Originally published in the Front Range Voluntaryist, Issue #10, December 2017
The war state must love Trump, but not so much in the way you might initially think. Yes, his bombastic saber rattling with North Korea and Iran along with continual drone bombings all over the Middle East certainly help and an elevated troop presence in Western Europe is always good for business, but the biggest advantage afforded the war state are the superficial distractions. Given the “freak out about everything” mentality of the populace these days; the news cycles endlessly focus on the superficial rather than anything of substance, creating a vicious idiot cycle that gives the war state amazing cover to run any number of operations that they see fit, knowing that on the homefront, the populace will be focused on — how to explain this to future generations — some tweets.
Recently in New York, there was an organized “primal scream” event marking the anniversary of the election of Donald Trump. Apparently, that is what is important and will make the world all better: hey guys, let’s scream like a three year old at a bombastic man we don’t like. The “all too consumed with trivialities” crowd can’t be bothered with the reality of US military involvement in SEVEN (that we know of) countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, and Libya. I know, I know, that was only six. Here is disgusting number seven: Yemen, where a brutal multi-years long coalition with Saudi Arabia, in which the US has proffered arms support, air power and encouraged an economic blockade (read: starvation), has decimated of an entire population, one that has never even come close to threatening our beloved “freedoms” and where they are literally vomiting and diarrhea-ing to death. This has irreparably damaged the future of the Yemeni people and has most certainly decreased our security with the only guarantee being assured blowback. General McChrystal calls it insurgent math: where you kill two and create twenty enemies. Historical podcasting legend Dan Carlin refers to this as the ripples of pain. Whatever it is called, the concept isn’t new and it is clear that we are well on our way to creating countless enemies. And yet, the uninformed still ask: why do they hate us? The information is out there and if there was ever something to get outraged about, surely this would qualify. Too distracted to read up on Yemen but want to prove a point for me? Listen to this entire Tom Woods podcast featuring Mid-East expert Scott Horton; it will leave your head reeling as they go through the details of our current military actions, or if you are too busy, fast forward to the 35 minute mark for the sordid reality of the situation in Yemen.
What to do? So you think you can just vote your way to a better foreign policy? Consider this: our “representatives” have hidden behind decades old authorizations of military force signed by people who aren’t even in office any longer. How’s that for representation? Republicans and Democrats have continually acquiesced and tacitly supported wars all across the globe over the previous sixteen years with hardly any objection. Our beloved constitution specifically delegated initiation of war making to congress, yet congress repeatedly runs from that responsibility. This is why that piece of paper doesn’t matter and never could matter when you have fallible human beings skirting responsibility at every chance. We’re often told that that is why our constitution is so great: it is written down, the framework is there, all we have to do is follow it. I’m guilty of following this line of reasoning, but our political climate is consumed with plausible deniability, where our representatives are more concerned with political point scoring than taking responsibility for inflicting unimaginable suffering on an unsuspecting people in a far away land. To wit: they would rather ponder, how will this play with my base? What are the optics for this vote? How can we spin this to make the other party look bad? This is what representation is? This is why it is so important to “get out there and vote?” File this under the myth of representation.
I guess we should not be surprised, our society has been conditioned to —Look! Someone said something insensitive — not have any critical, continuous — AH! He bowed to a foreign leader — thought of any significance, especially when — lapel pin, lapel pin — it comes to the war machine. But we sure do a bang up job fomenting the outrage machine. It’s far easier to go along with the masses and wag a finger at an individual: you, sir, are a bad human and behind the facade of the collective, we all agree. Some vociferously proclaim that they are living in a police state on account of Trump’s “fascism,” ignorant to the fact that it is society writ large that is the police state. When culture shouts, nay, shuts you down, not the state, this is the opposite of a police state. Someone more creative than me can come up with a catch phrase for this phenomenon. We willingly choose to be focused on a typo in a Trump tweet: he did what!?! That is so unpresidential. That handshake was so awkward! We can rally the troops, so to speak, to voice in unison an opposition to one person’s braggadocious demeanor, but do nothing of substance to even feign interest in rolling back the war machine. Outraged citizens pop up out of nowhere to condemn a teacher for using the wrong gender pronoun but nary an outraged voice can be heard over the number of troops and drone bases that we have in Chad, Niger and countless other places.
