{"id":52919,"date":"2025-05-08T10:31:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=52919"},"modified":"2025-05-08T10:31:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:31:54","slug":"too-much-bombing-not-enough-brains-the-real-evil-empire-may-surprise-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/08\/too-much-bombing-not-enough-brains-the-real-evil-empire-may-surprise-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Much Bombing, Not Enough Brains: The Real Evil Empire May Surprise You"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Originally published at TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s latest war (now on pause<\/a>) \u2014 the one in Yemen against the Houthis \u2014 was hardly noticeable here. Or rather it would have been barely noticeable if Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hadn\u2019t shared plans<\/a> for the first air strikes there with his wife and others in a private Signal chat that just happened to include the editor of the Atlantic <\/em>magazine. But other than that obvious headline-making goof, it\u2019s barely been news. Yes, if you were paying close attention, you might have seen that, six weeks after those strikes began, the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> \u2014 in what\u2019s now known (with a bow<\/a> to President Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish-American War of the nineteenth century) as Operation Rough Rider \u2014 that more than 800 targets had been hit in that country. And then there was the news that just the first few weeks of that new war had already cost U.S. taxpayers close to $1 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But if you truly wanted to follow what was happening there in all its distant grimness, you would have had to pay attention to the website Antiwar.com<\/a>. Here\u2019s the news I recently noticed there when it came to America\u2019s latest war: Between March 15th and April 24th, the U.S. launched 750 airstrikes<\/a> on Yemen and claims to have killed hundreds of Houthi rebels. However, at least 63 civilians were killed, including 11 children, and 150 were injured by U.S. airstrikes from March 15th to April 15th. More recently, there were those 68 people killed<\/a> by a U.S. airstrike at a detention facility for African migrants in Yemen\u2019s northwestern Saada province. And don\u2019t forget the 80 people<\/a> (including five paramedics) killed and another 150 wounded at a Yemeni fuel port on the Red Sea. And that\u2019s the way the killing of civilians goes \u2014 on and on and on, with almost no one in this country paying the slightest attention \u2014 Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tim Kaine (D-VA), who have indeed protested it<\/a>, excluded.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Houthis took down a number of American MQ-9 Reaper drones, worth $30 million each, and, oh yes, one jet plane that essentially fell off<\/a> the deck of one of the two aircraft carriers the U.S. positioned in the Red Sea to hit Yemeni targets, while the ship was maneuvering to avoid Houthi attacks.<\/p>\n

And so indeed it went (and went and went) in just the latest American war of these years of repeated (and deeply unsuccessful) conflicts. And though Donald Trump has stopped the bombing for the time being, who knows when it might start up again? In the meantime, in his 112th piece<\/a> for this site<\/a>, let retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore, author most recently of \u00a0American Militarism on Steroids: The Military-Industrial Complex, Unbounded, Uncontained, and Undemocratic<\/em><\/a>, fill you in on a country that, in some sense, no longer knows what peace is (even if we hardly notice anymore). ~\u00a0Tom\u00a0Engelhardt<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The Real Evil Empire May Surprise You<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Serving In (or Thinking About) the U.S. Military for 40 Years<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

By William J. Astore<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Forty years ago this month, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. I would be part of America\u2019s all-volunteer force<\/a> (AVF) for 20 years, hitting my marks and retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2005. In my two decades of service, I met a lot of fine and dedicated officers, enlisted members, and civilians. I worked with the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps as well, and met officers and cadets from countries like Great Britain, Germany, Pakistan, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. I managed not to get shot at or kill anyone. Strangely enough, in other words, my military service was peaceful.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong: I was a card-carrying member<\/a> of America\u2019s military-industrial complex. I\u2019m under no illusions about what a military exists for, nor should you be. As an historian, having read military history for 50 years of my life and having taught it as well at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, I know something of what war is all about, even if I haven\u2019t experienced the chaos, the mayhem, the violence, or the atrocity of war directly.<\/p>\n

