I think killing my fellow man has to be taught; it is not something that comes natural. Modern soldiers get training not only in shooting a variety of lethal weapons or operating even more lethal machines. Soldiers also get taught shooting at a face, imagining an enemy. It is often an important part of government propaganda to create, in some detail, an enemy. In both Middle Eastern countries where we went to war, it was never against the Iraqi people or against the Afghani people, but to topple an evil dictator or to get our hands on an evil man who found refuge in a country, Yet, after 6 and 8 years we are still there. Now we are there to fight 'insurgents'. Still, not the Iraqi and Afghani people, or even their governments which we established, but now against the bad people who do not want us there.
Does anyone really understand WHY we are still there? To install valid democracies? Did anyone ask us to make democracies, and our kind of democracies, there? Who asked us to be the world's police? Not even the American people. We rescue banks for endangering our (and the world's) economy. How about our expensive wars? They cost us trillions -- although I would not be surprised if someone looked at where those trillions went, and finds that almost all of it went right back to the U.S. Called wealth distribution. From tax payers money to rich corporations.
I have trouble with
that. More trouble because nobody seems to share my trouble.
A few days ago I learned
that 60% of all arms sold in the world come from the U.S. What we spend
on "defense" is more than what all other countries together
spend. Can that be? For what? We now send drones to bomb targets in
a country that is our ally supposedly.
When I look at a map
I can figure out one reason why we are still there -- but that nobody
mentions --: Iran is between our two great armies, a country which we
consider the most dangerous flash point in that part of the world. Isn't
there another flashpoint in the Middle East, a country we give 3 billion
dollars a year to buy our latest weapons; a nuclear nation, roughly
pushing the people who were there, before the later-comers came in numbers?
Two flash points: we very generously support the smallest, and surround
the bigger and far older with all our might. What do we think the rest
of that area thinks? They are not all Arabs, not even all Muslim, but
must it not seem that the United States is taking sides, stirring the
cauldron?
I am ignorant about high politics, but I am curious. Is anybody else curious why our new president seems to have embraced (or have been embraced by) the Military-Industrial complex?
We have the largest
military-industrial complex in the world because we must fight wars,
so we must fight wars because we have the largest, and very lucrative,
military-industrial complex in the world?
An awful lot of people all over the world, including some very famous American leaders, even generals, have expressed the thought that all wars are evil. In the 20th and 21st centuries wars are waged to kill civilians. And for at least half a century we should have learned that enormous power cannot win from an angry population.
And yet, and yet, we
are stuck in the idea of ever more fire power. Faster jets, larger ships,
more troops staggering under 70 pounds of protection and the latest
in weaponry. Does anybody THINK?
We think that in the end force must wins. Not true, not true at all. In the end killing is wasting; it's the big WE who survive. Brothers, sisters, helping each other survive. Killing makes enemies. We think we make war because there is an enemy, maybe it is the other way round, wars make enemies. The most dangerous and destructive wars are wars that change enemy in midstream. We go to war because of dangerous weapons of mass destruction (that weren't there), but then we stay in the war because we now have to build a nation we destroyed. We make war because a country allows a very bad man lives there. The bad man flees somewhere else, but we stay in the country anyway? Every time making a new enemy. The forever wars. Wars with lost goals. We're not clear any more who we are fighting. The enemy hides behind civilians, we say. The civilians are the enemy. Our enemy is whoever is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Civilians.
They know why they are fighting: they want us to go away.
We don't know who we
are fighting: farmer today, insurgent tomorrow. We put thousands of
people in prisons, because they might be terrorists. Then we release
them. Maybe, Or we move them to another prison because -- we cannot
tell you why -- but they might be dangerous to the security of our country.
I can think of a lot of people in high places who I think are dangers
to the security of our country, and they are not even 'enemy combatants'.
One of the Ten Commandments, given to us 2500 years ago, said: Thou Shalt Not Kill,
Could it be said any more simply?
But for 2500 years
devout Jews, Christians and Muslims have "interpreted" that
statement to have nuances, conditions.
No, I still don't believe humans are born killers. But we are suckers for leaders and interpreters who tell us we must fight to the death who they tell us are enemies.
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