The answer is that we are trying to keep our place as the top dog on the pile. We don’t want to risk the chance that China, or India, or even Japan (before their disaster) could come and knock us off as the leading world power. As an American citizen, I understand that fear. I don’t want to be No. 2 to anyone, especially when I’ve grown up reading, learning and seeing the advantages of being the most powerful nation in the world. My only hope is that our leaders understand the responsibility that is given to them and that they don’t misuse this power. It seems that in the last decade that happened. We mistakenly used our strength for our own gain in a detrimental way to the world. This cannot happen if we want to stay and benevolent dictators of the world.
It seems that we have fashioned ourselves after the great empires of the past as well. The English, Dutch, Galactic, and French Empires of our history all have established military forces outside their borders to protect their economic interests around the globe. For the United States, the last world war provided the perfect excuse to put bases all over Europe, including Germany (who we were occupying in a way) and in other places of the world. At the time this was seen as necessary, and indeed was necessary, to provide the United States with strategic strongholds against the Russians. The question is not was this system of bases important in the past, but is it important today? Who are we protecting ourselves against now? These bases around the world didn’t stop terrorists from attacking us 10 years ago. Who are we defending against? What other world power is there?
I have a good friend who is training to be a fighter pilot at the Air Force Academy. He always talks about how he wants to be stationed over in Germany once he is deployed. I never really thought that was odd. In fact I never really thought that having a base in any foreign country was odd until I watched this video. When looked at in this light, it is impossible not to see the United States as an Empire.
The other question we have to ask is how do we avoid war? Clearly it is not a good thing for the individual human. But for our geopolitical climate it serves several useful purposes. It provides a population check in competing areas. It helps decide who gets natural resources and who will be in charge.
The one thing in the video that I found especially interesting and didn’t know already was the psychology of ‘tricking’ soldiers into killing. We have glorified war, given soaring rhetoric to follow and given them a gun. But we never actually tell them what they are about to do. They are about to kill, maim, and destroy. If they have not accepted this and have not fully come to understand what they are about to do, they cannot cope with it as well. I had never thought about it that way. I have always known that personally, I wouldn’t be suited to war because I know that I couldn’t take a life without serious moral conflict and emotional damage. No amount of desensitizing from video games can make me forget the sanctity of life.
After watching the video in class I really am apauled, but not surprised by the actions of the military. PTSD is an extremely serious problem that so many veterans face. The problem isn’t that we don’t know the extent of the problem or that we don’t know how to help treat the problem but we just don’t help our soldiers. The government may be making strides to fix this but the overwhelming attitude of the military hasn’t changed.
The greatest empathy I could have is with the troops. All men in our society are held to superman standards. We are supposed to be smart, strong, tough, and hide our emotions. While all of these things are desirable traits, they are impossible to be all at once, all the time. When the horrors of war come crashing down upon men who aren’t prepared for it, things can get messy emotionally. This is considered weakness. Some people just don’t have the constitution for war. Some aren’t ready either. They have signed up for something that they don’t fully understand or accept.
All of this only reinforces what we have been talking about in class. There will always be a ruling class. The only thing we can do is try to do the best with the time we are given. And in this case that means that we need to try and influence or persuade the ruling class to heed us.
To be honest, however, that last thought is not entirely true. There is no doubt that rugged independence, industriousness, and a certain quality to never accept ‘no’ as an answer, but we have all been duped by the ruling class. If we were to look at the entire, broad scope of American history there has been an elite group of people that have run this country. It was only a small percentage of businessmen and politicians that were in favor of a revolution in the first place. The rest either were indifferent, ignorant, or Toreys (supporters of the crown). During the Civil War an elite section of the South pushed and prodded until the rest of the South (many of whom didn’t even own slaves) revolted with them and started a new country. In the industrial revolution, we begin to see some of what we have today in a ruling class of business men.
We talked in class a lot about the way things are versus the way things should be. What amazed me most was the graph about the perceived distribution of wealth versus the actual distribution of wealth. In a country where the top 1 percent owns 90 percent of the wealth it is astounding how unaware we are. This and other things that we have talked about show me how soft we have gotten as a country. If something like this had happened in 1840, the country would have been up in arms, literally. We have been a country that has fierily defended our rights. Yet over the past 150 years, we have slowly degraded into an apathetic country that is more interested in Cake Boss and Jersey Shore than the Halls of Congress, or what shitty laws are being made.
The bottom line is that emergencies and disasters are bad. The best we can do is to do the best we can.
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