Sorry, Caitlin. Your fantasy will remain just that for the simple reason you are picking on the wrong people and seeking the wrong elements of change. Focusing on your designated military/industrial shadow gummint is not even close to step one in the process of getting us out of places like Afghanistan.
Right now aside from some thinkers on the left and right coasts, the majority is so focused and afraid of the things they don’t know….Islam, the terrorists who are not there (but COULD they be? shiver, shiver), North Korean missiles, that the wars we are fighting that cost a couple of hundred lives here or there are irrelevant and immaterial so long as the idea that it keeps us something called “safe” is kept foremost in minds and hearts. We are being protected by “tha Troops.”
Afterall, don’t we ALL support “tha Troops”? I mean, who does NOT support “tha Troops”? They are our heroes, after all. And those two or three that died when that helicopter crashed or that roadside bomb went off and blew their feet and heads to smithereens? Who were they, those few? Why they were some of “tha Troops”.
Faceless.
They were all volunteers, weren’t they? They didn’t HAVE to go and get dead on some dusty street in some godforsakanistan, did they? They weren’t YOUR brother or MY son or grandson or daughter, were they? For that matter Caitlin, you’ve likely never worn a flak jacket nor done much more than carp on the Internet, so the war isn’t PERSONAL to you, is it?
No. The Wars aren’t PERSONAL to anyone at all. They are fought by what we have: “tha Troops”. To make us “safe”. Isn’t that all right?
We in the developed world no longer need to fight our own wars. They are fought by “tha Troops”. Our wars are no longer fought by our citizens, by the sons and daughters of people like you and me, but by “tha Troops”, the faceless heroes who are paid to slog through the dust and die.
And that right there is the problem. Our people…those like you and me…no longer need sully ourselves with the dirty business of fighting our wars. My grandchildren will likely not be drafted nor face even the remotest chance of any sort of service to their nation (in any form). Nor will yours, nor hers or his, or theirs: our neighbors. Most people don’t even know a “troop” let alone know what it is like to actually serve a cause that they may not want, but MUST serve.
Once upon a time it wasn’t this way. Once upon a time, perhaps well before you were born, if there was a war it was likely that every guy would be called on to go. Once upon a time if it was important enough to do some shooting or be shot at, it was assumed that all of us, we citizens, would defend out nation, interrupt our lives and perhaps give it up for that designated cause. Once upon a time it was pretty damned hard to make a case for doing the shooting or being shot at. Once upon a time.
And I remember when it became too painful for us citizens to count corpses and caskets filled with those who didn’t want to serve but did so anyway. And once upon a time, gradually the will to blindly support “tha Troops” and their mission changed, becoming a will to end a war.
So, perhaps it is a faceless military/industrial complex that is driving the ship, but that complex doesn’t make babies that too soon might become “tha Troops.” And if you want to rein in that complex of mongers and shadowy gummint types, you simply must find a way to make it very personal to those who are making the babies that fuel the machine.
Until and unless you or someone else can figure out how to make those distant wars that never end be brought directly to the hearts in your house and the one next door; until the caskets that roll off the transports at that big Air Force Base have a name on them that a lot of people recognize as belonging to a son or daughter who served even though they didn’t want to, there is little human reason to stop.
So long as “tha Troops” are just our heroes instead of our sons and daughters, “tha Troops” are expendable, your fantasy so many electrons floating in the ether.
And the military/industrial complex and its product of carnage continues.
