On Memorial Day, when everyone else was remembering those who fought and died in our various wars, I was remembering Radio Free Europe. I'll tell you why in a second.Â
But, for you youngsters out there RFE was the West's way of undermining post-WW-II authoritarian communist regimes in Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviet Union. They were called the "Cold War," years because it was just that, war minus the killing and destruction. It was a war in which the bullets and bombs were largely replaced by electrons, carrying news and entertainment and the truth - as the West saw it - to those deprived of a free press and freedom of speech.
While some may disagree, I think it's fair to say the West won the Cold War. Russia and Eastern Europe are now free, or at least as free as we are. And, while that's a good thing, they did have to learn, much to their chagrin, that freedom was hardly a solution to their every problem, like unemployment or the search of affordable healthcare. (It seems we forgot to include RFE programming explaining how capitalism is the ultimate game of Yin and Yang.)
Ah, but I digress.
While the West can be said to have won the largely non-violent Cold War, we clearly learned nothing from that success. We even had the exception that proved the rule, Vietnam, a hot war, and a war we lost.Â
Nevertheless we continued launching expensive and destructive hot wars, in places like Lebanon and Somalia and later again in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike the Cold War, in hot wars we get bogged down and bled white until we're forced to leave, apparently none the wiser.
Now we are getting to take that, "how the Cold War was won," lesson again. This time it's being taught in, of all places, the Middle East. It's the so-called "Arab Spring," popular uprisings that are overthrowing or bedeviling authoritarian regimes throughout the region.Â
And again, as happened behind the old Iron Curtain, the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East are information-driven uprisings. It turns out that the pen - (and the microphone and satellite TV and the Internet) - really are  more powerful than guns and bombs when it comes to changing the hearts and minds of the oppressed.
When oppressed people are able to learn the kinds of things their authoritarian governments don't want to know, something begins to stir. When that something reaches critical mass, the masses arise. It really is that simple.
And, despite what the dead-enders in the former Bush administration would like to claim, the US had nothing to do with what happened in Egypt, or Tunisia or Syria. Nothing. If anything, the West was caught flatfooted and had to be dragged to the party. Because these Arab uprisings are genuine grassroot events, driven, not by outside military threat, but by ordinary citizens who, for the first time, are demanding they be heard, and that their rightful needs be recognized and met.
Now ask the key question: just how did all these Arabs even learn they had rights and legitimate demands? Â Al Jazeera and the Internet, that's how. The 2011 versions of Radio Free Europe -- information carpet bombing.
Once empowered by information, Arab youth then employed their new weapons-of-choice, Â the same ones that armed them with the facts in the first place -- the Internet -- to reach out to fellow countrymen and women. They formed their virtual armies of peaceful protestors and, when their strength was sufficient, they filled the streets and, one by one, are bringing down their oppressors. Â (Remember, the US did not knock down the Berlin Wall, those on the other side knocked it down themselves.)
Still the US puts trillions of dollars a year into hot wars. Even though these hot wars cause more harm than good, wars where we kill thousands of very people we claim to be "liberating." Wars in which their homes and villages are destroyed, along with their crops, their livestock, even their children. Then we wonder why they hate us, so e spend billions of dollars more on psychological operation troops who go in afterwards to "win their hearts and minds."Â
Strange? No, that's not strange. It's insane.
Not only are hot wars social and geopolitical disasters, they are also insanely expensive. We won't know for several decades exactly how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost us. But to be sure the final tally will reach well into the low double-digit trillions. The full cost of a war does not stop when the shooting ends. The lion's share of the cost of wars like Vietnam, and Iraq and Afghanistan comes later, in caring for injured soldiers, treating mental conditions like post traumatic stress, and maladies caused by exposure to various harmful substances (remember Agent Orange and depleted uranium?) And there are the social costs that, while difficult to quantify, can devastate an entire generation, marriages, children, even entire communities.
So let's review. What was the lesson of the Cold War? It was that, not only do people want to be free, but information wants to be free as well. And when you free information in places where its been bottled up and held captive, and you facilitate its unimpeded flow to the masses, things tend to take care of themselves, sooner or later, and without the need for boots on the ground or wings overhead.
A Modest Proposal
I would suggest that, if we really want to change countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and such, for the better, the cheapest and most moral and effective way of accomplishing that would be to provide the ordinary people of that region free, universally accessible Wi-Max internet coverage. That's right, blanket the entire region with the same commodity any American can get free at any Starbucks in the US.Â
Instead of dropping bombs, drop pallets of cheap, wi-fi-enabled laptops, millions of the damn things. Drop them like snowflakes and keep dropping them until there isn't a man, woman or child who doesn't have a laptop squirreled away under their bed.Â
And resist the temptation of filling those laptops with our own propaganda too. Instead just configure the browsers so the default homepage is Google.
After that just keep providing free Internet connections. If the countries in question won't allow Wi-Fi towers, then provide connectivity via satellites and airborne transmitters, C140s flying 24/7 providing carpet-like, raw, unfiltered, uncensored, un-propagandized, TV and Internet access.
Then, bring the troops home and just sit back and enjoy the show.Â
As expensive as it might be to provide universal, free satellite TV and Internet to an entire region of the world, it would represent little more than a rounding error when compared to what all out war costs in dollars, the environment, lives and, not to mention, our national character.
(Just for fun... do the math. Say we drop 2 million cheap $300 laptops into a country. That's $60 million. One day of fighting in Iraq at the height of the war was costing us $750 million. Net savings: $690 million  A DAY . Yeah, I know, that doesn't include providing reliable wi-fi, but come on now,  if Starbucks can afford it...)
That's the legacy of Radio Free Europe which, though far from perfect, provided the oppressed of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union just enough real-world information to spark their own revolutions.
The evidence seems to argue in favor of fewer hot wars and more of those successful cold ones.
Maybe the next time President Obama shuffles his Joint Chiefs of Staff, he consider names like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. They seem to be onto something.
