| Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism |
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| Written by Chris Floyd | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, 06 March 2010 00:33 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All who draw the sword will die by the sword. -- Yeshua Ha-Notsri, Palestinian dissident, c. 33 CE. I. Nor is "victory" in war proof against these deleterious effects. For the brutalization, moral coarsening, corruption and concentration of elite power that attend every war do not simply disappear from a society when the fighting stops. They persist, like microbes, in myriad forms, working with slow, corrosive force to degrade and deform the victors. Indeed, victory in battle often leads a society to enshrine war's most pernicious attributes: violence is ennobled, and becomes entrenched as an ever-ready instrument of national policy. Militarism is exalted, the way of peace dishonored: cries of "Appeasers! Cowards! Traitors!" greet every approach that fails to brandish the threat of extreme violence, that fails to "keep all options on the table." The apparent "lesson" of victory – that there can be no right without armed might to win and safeguard it – quickly degenerates into the belief that armed might is right. (William Astore has an excellent article here on how the collision with Nazi Germany infected America's military with a continuing admiration for the German war machine.) Military power becomes equated with moral worth, and the ability to wreak savage, unimaginable destruction through armed violence -- via thoughtless obedience to the orders of "superiors" – becomes a cherished attribute of society. War is no longer seen as a vast, horrific failure of the human spirit, a scandalous betrayal of our common humanity, a sickening tragedy of irrevocable loss and inconsolable suffering – although this is its inescapable reality, even in a "good" war, for a "just" cause. (And of course no nation or faction has ever gone to war without declaring that its cause is just.) Instead of lamenting war, and girding for it, if at all, only in the most dire circumstances, with the most extreme reluctance, the infected society celebrates it at every turn. No national occasion – even a sporting event! – is complete without bristling displays of military firepower, and pious tributes to those wreaking violence around the world in blind obedience to their superiors. Oddly enough, when a modern nation consciously adopts a "warrior ethos," it casts aside -- openly, even gleefully -- whatever virtue that ethos has historically claimed for itself, such as courage in battle and honor toward adversaries. In its place come the adulation of overwhelming technological firepower and the rabid demonization of the enemy (or the perceived enemy, or even the "suspected" enemy), who is stripped of all rights, all human dignity, and subject to "whatever it takes" to break him down or destroy him. Thus our American militarists exult in the advanced hardware that allows "soldiers" to slaughter people from thousands of miles away, with missiles, bombs and bullets fired from lurking, unreachable drones high in the sky. (A recent study shows that even by the most conservative reckoning of who is or isn't a "militant," at least one third of the hundreds killed in the Bush-Obama drone campaigns in Pakistan are clearly civilians.) The drone "warriors" -- often living in complete safety and comfort -- see nothing but a bloodless image on a screen; they face no physical threat at all. This is assassination, not combat; it reeks of cowardice, and dehumanizes everyone it touches, the victims and the button-pushers alike. Yet our militarists -- most of whom, of course, have somehow never found the time to fight the wars they cheer for -- wax orgasmic about this craven weaponry. In the transvaluation of values that militarism produces, cowardice becomes a martial virtue. Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Laureate, pushes forward with plans for the "Prompt Global Strike" system of "conventional" super-missiles that can rain down massive death -- unstoppable, undeterrable, without warning -- anywhere on the planet within an hour. All this, while expanding shorter-range missile "defense" systems that bristle with blatantly offensive potential, and intent, all over the world. Plus spending billions to "modernize" the nuclear arsenal, ensuring that it stays effective enough to murder the entire earth, while weeding out some "redundant" warheads as a PR gesture. Meanwhile, the drone programs -- emblazoned with names that proudly proclaim their savage nature: "Predators" and "Reapers," launching "Hellfire" missiles into sleeping villages -- keep expanding relentlessly. As noted by Nick Turse -- who is doing invaluable work detailing the deadly nuts and bolts of the militarist empire and its profiteers -- the Pentagon is drooling over visions of vast robotic forces filling the heavens and roaming the earth, even down to the smallest crevice. He rightly notes the main purpose of this massively funded R&D: to make war "easier," less deadly to "our side," and thus more palatable to the public:
