{"id":236705,"date":"2023-06-05T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=236705"},"modified":"2023-06-02T05:50:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T04:50:49","slug":"usa-disconnecting-war-from-its-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/06\/usa-disconnecting-war-from-its-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"USA: Disconnecting War from Its Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>31 May 2023 – <\/em>Twenty-two years ago, Congress put sanity up for a vote. Sanity lost in the House, 420-1. It lost in the Senate, 98-0.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Barbara Lee\u2019s lone vote for sanity \u2014 that is to say, her vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force resolution, allowing the president to make war against . . . uh, evil . . . without congressional approval \u2014 remains a tiny light of courageous hope flickering in a chaotic world, which is on the brink of self-annihilation.<\/p>\n

Militarism keeps expanding, at least here in the USA. If there\u2019s a problem out there, option one is to kill it quickly. Problem solved! This simplistic (and utterly false) mindset, which is always present \u2014 the companion of fear \u2014 may have a grip on U.S. politics like never before, as demonstrated in the recent debt-ceiling standoff, in which President Biden came to an agreement with the Republicans that social spending will be slashed but \u201cdefense\u201d spending must continue to expand.<\/p>\n

You know. It\u2019s the only thing that\u2019s truly crucial. Poverty? Collapsing infrastructure? Underfunded schools? Climate disaster? We can worry about that stuff later, but as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy explained to reporters<\/a> recently:<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, we\u2019re always looking where we could find savings . . . but we live in a very dangerous world. I think the Pentagon has to actually have more resources.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the USA is not a country with the maturity to discuss and analyze complex issues, such as the future of the world. Hey, it\u2019s dangerous out there! It\u2019s full of terrorists and dictators. That\u2019s all you need to know. \u201cWeak on defense\u201d is the equivalent of \u201cwants to defund the police\u201d \u2014 a politician\u2019s death sentence by advertising. No matter how much hell war creates \u2014 no matter how many families it displaces, no matter how many children it kills \u2014 we\u2019ve got to be ready wage it, you know, whenever we feel like it. And the mainstream media, in its basic coverage, doesn\u2019t question this or delve into a complex analysis of the world.<\/p>\n

But we are still a country that is slowly and complexly evolving \u2014 no matter that the powers that be, for the most part, don\u2019t know it. Let\u2019s return to that AUMF vote, passed in the wake of the 9\/11 devastation. Barbara Lee, whose father was in the Army, serving in both World War II and the Korean War, knew about the human costs of war. After 9\/11 she was deeply uncertain what the nation\u2019s immediate response should be. She attended the memorial service at the capital, held the day of the vote (and attended by four former presidents plus the sitting president, GWB).<\/p>\n

There, as she told Politico<\/a>, the Rev, Nathan Baxter, as he led the attendees in prayer, called on the nation\u2019s leaders, as they considered how to respond, to \u201cnot become the evil we deplore.\u201d<\/p>\n

His words struck her in the soul. She had planned to challenge AUMF \u2014 she saw serious problems with it \u2014 but now she had certainty. She edited her prepared speech as she returned to Capitol Hill. There, she told her colleagues:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere must be some of us who say: Let\u2019s step back for a moment and think through the implications of our actions today. I do not want to see this spiral out of control.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She had no idea \u2014 until the vote began \u2014 that she\u2019d be the sole member of Congress to vote against AUMF. And soon enough her office was flooded with calls and emails. They were both for her and against her, but many of the latter were vicious. She was called a traitor. She received death threats. Plenty of people, especially as the antiwar movement grew, also declared \u201cBarbara Lee speaks for me.\u201d But the fury of those who hated her vote, who were shocked that she had the audacity to speak the truth, demonstrate the self-feeding loop that war creates. Instantly, all complexity vanishes and you\u2019re either for us or against us. And if you\u2019re against us . . . uh oh. Watch out.<\/p>\n

She also told Congress that day:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are not the sort of words that status-quo USA listens to, even in retrospect. My God, twenty years of war in Afghanistan, eight years of war and unspeakable carnage in Iraq. The U.S. was the official loser (though not it\u2019s military-industrial complex). We\u2019re not any safer; we\u2019re way less safe. But it\u2019s all dismissed with a shrug. \u201cWe live in a very dangerous world.\u201d All we can do is keep upping the military budget and keep refusing to listen to Barbara Lee.<\/p>\n

When will this change? The collective psychology of it goes pretty deep. Perhaps the presence of war in the national psyche bears a relationship to the presence of guns. The United States, as Scientific American<\/a> pointed out, is \u201cthe only country with more civilian firearms than people,\u201d which, according to researcher Nick Buttrick, is a phenomenon that began in the North American South after the Civil War.<\/p>\n

Guns had been tools, handy in rural areas for pest control. Then came the Emancipation Proclamation. Previously enslaved people \u2014 \u201cproperty\u201d \u2014 were suddenly free. They even had some political power. The world was no longer what it once was; the established order was gone. The world, from a white perspective, was suddenly chaotic, dangerous, incomprehensible. And white people were no longer on top. Gradually guns became fetishized as sources \u2014 and symbols \u2014 of strength. \u201cThrough your weapon, you could recreate order,\u201d<\/em> Buttrick said.<\/p>\n

Is that not the U.S. way?<\/p>\n

All you have to do is disconnect the consequences from the trigger, and you can keep pulling it and pulling it.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/span><\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound<\/span> (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at <\/span><\/em>koehlercw@gmail.com<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

31 May 2023 – Twenty-two years ago, Congress put sanity up for a vote. It lost in the House, 420-1 and in the Senate, 98-0. Barbara Lee\u2019s was the lone vote against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force resolution. Militarism keeps expanding. If there\u2019s a problem out there, option one is to kill it quickly. Problem solved!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[867,1817,2009,2797,2462,112,95,70,1594,481],"class_list":["post-236705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-anglo-america","tag-anti-militarism","tag-anti-war","tag-culture-of-war","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-pentagon","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236705","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=236705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236708,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236705\/revisions\/236708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}