America’s Wars as a Bad Novel

A curious feature of America’s wars is their lack of thematic coherence.  Lacking a clear beginning (other than the 9/11 attacks), they also lack a clear end point.  It’s all middle – repetition without meaning, action without progress, like a bad novel that introduces lots of characters but that never goes anywhere.  Look at the rolling cast of characters in charge of America’s wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.  Other than generals who disgraced themselves in ways unrelated to combat performance (David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal), their names are unmemorable.

The American people have largely cast aside the “bad novel” of America’s wars.  They find it boring, repetitive, inconsequential (at least to them).  But that doesn’t mean people aren’t paying for it, each and every day.

The American people have largely cast aside the “bad novel” of America’s wars.  They find it boring, repetitive, inconsequential (at least to them).  But that doesn’t mean people aren’t paying for it, each and every day.

In the absence of Congressional declarations, America’s wars today are not being waged in the name of the people.  Cowed by the Executive branch and coerced by money, a spineless Congress willingly sidelines itself. In turn the Executive branch keeps the American people isolated from war even as it misleads them with lies and half-truths.

And thus the American people refuse to take ownership of these wars.  And who can blame them, since these wars aren’t being fought in their name or for their interests.  America’s wars are the preserve of the commander-in-chief and his various “experts” in and out of uniform, men like retired general and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, John Bolton, the new National Security Advisor, and Mike Pompeo, the CIA chief who now leads the State Department.  Unconcerned with the will and concerns of the people, these men favor aggressive stances and support U.S. military interventions around the globe.

What’s the solution to America’s “bad novel”?  Ignoring or disowning it only empowers its authors and their predilection for waging war, however falsely, in our name.  Instead, we have to overcome America’s ethos of violence and its climate of fear.  Campaign finance reform is vital if we want to suppress the influence of war profiteers.

Cutting the Pentagon budget by at least 20% is essential as well.  Finally, we need to educate ourselves about war, and to insist that wars are fought only when authorized by Congress, and only as a last resort instead of the first.

If we don’t take these steps, America will be forever stuck reading a bad novel with a one-word title: War.

 WJ Astore
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