But while Turse outlines this potential nightmare in grim detail (the whole piece should be read in full), we are of course beset by present nightmares in horrific plenty. And few are more chilling than the ruling establishment's astonishingly swift acceptance of outright torture as an open tool of national policy. This acceptance not only includes the increasingly frenzied praise and championing of torture by the circle of war criminals and accomplices led by Dick Cheney; in slightly more restrained tones, it goes right across the board among the political and media elite. Torture is now nothing more than a topic for "debate" -- debates which center largely on the relative "effectiveness" of various torture techniques, or else on mindless (not to mention heartless) hairsplitting over the meaning of the word "torture." There is of course a myth that Barack Obama has "ended" the practice of torture. This is not even remotely true. For one thing, as we have often noted here, the Army Field Manual that Obama has adopted as his interrogation standard permits many practices that any rational person would consider torture. For another, we have no way of verifying what techniques are actually being used by the government's innumerable "security" and intelligence agencies, by the covert units of the military -- and by other entities whose very existence is still unknown. These agencies are almost entirely self-policed; they investigate themselves, they report on themselves to the toothless Congressional "oversight" committees; we simply have to take these organizations -- whose entire raison d'etre is deceit, deception, lawlessness and subterfuge -- at their word. And of course, we have no way of knowing what is being done in the torture chambers of foreign lands where the United States often "outsources" its captives, including American citizens. Finally, even if the comforting bedtime story of Obama's ban of torture techniques in interrogation were true, there remains his ardent championing of the right to seize anyone on earth -- without a warrant, without producing any evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing -- and hold them indefinitely, often for years on end, in a legal limbo, with no inherent rights whatsoever, beyond whatever narrowly constricted, ever-changing, legally baseless and often farcical "hearings" and tribunals the captors deign to allow them. Incarceration under these conditions is itself an horrendous act of torture, no matter what else might happen to the captive. Yet Obama has actively, avidly applied this torture, and has gone to court numerous times to defend this torture, and to expand the use of this torture. Many thousands of innocent people have already been forced through the meat grinder of this torture -- at one point early in the Iraq War, the Red Cross estimated that 70-90 percent of the more than 20,000 Iraqis being held by the Americans as "suspected terrorists" were not guilty of any crime whatsoever, much less 'terrorism'. And that is just a single snapshot, at a single point in time, of the vast gulag that America has wrapped around the earth -- a gulag where many have been murdered outright, not just tortured or unjustly imprisoned. And it is still going on, with scarcely a demur across the bipartisan establishment. The heinous and dishonorable practice of torture, physical and psychological, is now an intrinsic, openly established element of American society. Murder, cowardice, torture, dishonor: these are fruits -- and the distinguishing characteristics -- of the militarized society. What Americans once would not do even to Nazis with the blood of millions on their hands, they now do routinely to weak and wretched captives seized on little or no evidence of wrongdoing at all. We are deep in the darkness, and hurtling deeper, headlong, all the time. II. Nor is it a peculiarly American problem. As Caroline Alexander notes in her remarkable new work, The War That Killed Achilles:
