Twenty years of war has cost the United States trillions of dollars, thousands of its young men and women, and the almost universal condemnation from the rest of the world. Afghanistan and Iraq are in ruins, joining Vietnam and Korea as victims of our military prowess and quest for world domination since World War II.
Perhaps these calamities visited on Third World countries will help us dig deeper into our own national psyche, starting with the myth of good intentions. For each invasion of foreign lands, the American people were offered noble reasons for the carnage. For Korea and Vietnam we were told that our country was fighting for freedom from Communism. For Afghanistan, it was freedom for women. For Iraq it was to punish a dictator who was "killing his own people." Of course, we also understood that the latter two invasions were in retribution for 9/11, a moral judgment that most American citizens accepted. Paying back these Islamist countries also became part of the honorable intentions that most citizens believed in.
To preserve this mythology, other aspects of our system need to be obscured. Like the staggering profits of our weapons makers. No matter who ultimately wins these wars or how many innocents get obliterated, the military industrial complex always comes out on top. We are told that wars break out, and that we must spend our national treasure defending ourselves and doing good in the world. We never conceive that it goes the other way around. That the weapons makers sit in the Pentagon strategizing how they can make billions starting new wars, and then our media comes up with the lies to make it all palatable.
Perhaps the war in Ukraine will be an end to all wars. A nuclear exchange with Russia would terminate most life on earth. But our media never dwells on the negatives of our war making. Perhaps we will go marching off to that nuclear winter with all our patriotic righteousness still intact.
Fred Nagel