Military service is about being prepared to kill. I was neither a trigger-puller nor a bomb-dropper. Nonetheless, I was part of a service that paradoxically preaches peace through superior firepower.\u00a0The U.S. military and, of course, our government leaders, have had a misplaced \u2014 indeed, irrational \u2014 faith in the power of bullets and bombs to solve or resolve the most intractable of problems. Vietnam is going communist in 1965? Bomb it to hell and back. Afghanistan supports terrorism in 2001? Bomb it wildly. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in 2003? Bomb it, too (even though it had no WMD). The Houthis in Yemen have the temerity to protest and strike out in relation to Israel\u2019s atrocities in Gaza in 2025? Bomb them to hell and back<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sadly, \u201cbomb it\u201d is this country\u2019s go-to option<\/a>, the one that\u2019s always on the table, the one our leaders often reach for first. America\u2019s \u201cbest and brightest,\u201d whether in the Vietnam era or now, have a powerful yen for destruction or, as the saying went<\/a> in that long-gone era, \u201cIt became necessary to destroy the town to save it.\u201d Judging them by their acts, our leaders indeed have long appeared to believe that all too many villages, towns, cities, and countries needed to be destroyed in order to save them.<\/p>\n

My own Orwellian turn of phrase for such mania is: destruction is construction.\u00a0In this country, an all-too-offensive military is sold as a defensive one, hence, of course, the rebranding of the Department of War as the Department of Defense. An imperial military is sold as so many freedom-fighters<\/a> and -bringers. We have the mega-weapons and the urge to dominate of Darth Vader and yet, miraculously enough, we continue to believe that we\u2019re Luke Skywalker.<\/p>\n

This is just one of the many paradoxes and contradictions contained within the U.S. military and indeed my own life.\u00a0Perhaps they\u2019re worth teasing out and exploring, as I reminisce about being commissioned at the ripe old age of 22 in 1985 \u2014 a long time ago in a country far, far away.<\/p>\n

The Evil Empire<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I went on active duty in 1985, the country that constituted the Evil Empire on this planet wasn\u2019t in doubt. As President Ronald Reagan said<\/a> then, it was the Soviet Union \u2014 authoritarian, militaristic, domineering, and decidedly untrustworthy. Forty years later, who, exactly, is the evil empire? Is it Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia with its invasion of Ukraine three years ago? The Biden administration surely thought so; the Trump administration isn\u2019t so sure.\u00a0Speaking of Trump (and how can I not?), isn\u2019t it correct to say that the U.S. is increasingly authoritarian, domineering, militaristic<\/a>, and decidedly untrustworthy? Which country has roughly 800<\/a> military bases globally? Which country\u2019s leader openly boasts<\/a> of trillion-dollar war budgets and dreams of the annexation<\/a> of Canada and Greenland? It\u2019s not Russia, of course, nor is it China.<\/p>\n

Back when I first put on a uniform, there was thankfully no Department of Homeland Security, even as the Reagan administration began to trust (but verify!)<\/a> the Soviets in negotiations to reduce our mutual nuclear stockpiles. Interestingly, 1985 witnessed an aging Republican president, Reagan, working with his Soviet peer, even as he dreamed of creating a \u201cspace shield\u201d (SDI, the strategic defense initiative<\/a>) to protect America from nuclear attack. In 2025, we have an aging Republican president, Donald Trump, negotiating with Putin even as he floats the idea of a \u201cGolden Dome<\/a>\u201d to shield America from nukes. (Republicans in Congress already seek $27 billion<\/a> for that \u201cdome,\u201d so that \u201cgolden\u201d moniker is weirdly appropriate and, given the history of cost overruns on American weaponry, you know that would be just the starting point of its soaring projected cost.)<\/p>\n

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, fears of a third world war that would lead to a nuclear exchange (as caught in books of the time like Tom Clancy\u2019s popular novel Red Storm Rising<\/em>) abated. And for a brief shining moment, the U.S. military reigned supreme globally, pulverizing the junior varsity mirror image of the Soviet military in Iraq with Desert Storm in 1991. We had kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all, President George H.W. Bush exulted<\/a>. It was high time for some genuine peace dividends, or so it seemed.<\/p>\n

The real problem was that that seemingly instantaneous success against Saddam Hussein\u2019s much-overrated Iraqi military reignited the real Vietnam Syndrome, which was Washington\u2019s overconfidence in military force as the way to secure dominance, while allegedly strengthening democracy not just here in America but globally. Hubris led to the expansion of NATO<\/a> to Russia\u2019s borders; hubris led to unipolar dreams of total dominance everywhere; hubris meant that America could somehow have the most moral as well as lethal military in the world; hubris meant that one need never concern oneself about potential blowback<\/a> from allying with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan or the risk of provoking Russian aggression as NATO floated Ukraine and Georgia as future members of an alliance designed to keep Russia down.<\/p>\n

