War? What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing!
If this one doesn't get me on some sort of list, than what will!?!?!?!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role for the poor,- Black Sabbath, “War Pigs”
America is held together by war. As a country built and maintained on horrific violence, no one can separate the past, present, and future of the United States from its bloody wake.
No country is truly free of violence, the act of state creation itself being a violent one, the U.S. has a deep history of bloodshed, despite its relative youth. A multitude of factors, not least the enduring legacies of chattel slavery and colonialism has led to this. A country that fought two Wars of Independence, one as the oppressed and one as the oppressor, violence has been with the U.S. since its birth.
People like to point out that the U.S. has been at war for 227 years out of its 244 years of existence. A stunning fact, which nevertheless only partially hits the mark. The U.S. has always been at war. War against the black and brown people brought here against their will, war against the indigenous peoples it sought to replace, war against its poor, and downtrodden, “Manifest Destiny,” the carceral system, a lack of social services, policing tactics, Indian Removal, all come from and make up America’s war machine.
The greatest trick the military-industrial complex pulls is hiding in plain sight. On a day-to-day basis many people living in the United States do not interact with the U.S. Military. Despite the U.S. being at war abroad since the inception of the War on Terror a large number of Americans – especially middle-class white ones – do not deal with that fact on a day-to-day basis. Even people who closely follow the news do not experience the material consequences of the war in an immediate way. Soldiers become people seen in memes and unimaginably bad TikToks. Generals go on TV sometimes; tanks seem like a pretty decent unit in Civ VI. American hospitals don’t get burned down, funerals don’t get triple-tapped by a foreign country’s Air Force, our military leaders don’t get assassinated in efforts to “create peace.” War remains far away, always on distant shores.
For many American, the military-industrial complex does have very immediate effects on their lives. The Army preys on poor and minority communities for recruits, promising money and prospects that disappear the second someone wants to collect. It provides the material to police forces that patrol black communities day and night. Its massive hundreds of billions-dollar budget takes away money from programs that could benefit everyone in the United States, not just the companies that make our bombs. It leaves its veterans shattered and broken, struggling to survive outside and in combat zones.
The USAF often saves its worst for those living outside the U.S. Those people, and they are people, not “enemy combatants,” or “casualities,” or “civilians.” They’re people. People who try to live their lives the best they can, despite the constant fear of a black-visored, cameo-armored, gun-toting military force. These people, who have lost brothers, fathers, daughters, sisters, aunts, uncles, family and more, face repression from the U.S. Armed Forces on a daily basis. The USAF preaches a mission of fighting for peace, creating freedom, of stopping war criminals. Despite proving these missions false on a daily basis, it continues as the long arm of the American Empire. Unchecked by seemingly anything, the military acts indiscriminately. War crimes, of which Americans have committed an abundance, go unpunished at all levels while the crimes of other poorer nations act as fodder for the extension of American power.
It can often seem as if the majority of Americans have bought into the twin myths of redemptive violence and peace through strength. These two phrases, foundational to the moral backing for American projection of strength, are oxymoronic. Peace and justice can and never will be achieved through violence and violence alone. And even if it could, the USAF would have no reason to bring it about. The veniality of the American military complex, a complex whose entire goal is to replicate itself, and make money for the people controlling it, would not let it end itself. The United States military force cannot be viewed as morally neutral. Fixing it does not come from simply lowering its budget, or replacing its generals. Full scale demolition of the military remains the only way forward. The government should no longer have it as an instrument of foreign and national policy. Its principles and rules must be thrown in the fire and something new must be forged. The time for the end of the US military hegemony is and must be now.