America’s love of all things military
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Martin Luther King Jr, April 30, 1967.
George Floyd’s murder exposes more than just racism in America. It also exposes a culture of militarism. The trickle-down effect of years of warring, delivered in the form of an 8 minute 46-second knee-to-the-neck chokehold.
We are a country armed to the eyeballs and possessing an arsenal unparalleled in history. Police officers that kill like Derek Chauvin represent the malfunctioning machines of a country on the offensive. It’s not just the state of mind for a cop, it’s the state of mind for a nation.
Our murderous modern history in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq has resulted in the collective loss of about five million lives. Few Americans know this, and even fewer acknowledge it. Carnage of this magnitude is typically associated with Nazi Germany, not a great democracy like America.
It’s no wonder Mike Pompeo attacks the International Criminal Court (ICC) while Trump sanctions it. It’s fine when other countries are investigated for their crimes against humanity. But questions about potential American crimes are considered attacks on our exceptionalism. Justice has no place in the protection of American liberty.
Spurred by racism, George Floyd’s death was fueled by a culture that worships its warriors, regardless of their crimes. From Call of Duty to Guns Galore, and our tradition of showcasing military personnel at sporting events, the American psychic relishes all things military. Socially, it’s obligatory to thank military folk for their service to the country even though we have no idea what that service was or how it was performed. (I don’t observe this rule.)
Far removed from any of the world’s real danger zones, many Americans act as though war is at their doorstep. Strong is the illusion of enemies. Compelling is the need to kill. Many Americans can’t find it on a map but are as sure of China’s pending invasion as they are of the Second Coming.
The misery of others is the silent metric in the American algorithm of greatness. It’s our message to the world not to screw with us. Simply put: we accept killing our own and others in the pursuit of greatness. In 1965 Assistant Secretary of Defense, John McNaughton, authored a short memo that broke down our reasons for being in Vietnam. At the top of his list, he wrote: “70% — To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).” Between the time this memo was written, and our last day in Vietnam in 1975, over two million Vietnamese would die along with fifty-seven thousand U.S. Soldiers. All to maintain America’s “reputation.”
We pounded Vietnam and its neighbor Laos with more bombs than we dropped in the entire second world war. On lush Vietnamese farmlands, we dropped over twenty million gallons of chemical defoliants and destroyed them for generations. Children are still being born with severe birth defects as a result of those toxins.
Nobody was ever held accountable for the Vietnam war. The killing of millions of Vietnamese was never discussed. After the last protest was held, and the last joint smoked, we all went on with our lives and forgot the war. Capitalizing on our loss of life we managed to construct a wall to American patriotism and on it chiseled the names of our fallen. Building on the idea of our greatness made us feel better about the war. It also deflected attention away from the U.S.’s immoral actions against fellow human beings. Forgotten on that wall are the lives of three-and-a-half million Vietnamese that perished during our time in their country. For every American name, fifty-eight Vietnamese died. We never talked about this; it makes people uncomfortable.
“The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait, for all time.” Valery Legasov — Chernobyl
The lie of Vietnam lied in wait. September 11 brought it back to life.
As reckless as anything we did in Southeast Asia, America rained hell on Afghanistan after 9/11. Out for revenge, we lost sight of our reason for being there but succeeded in harming the country and the lives of hundreds-of-thousands of Afghans. When we first arrived, millions of dollars in cash was paid to warlords to round up “terror” suspects. Over one-hundred-thousand men were captured and tortured. Many died, but few terrorists were identified. The documentary Taxi to the Dark Side tells the story in chilling detail.
American disregard for the lives of others fell to an even lower level in Iraq, where it was publicly stated by General Tommy Franks that “we don’t do body counts.” In our war on terror, we were too busy fighting to assess who was being killed. Wasting the lives of innocents is acceptable in the war on terror, particularly if we aren’t counting them. We label these losses “collateral damage.” Our dehumanizing term for the unintended, but certain, consequences of war.
Today, estimates range from hundreds of thousands to over a million Iraqis deaths since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Millions were made refugees. We don’t talk about this in America. It’s an Iraqi problem now, despite being one we created.
The poisonous hate we have shown toward fellow human beings abroad flows through the veins of many Americas. It’s a form of PTSD but at a national level. The warzones we encountered overseas are taking shape at home. George Floyd is America’s collateral damage.