It was the end of history (so it was said) and American-style democracy had prevailed.<\/p>\n

Even so, militarily, this country did anything but demobilize. Under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, there was some budgetary trimming, but military Keynesianism remained a thing, as did the military-industrial-congressional complex. Clinton managed a rare balanced budget due to domestic spending cuts and welfare reform; his cuts to military spending, however, were modest indeed. Tragically, under him, America would not become<\/a> \u201ca normal country in normal times,\u201d as former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick once dreamed. It would remain an empire \u2014 and an increasingly hungry one at that.<\/p>\n

In that vein, senior civilians like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began to wonder<\/a> why this country had such a superb military if we weren\u2019t prepared to use it to boss others around. Never mind concerns about the constitutionality of employing U.S. troops in conflicts without a congressional declaration of war. (How unnecessary! How old-fashioned!) It was time to unapologetically rule the world.<\/p>\n

The calamitous events of 9\/11 changed nothing except the impetus to punish those who\u2019d challenged our illusions.\u00a0Those same events also changed everything as America\u2019s leaders decided it was then the moment to double down on empire, to become even more authoritarian (the Patriot Act, torture, and the like), to go openly to \u201cthe dark side<\/a>,\u201d to lash out in the only way they knew how \u2014 more bombing (Afghanistan, Iraq), followed by invasions and \u201csurges\u201d \u2014 then, wash, rinse, repeat.<\/p>\n

So, had we really beaten the Vietnam Syndrome in the triumphant year of 1991? Of course not. \u00a0A decade later, after 9\/11, we met the enemy, and once again it was our unrepresentative government spoiling for war, no matter how ill-conceived and ill-advised \u2014 because war pays, because war is \u201cpresidential,\u201d because America\u2019s leaders believe that the true \u201cpower of its example\u201d is example after example of its power, especially bombs bursting in air.<\/p>\n

The \u201cAll-Volunteer\u201d Force Isn\u2019t What It Seems<\/strong><\/p>\n

Speaking as a veteran and a military historian, I believe America\u2019s all-volunteer force has lost its way. Today\u2019s military members \u2014 unlike those of the \u201cgreatest generation\u201d of World War II fame \u2014 are no longer citizen-soldiers. Today\u2019s \u201cvolunteers\u201d have surrendered to the rhetoric of being \u201cwarriors<\/a>\u201d and \u201cwarfighters<\/a>.\u201d They take their identity from fighting wars or preparing for the same, putting aside their oath to support and defend the Constitution. They forget (or were never taught) that they must be citizens first, soldiers second. They have, in truth, come to embrace a warrior mystique that is far more consistent with authoritarian regimes. They\u2019ve come to think of themselves \u2014 proudly so \u2014 as a breed apart.<\/p>\n

Far too often in this America, an affinitive patriotism has been replaced by a rabid nationalism. Consider that Christocentric \u201cAmerica First\u201d ideals are now openly promoted by the civilian commander-in-chief, no matter that they remain antithetical to the Constitution and corrosive to democracy. The new \u201caffirmative action\u201d openly affirms faith in Christ and trust in Trump (leavened with lots of bombs and missiles against nonbelievers).<\/p>\n

Citizen-soldiers<\/a> of my father\u2019s generation, by way of contrast, thought for themselves. They chafed against military authority, confronting it when it seemed foolish, wasteful, or unlawful. They largely demobilized themselves in the aftermath of World War II. But warriors don\u2019t think. They follow orders. They drop bombs on target. They make the war machine run on time.<\/p>\n

Americans, when they\u2019re not overwhelmed by their efforts to simply make ends meet, have largely washed their hands of whatever that warrior-military does in their name. They know little<\/a> about wars fought supposedly to protect them and care even less. Why should they care? They\u2019re not asked to weigh in. They\u2019re not even asked to sacrifice (other than to pay taxes and keep their mouths shut).<\/p>\n

Too many people in America, it seems to me, are now playing a perilous game of make-believe. We make-believe that America\u2019s wars are authorized when they clearly are not. For example, who, other than Donald Trump (and Joe Biden before him), gave the U.S. military the right to bomb Yemen<\/a>?<\/p>\n

