{"id":16533,"date":"2011-12-26T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-12-26T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=16533"},"modified":"2011-12-22T15:22:13","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T15:22:13","slug":"fighting-1-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/12\/fighting-1-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting 1% Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Our Wars of Choice May Prove Fatal<\/em><\/p>\n

America\u2019s wars are remote.\u00a0 They\u2019re remote from us geographically, remote from us emotionally (unless you\u2019re serving in the military or have a close relative or friend who serves), and remote from our major media outlets, which have given us no compelling narrative about them, except that they\u2019re being fought by \u201cAmerica\u2019s heroes\u201d<\/a> against foreign terrorists and evil-doers.\u00a0 They\u2019re even being fought, in significant part, by remote control — by robotic drones<\/a> \u201cpiloted\u201d by ground-based operators from a secret network of bases<\/a> located hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the danger of the battlefield.<\/p>\n

Their remoteness, which breeds detachment if not complacency at home, is no accident.\u00a0 Indeed, it\u2019s a product of the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq were wars of choice, not wars of necessity.\u00a0 It\u2019s a product of the fact that we\u2019ve chosen to create a \u201cwarrior\u201d or \u201cwar fighter\u201d caste<\/a> in this country, which we send with few concerns and fewer qualms to prosecute Washington\u2019s foreign wars<\/a> of choice.<\/p>\n

The results have been predictable, as in predictably bad<\/a>.\u00a0 The troops suffer.\u00a0 Iraqi and Afghan innocents suffer<\/a> even more.\u00a0 And yet we don\u2019t suffer, at least not in ways that are easily noticeable, because of that very remoteness.\u00a0 We\u2019ve chosen — or let others do the choosing — to remove ourselves from all the pain and horror of the wars being waged in our name.\u00a0 And that\u2019s a choice we\u2019ve made at our peril, since a state of permanent remote war has weakened<\/a> our military, drained<\/a> our treasury, and eroded<\/a> our rights and freedoms.<\/p>\n

Wars of Necessity vs. Wars of Choice<\/strong><\/p>\n

World War II was a war of necessity. In such a war, all Americans had a stake.\u00a0 Adolf Hitler and Nazism had to be defeated; so too did Japanese militarism.\u00a0 Indeed, war goals were that clear, that simple, to state.\u00a0 For that war, we relied uncontroversially on an equitable draft of citizen-soldiers to share the burdens of defense.<\/p>\n

Contrast this with our current 1% wars.\u00a0 In them, 99% of Americans have no stake.\u00a0 The 1% who do are largely ID-card-carrying members of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower so memorably called the \u201cmilitary-industrial complex\u201d in 1961. \u00a0In the half-century since, that web of crony corporations, lobbyists, politicians, and retired military types who have passed through Washington\u2019s revolving door has grown ever more gargantuan and tangled, engorged by untold trillions<\/a> devoted to a national security<\/a> and intelligence complex that seemingly dominates Washington.\u00a0 They are the ones who, in turn, have dispatched another 1%<\/a> — the lone percent of Americans in our All-Volunteer Military — to repetitive tours of duty fighting endless wars<\/a> abroad.<\/p>\n

Unlike previous wars of necessity, the mission behind our wars of choice is nebulous, confusing, and seems in constant flux.\u00a0 Is it a fight against terror (which, as so many have pointed out, is in any case a method, not an enemy)?\u00a0 A fight for oil and other strategic resources?\u00a0 A fight to spread freedom and democracy?\u00a0 A fight to build nations?\u00a0 A fight to show American resolve or make the world safe from al-Qaeda?\u00a0 Who really knows anymore, now that Washington seldom bothers to bring up the \u201cwhy\u201d question at all, preferring simply to fight on without surcease?<\/p>\n

In wars of choice, of course, the mission is whatever our leaders choose it to be, which gives the citizenry (assuming we\u2019re watching closely, which we\u2019re not) no criteria with which to measure success, let alone determine an endpoint.<\/p>\n

