With the recent tragic deaths of three U.S. military personnel in Jordan, due to an attack by an alleged Iranian supported militia, U.S. politicians are pounding their chest while calling for an attack on Iran. By the time you read this essay, attacks in Iran, or more likely elsewhere, may have already occurred.
Never mind the civilian costs of an expanded war, this apparently matters little within the U.S. political caste. This has been clearly demonstrated by the U.S.’ continued support of the civilian slaughter in Palestine–despite much political and moral pressure to do otherwise.
A little noted fact is that during the first three weeks of “shock and awe”, the 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq, an estimated 6,700 civilians were killed (Iraq Body Count). According to the Cost of War project out of Brown University, an estimated 432,093 civilians have died violent deaths due to the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan. According to the same Project, indirect deaths from hunger, disease, and so forth, due to these wars, are estimated at 3.6 to 3.8 million. Most of these are civilian deaths. Additionally, an estimated 38 million people have been displaced or made refugees by the wars. It is not clear whether Libya is included in any of these numbers.
Can anyone claim that any of these countries are better off today than they were pre war? Has the cause of democracy been advanced in any of these nations? Is the world more free of “terrorism” today than it was pre-9/11? If there has been no advance to civilization due to these wars, then why do we sacrifice our children, spouses, siblings, parents, and the children, spouses, siblings, and parents of others, during these nonsensical wars? Even if there had been “advances” to civilization, who legitimately can claim the throne to decide who is to die and who is to live for these supposed righteous crusades? So who is advanced by these wars? Eisenhower’s Military Industrial Complex (MIC) comes to mind, but that is a topic perhaps better left to another time, but it does lead to the following point.
There are two broad categories of people. There are those who believe humankind is inherently violent, cannot change, and will always resort to war; and those who believe humankind is reformable, can rise to a higher spiritual plane, and live in a world that does not resort to war.
Defense contractors, the think tanks which the defense firms fund in order to promote their agendas, lobbyists, U.S’ Senators and House Representatives, and members of the Department of Defense, are generally members of the MIC. They belong in the first category of people who see war as inherent to human nature. There is no effort here to question the authenticity of their beliefs; we cannot peer into the hearts of others. But they are winning the ideological battle, pulling others into their warrior beliefs. This must change.
It would be fine if we could stick the warrior types, and their followers, on an island and let them fight it out. The rest of us, those committed to nonviolence, who believe humankind is capable of better, could then live in relative peace through negotiated positions which, while not always easily achieved or completely satisfactory, are certainly better, and cheaper, than the alternative of war.
Unfortunately, however, the latter group would have to fund the former group on their island of war, because the former group destroys, it does not create; but this would be acceptable in order to prevent innocent civilian deaths. Everyone would be satisfied: the noble warrior class would fulfill their obligatory destinies in accordance with the mythology that humankind is incapable of peace, Meanwhile, civilians would actually live in peace.
But this is not how war happens. In war, civilians are killed, severely wounded, humiliated, forced into homelessness, hunger, migration and so forth.
Here in the U.S., we feel relatively isolated from the travails of war so we are insensitive to the sufferings imposed by war. It is hard to imagine that anyone really believes that the U.S. mainland would be invaded by a foreign adversary. How would this happen?–a foreign adversary is going to dump troops off of boats to take on a well armed U.S. military and civilian population? Our relative isolation diminishes our consciousness of the realities of war. Rather we glorify war through games and entertainment.
Many of us, however, can imagine nuclear strikes on the mainland and the consequent anarchy and revolution which would likely ensue: much of the threat lies within us. The U.S. strategy appears to be to militarily agitate or react, to a point somewhat shy of that which would trigger a nuclear attack on the U.S. mainline. This is risky business.
If there was ever a time for the general public to unite in opposition to the spreading global conflict, now is the time. Not merely for the civilians, many of whom have no interests in geopolitics, but merely wish to marry, breed, and retire; but also for the soldiers who are sucked into these ideological and economic conflicts which determine their fate.
During “shock and awe”, 172 soldiers, mostly U.S., were killed among the coalition forces. Various estimates place Iraqi combatant deaths at between eleven to thirty thousand. The Iraqi soldiers, like their western counterparts, were groomed into ideological beliefs which required their sacrifice in war.
We need a new ideological framework, or the resurrection of an old framework, which is committed to nonviolence, cooperation, and peace. Even though, arguably, this could compromise our consumption patterns as there would need to be a better distribution of goods and services. Our incentives need to change. Not everybody will join this movement, but it must grow and it must be global; nations will not unilaterally disarm.
If global war with possible nuclear consequences is to be avoided, it is the general public, the everyday citizen, who must stand up and say “enough is enough, we must reverse the global movement towards war”. Otherwise, we also, as civilians, could also experience the death, destruction, and humilities of war.
PostScript: Comments are welcomed, civility is requested. Please avoid partisan politics.
Peace begins with us.