We make-believe all our troops are volunteers. We make-believe we care about those \u201cvolunteers.\u201d Sometimes, some of us even make-believe we care about those wars being waged in places and countries most Americans would be hard-pressed to find on a map. How confident are you that all too many Americans could even point to the right hemisphere to find Syria or Yemen or past war zones like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq?<\/p>\n

War isn\u2019t even that good at teaching Americans geography anymore!<\/p>\n

What Is To Be Done?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you accept that there\u2019s a kernel of truth to what I\u2019ve written so far, and that there\u2019s definitely something wrong that should be fixed, the question remains: What is to be done?<\/p>\n

Some concrete actions immediately demand our attention.<\/p>\n

*Any ongoing wars, including \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d and the like, must be stopped immediately unless Congress formally issues a declaration of war as required by the Constitution. No more nonsense about MOOTW, or \u201cmilitary operations other than war.\u201d There is war or there is peace. Period. Want to bomb Yemen? First, declare war on Yemen through Congress.<\/p>\n

*Wars, assuming they are supported by Congressional declarations, must be paid for with taxes raised above all from those Americans who benefit most handsomely from fighting them. There shall be no deficit spending for war.<\/p>\n

*Americans are used to \u201csin\u201d taxes for purchases like tobacco and alcohol. So, isn\u2019t it time for a new \u201csin\u201d tax related to profiteering from war, especially by the corporations that make the distinctly overpriced weaponry without which such wars couldn\u2019t be waged?<\/p>\n

To end wars and weaken militarism in America, we must render it unprofitable. As long as powerful forces continue to profit so handsomely from going to war \u2014 even as \u201cvolunteer\u201d troops are told to aspire to be \u201cwarriors,\u201d born and trained to kill \u2014 this violent madness in America will persist, if not expand.<\/p>\n

Look, the 22-year-old version of me thought he knew who the evil empire was. He thought he was one of the good guys. He thought his country and his military stood for something worthy, even for \u201cgreatness\u201d of a sort. Sure, he was na\u00efve.\u00a0 Perhaps he was just another wet-behind-the-ears factotum of empire. But he took his oath to the Constitution seriously and looked to a brighter day when that military would serve only as a deterrent in a world largely at peace.<\/p>\n

The soon-to-be-62-year-old me is no longer so na\u00efve and, these days, none too sure who\u2019s evil and who isn\u2019t. He knows his country is on the wrong path, that the bloody path of bullets and bombs (and profiting from the same) is always perilous for any freedom-loving people to travel on.<\/p>\n

Somehow, America needs to be put back on the freedom trail that inspires and empowers citizens rather than wannabe warriors brandishing weapons galore. Somehow, we need to aspire again to be a nation of laws. (Can we agree that due process is better than no process?) Somehow, we need to dream of being a nation where right makes might, one that knows that destruction is not construction, one that exchanges bullets and bombs for ballots and beauty.<\/p>\n

How else are we to become America the Beautiful<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Follow\u00a0TomDispatch\u00a0on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and join us on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer\u2019s new dystopian\u00a0novel,\u00a0<\/em>Songlands<\/a>\u00a0(the final one in his Splinterlands series),\u00a0Beverly Gologorsky\u2019s novel\u00a0<\/em>Every Body Has a Story<\/a>,\u00a0and Tom Engelhardt\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>A Nation Unmade by War<\/a>, as well as Alfred McCoy\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<\/a>, John Dower\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II<\/a>, and Ann Jones\u2019s<\/em> They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America\u2019s Wars: The Untold Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

William J. Astore<\/strong>, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a\u00a0TomDispatch<\/em> regular<\/a> and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views<\/a><\/em>. His video testimony for the Merchants of Death Tribunal is available\u00a0<\/span>at this link<\/a>. His new book, made up of the 110 pieces he wrote for TomDispatch, is American Militarism on Steroids: The Military-Industrial Complex, Unbounded, Uncontained, and Undemocratic<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 William J. Astore<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published at TomDispatch. Washington\u2019s latest war (now on pause) \u2014 the one in Yemen against the Houthis \u2014 was hardly noticeable here. Or rather it would have been barely noticeable if Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hadn\u2019t shared plans for the first air strikes there with his wife and others in a private Signal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-52919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Serving In (or Thinking About) the U.S. Military for 40 Years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52919"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52930,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52919\/revisions\/52930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52919"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=52919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}