abolish slavery, but rather over the economic future of the United States-- would it be agriculture and slavery or industry and wage slavery? The Emancipation Proclamation did little to end slavery since it only applied to states that remained loyal to the Confederacy, it was people such as Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists that seized the moment and put pressure on politicians to pass the 13th amendment. Iraq just happens to be a strategic key to the Middle East and is sitting on huge amounts of oil; we got involved in Panama for control of the canal, in Indonesia and the south Pacific, in Latin America, the list goes on. Perhaps there is no greater evidence of this truth then our domestic wars, you know the “War on fill in the blank” poverty, drugs, terrorism- it doesn’t matter all of these efforts have resulted in a very few already rich people increasing their wealth at the expense of the very people the efforts were supposedly aimed at helping. The wealth gap has only grown, jails are full of non-violent black and brown folks whose only crime was pursuing one of the very few real economic opportunities available to them, and as we can clearly see Islamophobia is at a fever pitch (for more in depth analysis look into writings by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Ronald Takaki).

This is all of course a cycle that depends on each aspect in order to function. The rich would never and indeed never have fought in their own wars, the majority of infantry and frontline soldiers have always been the poor. Therefore, it is necessary to keep a consistent supply of poor on hand. When you couple that with a pro-military media that can be counted on to send the right message you are left with a decent size pool of socialized young men and women to draw from- even when faced with a hugely unpopular, and drawn out war like Iraq. Shit you can even use videogames as a tool to desensitize future cadets to the realities of war, which as technology increases becomes easier to mask-- as the popular drone bombings, and disturbing videos released by Wikileaks of soldiers massacring civilians in Iraq illustrate.

We have a duty then, as people who care about not just our fellow citizens, but humanity as a whole to tell the truth about war, and more specifically the United States military. The media has no business promoting a pro-military message given the inevitable consequences of having to utilize an armed force. We pay lip service to ideas such as peace and equality, but actively promote the exact opposite when we turn a blind eye to reality. So after taking Chris Berman seriously and reflecting I challenge you to do the same, and ask that you challenge others, and so forth because it is only through those reflections and possible uncomfortable, tough conversations will we make progress towards a more peaceful world.