By Eric Anschutz, June 2, 2010
This column is an updated version of one that I wrote on Memorial Day, 2008. Sad to say, not much has changed since then. Our soldiers are still dying in counterproductive wars.
Sidsel and I watched the Memorial Day Concert. The concert, which comes to us every year from the Mall in Washington, DC, presented, as always, stirring renditions of the songs that stir our patriotic emotions. I view that kind of “celebration” of our fallen heroes with mixed emotions. Those young people whose lives are taken by war do of course merit every honor we can bestow upon their memory. Yet, as we pay tribute to those who have fallen in war, we know that more young kids are dying every day in wars that continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that more will die in yet more wars that are all but certain to be fought in coming years.
Seated in the front row of the Memorial Day Concert audience were a number of soldiers brought to the concert from nearby Walter Reed Army Hospital. They were beautiful young kids, most with missing limbs, some with terrible body and facial burns, all sitting stoically in wheelchairs. Seated alongside them were the parents, widows and small children of some who gave their lives in Iraq. While we recognize and honor the fallen, we need to be asking ourselves how might we bring this unending slaughter of our young to an end?
I read some time ago about a young soldier who in 2004 had suffered the concussive effects of one of the ubiquitous Improvised Explosive Devices that seem to line the roads in Iraq and Afghanistan. His brain injuries were such that he was left totally paralyzed, unable to speak or to move any part of his body. After four years of therapy this young man is now able to lift an eyebrow, but no one is certain that he understands anything. This now 24-year old young man is living at home with his mother (poor, black and altogether wonderful) who tends him with love and pride, as one would tend a baby, hopeful against all odds that one day he will return to some kind of life.
For me these tributes to “our boys” ring hollow when they are delivered by politicians who are only too ready to keep sending still more young men and women into wars that are not only wrong and unnecessary – but are by every metric actually counterproductive to our national interests. Yet, we have raised the ante in both Afghanistan and Iran by committing more troops to the former and threatening ever-tighter sanctions and implied military action against the latter. General Petraeus has ordered the sending of Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and perform reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate. And in response to the heightened tensions between North and South Korea we are now conducting joint naval operations there and have placed on alert the 35,000 US troops in South Korea – thereby injecting ourselves ever more deeply into that unendingly dangerous and peril-filled arena.
President Obama did, in his recent speech to the West Point graduating class, set forth what has been termed a “new national security strategy” rooted in diplomatic engagement and international alliances, repudiating his predecessor’s emphasis on unilateral American power and the right to wage preemptive war. “…America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation. We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice – so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and they face consequences when they don’t.”
There is in fact nothing “new” in Obama’s words. From the man who promised change, we get the continuing rhetoric of a self-appointed world policeman. When we proclaim that “nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities,” we set our nation up as the judge of whether other nations are meeting their responsibilities. When we proclaim that “they face consequences when they don’t,” we commit ourselves to the imposition of those consequences. While this kind of bombast stops well short of unilateralism and threats of preemptive war, it is also well short of the kind of “change” that Obama promised in his campaign renunciation of “dumb wars.”
I know that Obama agonizes over the killing and maiming that are the inevitable result of war. But so did Bush. There is in fact only one way to avoid the tragedy of maimed bodies and empty lives we see every Memorial Day, and that is to implicitly (if not explicitly) renounce war as an instrument of national policy. European nations have essentially done that, with the possible exception of England where the government staunchly supports us in every conflict we choose to undertake – over the objections of its people. Though Russia has had regional conflicts (Chechnya, Georgia, Afghanistan), no Russian troops are based outside its borders. Nor does China have troops based outside its borders; indeed, China proclaims and vigorously enforces a policy of non-interference in the affairs of other states. (That is why China is so reluctant to join us in sanctions against North Korea and Iran.) The rest of the world is tired of confrontation and war. It is only our country that has the misguided notion that we need to station more than 400,000 of our troops across the world to “maintain order and stability,” and to fight the in Afghanistan against an elusive enemy whose weaponry is chiefly roadside bombs and suicide bombers.
When will we learn? When will we honor our fallen and profoundly wounded soldiers in the only way that matters: stop going to war. Stop spending our national treasure on such weaponry as aircraft carriers; they cost in the neighborhood of $10 billion each, not counting the planes (we have 11 carriers and are building another , no other nation has more than one, most have none). Stop bluster and embrace diplomacy; focus on building our national infrastructure, educate our young, and become the world’s leader in green technologies. Only then will Obama have delivered on his promise of change. As I said in my column of two years ago: How about another national holiday, perhaps as an extension of Memorial Day? We could call it “World Peace Day,” and dedicate that day to a nationwide pondering of ways to avoid future wars.