Our indiscriminate drone bombing policy is now well entrenched in our foreign policy apparatus. We have learned that it is much easier to drone bomb from afar, collateral damage and all, versus the targeted picking up of alleged terrorists and prosecuting them. This lesson has been well learned courtesy of the precedent set by Bush and Obama. Of course, this is all contrary to that feel-good-habeas-corpus-due-process-junior-high-civics-class stuff we all learned growing up. The imagery of the benevolent superpower starts for us at a young age and a large majority of the populace has been conditioned to be complacent with drone bombing and “military actions,” so long as the message is delivered in a genuine, genteel manner (if it is talked about at all). Please, Mr. President, do your warring, just don’t be so brash about it. Tom Woods summed it up best in a recent email: “…we want our presidents to be polite as they’re dropping bombs, apparently. These critics want to get back to traditional “presidential” activity, like the invasion of Iraq, the internment of Japanese Americans, the confiscation of Americans’ gold, the lies about babies being thrown out of Kuwaiti incubators, the bombing of Serbia over bogus claims, the destruction of Libya…Quit the Twitter taunts and get bombing, seems to be the message.” It’s as if we can overlook the realities of military actions so long as we change the phrasing and mask it with feel good slogans on the order of “Operation Enduring Freedom” or “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
How is it so many unflinchingly accept our aggressive foreign policy? The answer lies in the continuous, never-ending pervasiveness of the military image. The military is everywhere, at every sporting event at every level, every church service and at every public event. It has been recently uncovered via documents reviewed via FOIA requests that the Pentagon, CIA and NSA actively influence and edit numerous movies, tv shows and commercials. You can’t escape it. Expanding this even further Eric Hoffer notes in The True Believer (p. 65) that, “The uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death.” The image is everywhere; the illusion of moral superiority. The image is strong and we are often afraid to speak out against it. Most take the tack of blissful ignorance: I’m better off if I just don’t know. Certainly, that is one approach, but another reality is far more menacing: fear. No stranger to the concept of fear of speaking out, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn concisely summed it up in the Gulag Archipelago:
“They just want to make you say things that you know aren’t true. That is what power is.” -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
That is why you stand up for the flag. An alleged symbol of freedom, it has you standing on account of fear: fear of ostracization, fear of condescending looks, fear of violence, fear of what your neighbors would say. This is thought control; this is true progressivism. All must conform to the almighty Federal collectivist view. Don’t think about it, don’t read, don’t challenge the as-written history. It’s all settled, we’ll tell you the sanitized and mythical version. This paragraph is quote heavy but let’s just hammer it home. Jacob Hornberger summarized the reality behind the military image as: “Hegemony. Dominance. Control. Empire. That’s it. That’s what U.S. forces have killed and died for. Not “defending our liberties” but instead to establish, maintain, and expand the foreign hegemony, dominance, control and imperialism of the U.S. government.” We know there is a war on somewhere and we know we are doing the right thing; we are told that every day. There is never a shortage of experts to convince us. We conjure up all the faux outrage over insignificant trivialities much the same way that we imagine our war machine continually and undoubtedly doing good. Again from Hoffer, “We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds…” We are consumed by the imagery and ignorant of the reality.
We focus on the optics of Trump and the war machine drones on. We wonder what the world thinks of us because we elected Trump and the war machine drones on. We eagerly await scrolling through our Twitter feed in the morning to find out about the next great outrage and the war machine drones on. It’s never the wars. It’s never the bombing. It’s never dead families. And what the hell happens when they get drones? Talk about a dangerous precedent. The outrage should be within us all. Oddly enough, the working title for this article was: The U.S. Way of War: You all suck and I do too. Sleep well tonight knowing that your family, your kids and your neighbors aren’t familiar with the sound of a drone coming to bring you “democracy”.