We human beings have been shaped by millions of years of genetic breakage and mutation, all of which is still on-going. We are compounds of chaos, ignorance and error. Our psyches are frail and variegated things, isolated, with each individual consciousness formed from a unique and ever-shifting coalescence of billions of brain cells firing (and misfiring) in infinite, unrepeatable combinations. Beneath this electrical superstructure lie mechanical rhythms and erratic surges of instinct and impulse, dark, hormonal tides and drives that never reach the plane of awareness. In the infancy of our species we began to cling -- fiercely, in fear and desire -- to patterns of behavior, emotion and thought that seemed to bring some sort of order, some containment of the whirlwind within us, and some protection from the dangers, known and unknown, that lurked outside. We began to do "whatever it takes" to preserve these patterns from the ever-present threat of their dissolution in the whirlwind, to impose them, by violence if necessary, on the recalcitrant material of reality -- including the always-unknowable, impenetrable reality of the Other, those mysterious combinations outside our isolated consciousness. The patterns become ingrained, they sink into the substrate where they operate unquestioned and unseen, they become "natural," the way that things must be. Domination and obedience are among the strongest, and most enduring, of these patterns, taking multitudinous forms -- a "local habitation and a name" -- in the ever-changing circumstances of existence. War is their expression writ large. It is in us, it comes from us. But to acknowledge war's intrinsic, universal character does not absolve us of the need to resist it. To say, "Oh, that's just human nature; it's always been this way and always will be this way," is not only a lazy, timorous acquiescence to base instinct, it also posits a settled, even eternal quality to human nature and human consciousness that simply does not and cannot exist. To go against war, to step outside the ingrained behavioral patterns of domination and obedience is indeed an "unnatural" act -- and it feels unnatural, it feels strange, and raw, and frightening. But the deeper fear -- of psychic and physical dissolution -- that lies at the foundation of these ever-more destructive patterns can only be faced down, changed, and wrenched into some more benevolent pattern by embracing the risk and discomfort of stepping forth, of stepping beyond -- literally, "transgressing" -- the boundaries of a wholly imaginary (or even hallucinatory) "human nature." The whirlwind that characterizes the imperfect, breaking, misfiring, evolving reality of human consciousness is not only a producer of (very understandable) deep-seated fears; it is also a force for liberation. Because our nature is not ultimately fixed, we can, literally and figuratively, burn new connections in our brains, we can enlarge our consciousness and extend our empathetic understanding of those strange Others. And we have been doing this, in fits and starts, in lurches and staggers, with much backsliding and many wrong turns -- indeed, in ignorance and error -- for as long as we have been creatures cursed and gifted with self-awareness. We do have the capacity, the space, to resist the patterns of domination and obedience, to seek out new ways of seeing the world, of being in the world, of communing with others. This seems, to me, a worthwhile thing to be getting on with during our painfully brief time on the earth, during our infinitesimal window of opportunity to make some small contribution toward pushing the project of being human -- or rather, becoming human -- down the road, at least a few more steps, in the direction of a better understanding, a broader consciousness, a greater enlightenment. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
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Comments (15)
Michael B
said:
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Here in Ammoland USA Gun Owners Buy 14 Million Plus Guns In 2009 – More Than 21 of the Worlds Standing Armies Combined. This is an evaluation of overall firearms and ammunition purchases based on low end numbers per Federal NIC instacheck data base Statistics. The numbers presented are only PART of the overall numbers of arms and ammunition that have been sold. The actual numbers are much higher. http://www.ammoland.com/2010/01/13/gun-owners-buy-14-million-plus-guns-in-2009/ Well shouldn't the above be reason enough to eliminate the officially sanctioned War Department on The Potomac. Ain't no fuckin' way any country in the world is gonna take over Arkansas or Idaho so no need to keep up the Pentagon pretense eh? Of course we know it's real purpose is as a protection racket for The American Capital Syndicate. We' Merikans seem to like to blow things up. Warm fuzzies all around here in The Homeland. |
Markus Nystrom
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Good things come to those who wait I refer not to the prospect for peace or any beneficial mutation to the twisted human fiber--which, as Mr. Floyd says, we will never get by waiting alone--but to this most recent bale of enlightening words harvested by Mr. Floyd's charmed pen. He had us on tenterhooks for a while, but when he delivered there was no mistaking it--this essay hits heart and mind like a Buick tumbling down a mountain. Three cheers for Chris Floyd. |
Art James, bebop-o, GoodCelery!