How do we know these are wars of choice?\u00a0 It\u2019s simple: because we could elect to leave whenever we wanted or whenever the heat got too high, as is currently the case in Iraq (even if we are leaving behind a fortress embassy<\/a> the size of the Vatican with a private army of 5,000 rent-a-guns to defend it), and as we are likely to do in Afghanistan sometime in the years after the 2012 presidential election.\u00a0 The choice is ours.\u00a0 The people without a choice are of course the Iraqis and Afghans whom we\u2019ll leave to pick up the pieces.<\/p>\n

Even our vaunted Global War on Terror is a war of choice.\u00a0 Think about it: Who has control over our own terror: us or our enemies?\u00a0 We can only be terrorized in the first place if we choose to give in to fear.<\/p>\n

Think here of the \u201cshoe bomber\u201d<\/a> in 2001 and the \u201cunderwear bomber\u201d<\/a> in 2009.\u00a0 Why did the criminally inept actions of these two losers garner so much attention (and fear-mongering<\/a>) in the American media?\u00a0 As the self-confessed greatest and most powerful nation on Earth, shouldn\u2019t we have shared a collective belly laugh at the absurdity and incompetence of those \u201cattacks\u201d and gone about our business?<\/p>\n

Instead of laughing, of course, we allowed yet more American treasure to be poured into technology and screening systems that may never<\/a> even have caught<\/a> a terrorist.\u00a0 We consented to be surveilled ever more and consulted ever less.\u00a0 We chose to reaffirm our terrors every time we doffed our shoes or submitted supinely to being scoped<\/a> or groped at our nation\u2019s airports.<\/p>\n

Our distant permanent wars, our 1% wars of choice, will remain remote from our emotions and our thinking, requiring few sacrifices except from our troops, who grow ever more remote from our polity.\u00a0 This is especially true of America\u2019s young adults, between 18 and 29 years of age, who are the least likely to have family members in the military, according to a recent Pew Research Center study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The result?\u00a0 An already emergent warrior-caste might grow ever more estranged from the 99%, creating tensions and encouraging grievances that quite possibly could be manipulated by that other 1%: the powerbrokers, money-makers, and string-pullers, already so eager to call out the police to bully and arrest occupy movements in numerous cities across this once-great land.<\/p>\n

Our Military or Their<\/strong> <\/strong><\/em>Military?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we fight wars of choice in distant lands for ever-shifting goals, what if \u201cour troops\u201d simply continue to grow ever more remote from us?\u00a0 What if they become \u201ctheir\u201d troops?\u00a0 Is this not the true terror we should be mobilizing as a nation to prevent?\u00a0 The terror of separating our military almost totally from our nation — and ourselves.<\/p>\n

As Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it recently to Time<\/em><\/a>: \u201cLong term, if the military drifts away from its people in this country, that is a catastrophic outcome we as a country can’t tolerate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behold a horrifying fate: a people that allows its wars of choice to compromise the very core of its self-image as a freedom-loving society, while letting itself be estranged from the young men and women who served in the frontlines of these wars.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an American fact: the 99% are far too remote from our wars of choice and those who fight them.\u00a0 To reclaim the latter, we must end the former.\u00a0 And that\u2019s a war of necessity that has to be fought — and won.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and TomDispatch regular<\/a>.\u00a0 He welcomes reader comments at <\/em>wjastore@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2011 William J. Astore<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 tomdispatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Our Wars of Choice May Prove Fatal – America\u2019s wars are remote from us geographically, emotionally, and from our major media outlets, which have given us no compelling narrative about them, except that they\u2019re being fought by \u201cAmerica\u2019s heroes\u201d against foreign terrorists and evil-doers. They\u2019re even being fought by robotic drones \u201cpiloted\u201d by operators from hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the danger of the battlefield. Behold a horrifying fate: a people that allows its wars of choice to compromise the very core of its self-image as a freedom-loving society, while letting itself be estranged from the young men and women who served in the frontlines of these wars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}