Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
From the Gaza Strip, the Hamas offensive against Israel has been murderously effective. The vaunted and much-celebrated Israeli military was caught by surprise and is responding to the Hamas attacks with its own version of murder, as captured in this announcement:
Israel Defense Minister: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” [emphasis added]
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Here’s a reminder of a stark reality: When President Joe Biden finally ended the disastrous Afghan War in 2021, the Pentagon war budget went up by roughly $50 billion.
The Afghan War was costing America almost $50 billion a year until the war party in DC (both Democrats and Republicans) decided enough was enough. So how could ending a war result in a substantial increase in military spending?
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great “investment” for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don’t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression “making a killing” on the “market.”
To Gordon Gekko’s infamous “greed is good” speech we must now add “war is good.” That war is “right.” That it “works” – at least for America, allegedly.
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan was attacked for visiting a German military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, because that cemetery included forty graves of members of the Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the Schutzstaffel led by the infamous Heinrich Himmler. Reagan’s intent was to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the ending of World War II in Europe, not to celebrate those forty graves among the 2000 in that cemetery. Nevertheless, he was deeply criticized for laying a memorial wreath at Bitburg, as the photo below shows.
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
I remember seeing the first Rambo flick (“First Blood”) in a movie theater in 1982 when I was nineteen and rooting for Sly Stallone’s character against the police and national guardsmen who are sent to kill him. The police think it’ll be easy to subdue one man, but we the viewers know better. As Colonel Trautman, Rambo’s former commanding officer, says in the movie: In war, it’s wise to have “a good supply of body bags” on hand, a telling reminder about the harsh reality of combat.
In “First Blood,” military clothing and the flag offer no protection to John Rambo, who’s treated as a lowlife by the local sheriff
Yet, there’s a deeper meaning to “First Blood” captured near the end of the movie, when John Rambo, having improbably acted as a one-man invincible army (a true “Army of One”), bitterly reflects on his own post-Vietnam experiences. Rambo, breaking down, admits he can’t adapt to regular civilian life. A loner, he feels himself to be a loser, even though he was decorated for heroism in war with the Medal of Honor. Wounded and haunted by war, his soul seared by violence, he surrenders to Colonel Trautman.
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Clearly, on this 22nd anniversary of 9/11, the dogs of war have won and continue to win.
It hasn’t mattered that, over the last 16 years, after a 20-year military career, I’ve written hundreds of articles critical of the military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) and in support of peacemaking and diplomacy rather than war making and gargantuan military expenditures. My writing hasn’t slowed America’s collective march toward nationalism, militarism, and war.
Lately, I’ve been working more closely with antiwar groups. They mean well. America needs them. But they are losing.