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Good Wouk. Yuck links, gads Herman Wouk - In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage abaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. ` I keep thing of what Wouk wrote. Your links ref:` f- 16, names like "Homer" and "Speedo" - kooky. I don't even trust Dick Cheney's Dr. He Dr. Seuss? You wonder how longs is the tail of a Dicky Zong? I "loved" your stinky Links about sports. Disgusting! I hear the Dick C. Snoops have collected video clips. Everything a DC creeps do is viewed by Liz Chaney. Liz and her daddy watch NASCAR and NSA porno. I hear they got on tape Barack O scratching groin. You know. Florida Super Star singers and pitcher? You see `um scratch thee butt of the hick center. The Colts Catcher of the pigskin loves crocuses. The Liz Chaney mission is to play bribe all balls. Liz loves apple pie and country boy Pink Floyd. Careful. Chris Floyd? Ya scratch non detectably. I hope. They bribe? They will show thee Pope. The NSA tells me they can film you pooping. The gadgets can record if you tip Postman. Dr. Seuss records. Doc tell about Prostrate. Dick Cheney views NSA You-Tube. Pees. If you urinate out widows or the Porch? You bet! Dick Cheney views. Liz bribes Floyd too! Yep. Dick and Liz tell St. Pedro and Don Gates! DOD's Gates ask Dick C. to tell St. Pedro! In paradise you get 0-star inn with bugs! You go to bed with bloody red lip whore! NSA records if you sleep with stink bugs! Dick Cheney will tell his happy mortician! Dick's may take up Blues band with Floyd! Chris & Liz & Dick form melancholy band! NSA know Chris Floyd no flush porto pot! This -!- is a rude exclamation point dot.! Next Breaking News? Floyd Wouk @ FOX! bribery. buick? Chris Floyd love Edsel. You facilitate psycho? Run a nail parlor club? Free manicure by Chris? You need honest Wouk? You run group therapy? I hope you forbid hugs! apology vent is therapy. |
Grandma Jefferson
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Grandma is Here... ...if anyone is interested. Just too despairing to comment. |
Bill Jones
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Hey Chris: Newsflash. Corporate Media are whores for the State. Get on over to Google Earth and have a close look at the Taliban/Al Qaeada Stronghold of Marjeh an 80,000 inhabitant Town according to AP It's a flat valley floor with a bunch of fields and a couple hundred houses. google ""southern Afghan town of 80,000 people."" to see the other liars. Funny how that works huh? |
john kelley
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... Secretary of Defense Gates was recently here in Europe and he left us with this morsel of newspeak: "The demilitarization of Europe -- where large swathes of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it -- has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st." ....... The seemingly obvious and reasonable act of "Bringing America Home" will happen only when the vast empire can no longer be financed. An hypothetical demand to dismantle the vast military complex would require engaging one of the most morally and intellectually decrepit legislative bodies ever. These cretins are, indeed, "too fucking lazy and bigoted and unimaginative to prefer peace to hegemony and terrorism", (Mr. Fish). And in any case, the topic is definitely not on the table. As such, "Bringing America Home" as a viable goal seems to me somewhat of a non-starter. Almost utopian. Has a nice jingle to it, though. The powers that be can be brought to their knees only by massive non-compliance. The coming economic crunch could facilitate this kind of resistance. |
scott douglas
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... Chris -- a very powerful piece, much appreciated. Your explication of the corrosive effect of the militarist social -perversion was not lost on me! The orientation of the society at large is writ small, seeded and predetermined in the tiny, stripped down, post-bourgeois family unit - itself, now, almost extinct. The real terror in the West is indeed the friendly, totalitarian overlay that teaches every isolated lad and lasse that endless war is the Nature of Things. I will be 51 years old in days, now, and I continue to wretch-up the poison with which I was filled from infancy. Yes, humanity is plastic; and I deeply believe it is salvageable. But the modern individual, apparently without any uncorrupted institutional aid or understanding, is now tasked with this Herculean mandate: he or she must come to a post-civil understanding. The teachable, limited, isolated consciousness is an illusion. A sane life and a constructive relation to the future of the species can only come with an honest assessment of the madness of the current headlong rush into oblivion in the larger society - punctuated as it is with the needless suffering and squanderous deaths of Millions - and, with the dangerous demand of a personal exploration of the elusive and ever evolving filigree of higher consciousness. One must allow oneself to be experienced by Reality, and then attempt to digest this gnosis through the rough-sieve of the proto-human consciousness - as Chris has so aptly described it - all with the utterly impossible goal of sparking the souls of one's fellow incarnates. All in real time. We have, if lucky, our seventy years...HA! Well. It is hopeless. And yet... Look at Chris write! What a guy! Scott |
John Zientowski
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The assassinations of JFK, RFK, Malcolm X and MLK... were done in a relatively short period of time. The odds that these were acts by random individuals surpasses the limits of possibility. The book, "JFK and the Unspeakable - Why He Died & Why It Matters" by James W. Douglass takes you on a journey to the "Dark Side". |
philip
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... I am a few days late to this party, because i took a short break from the madness to go see the grand canyon and commune with nature. But i just wanted to second the motion of John and highly recommend "JFK and the unspeakable". What a powerful book. Plus of course thank Chris for the fabulous article. You never fail to inspire me. |
chasm
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we have met the enemy and he is us Frequently, I am asked by someone whose worldview I have futilely deflected -- I say futilely because inevitably equilibrium reasserts itself within minutes if not seconds -- a question that never fails to astound me: "Well, if what you say is true, then what is the answer?" "What is the answer?" I respond blankly. "Yes. If all these things you've told me are true, then what do we do about it? What is the answer?" "What is the answer?" I repeat. "Is this some sort of joke?" "What do you mean?" they inevitably respond. "You have told me that the world is a mess and we are killing ourselves and taking most of the rest of nature along with us. Do you have a solution to this? If not, why should I listen to you?" "Are you honestly telling me that you do not know the answer to these things?" I ask. "Every five year old on the planet can tell you the answer. Any human with an ounce of sense or compassion can tell you the answer. We all know the answer. It's just that none of us is willing to do anything about it." And with this brilliant retort, I can widen their deflection by a few degrees and extend its duration by as many as fifteen seconds. And then they forget what I said. But it it true nonetheless. We all know all the answers. But very few of us are willing to do anything about them. And the reason we won't, as far as I've been able to determine, is because it would mean doing the thing we all dread more than death itself. It would mean taking responsibility. It doesn't take much research to reveal that avoiding responsibility is humanity's great pastime. Our religions, our social hierarchy, our work hierarchies, our political hierarchies, our legal system, and pretty much everything else we've invented serves to shuffle off responsibility onto those above, below, or next to us in the hierarchy. No wonder most humans fear anarchy. Anarchists must assume responsibility for themselves. In an anarchic system, there is no one else to blame. One favorite pastime on the Left is to blame the ruling class for every ill (please don't call them "elite"). Please! There is no ruling class. Those self-appointed bozos gorging themselves at the expense of others exist solely at the pleasure of average folk, who created them so that they might live safely and vicariously through them. They are nothing more than blood sucking parasites. We can crush these fat, slimy insects at our whim. And the ruling class knows this and lives in fear that the rest of humanity might some day wake up. They need not worry. Average people only pretend to be ignorant. In truth, they know that the ruling class has no power but what the rest of humanity cedes to them, but to acknowledge that would prevent us from blaming our failures on the rulers and would force us to take responsibility, and we certainly can't have that. So there is no system that we can create that we cannot also corrupt, usually as fast as we've created it. There is no system -- not communism, not socialism, not anarchism, and certainly not capitalism -- that will heal our ills. In fact, such systems are only possible to the degree that we do the real work, which is internal. The system we have reflects our current internal state. So it is human nature we must change if we are to survive as a species. But the stubbornness of our refusal to change is reflected in our conviction that human nature is something unchangeable. Even our linguistics serves the cause of making our nature unchangeable, despite enormous evidence to the contrary. Socialism, communism, capitalism -- we are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Until we're willing to do the hard work of changing ourselves, beginning with taking responsibility for our own lives, we will go nowhere but down. It is a great pleasure to finally read an article on Empire Burlesque that appears to acknowledge this. |
Paul Fernhout
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Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead? Likewise, nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land? Simple persuasive rhetoric was tried, and failed, when Albert Einstein said, with the creation of atomic weapons everything had changed except our way of thinking. The economic argument against war was tried, and failed; see "War is a Racket" by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler: http://www.lexrex.com/enlighte...racket.htm A basic moral argument against war was tried, and failed; see Freeman Dyson's book "Weapons and Hope" than says nuclear weapons are a moral evil, like slavery. A deeper religious argument against war was tried, and failed, see "James P. Carse, Religious War In Light of the Infinite Game, SALT talk" http://video.google.com/videop...5884493114 We even tried public education through TV to create an enlightened citizenry (what high hopes back when TV was created) and that even got corrupted into promoting and celebrating violence. See the book by Diane E. Levin and Nancy Carlsson-Paige "The War Play Dilemma" for ways to deal with that if you have children; I wrote a review of that book here mentioning the key points: http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-...lemma.html So, people have tried, and tried again, and failed to turn the tide, both people in the military and people outside the military. Still, each attempt has contributed, but together they have not yet been enough yet to turn the tide and help the USA transcend militarism and empire. What else can we try that does not just beget more violence? http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whor...lence.html Maybe ironic humor is our last, best hope against the war machines? As was quoted by Joel Goodman of the Humor Project here: http://www.humorproject.com/do...p?number=1 "There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension. So we must do what we can with the third.(John F. Kennedy)" The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream. We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") http://www.beyondintractabilit.../?nid=2430 and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power There are lots of alternative I helped organize here for helping transcend an economy based around militarism and artificial scarcity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery Still, we must accept that there is nothing wrong with wanting some security. The issue is how we go about it in a non-ironic way that works for everyone. The people serving the USA in uniform are some of the most idealistic, brave, and altruistic people around; they just unfortunately are often misled for reasons of profit and power that Major General Butler outlined very clearly in "War is a Racket" decades ago. We need to build a better world where our trusting young people (and the people who give them orders) have more options for helping build a world that works for everyone than "war play". We need to build a better world where some of our most hopeful and trusting citizens are not coming home with PTSD as shattered people (or worse, coming home in body bags) because they were asked to kill and die for an unrecognized irony of using the tools of abundance to create artificial scarcity. |
Fredric Dennis Williams
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The Violent Progress toward Peace The course of militarism is one thing; the course of human progress and war another. As Chris observes, we have been killing each other on a consistent basis for a long, long time. Some nations are more militaristic than others. In time they come to dominate the weaker nations. In time they themselves fall as they misuse their power. The human species, like other life forms, seeks to progress through war. Every life form seeks to preserve itself in a competition for resources. As the Nazarene noted, those who kill are killed. Thus, those who become soldiers, while praised by those who send them off to kill so that their society might dominate, are killed. Slowly, but surely, two things come to pass. The violent fight the wars and are killed off. Societies grow through such violence to become larger and larger -- as we move from family to tribe to nation-state. In the end, one world society is formed. This world society must then be dedicated to the elimination of crime -- warfare on a smaller scale -- primarily through a government in which every part of society is treated justly and those most capable rise to the top. For those of us living in this process of becoming -- and hoping to avoid the destruction of mankind or the planet in the meantime -- it is enough to seek our proper place in the social order, recognizing the wisdom of Yeshua, that we should seek the lowest point, not the highest. And for those looking for a sign, consider the Nazis, heir to the power of Prussian militarism, who gave way to modern pacifist Germany. Or Japan, defeated and now peaceful. It is America, and its collapse that must open the doors to the next step toward peace. Let us pray that it is not a post-nuclear-war peace. The submissive will inherit the earth. |
