A Few Observations on War, Sports, Fortresses, America, and Life
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America the beautiful? Yes, that’s a stealth bomber designed for nuclear attack cruising over a football stadium, because America!
By W.J. Astore
It’s a new year! And as we adjust to 2019, I thought I’d share a few random observations (hopefully of some import).
“Retirement”: Many Americans fear the concept of retirement. Part of the challenge is coming to grips with the word. In America, your identity often hinges on your title, your job, and your paycheck. Since retiring from teaching (after retiring from the military), I’m still mentally adjusting to not having a fixed schedule, to not having expectations on the job that have to be met. I’ve never been an especially driven person but I’ve always sought to do well. Now I have to do well on terms defined by me. It’s a mental adjustment.
One thing is certain: society is always trying to pigeonhole us. When I tell people I’m “retired,” the immediate response is “You’re too young” or “But what do you do?” said in an incredulous voice. To avoid this problem, sometimes I tell people I’m a writer or a historian, both true, though I currently have no salaried position as such. To state the obvious, American culture is job-centered. Look at our health care: lose your job, lose your health insurance. So much of our identity, as well as our ability to navigate American society, is based on our jobs.
People find meaning in work. But inspiration can be found elsewhere. Find something of value to you that’s inspiring and I don’t think you’ll ever be “retired.”
“A man’s home is his castle”: Is it good that men are encouraged to think of their homes as their castles? For what are castles but fortresses? And fortresses need defending, with guns and security alarms and fences and all the rest. And if a man is Lord of his Castle, then everyone else is his subject, including his wife and children. Perhaps especially his wife and children. We need to think of home as home, not as a castle, not as a fortress in which a man fortifies and actuates his own fears and aggression. (This observation was inspired by an article on male violence in the home.)
On Mourning America’s War Dead: A subject worthy of discussion is how we mourn our troops. When flag-draped caskets return to American soil, our troops are honored. But they are mourned mainly within family settings, or among neighbors in close-knit communities. Rarely are they mourned within wider communal settings. And I sense that some families are torn: there is little serenity for them, not only because they lost a loved one, but because there is a sense, a suspicion, that loved ones died for lesser causes, causes unrelated to ideals held sacred.
Of course, a soldier never dies in vain when he dies for his fellow troops. But that can be said of all soldiers on all sides in all wars. In a republic like the USA, or a polis as in ancient Greece, soldiers are supposed to die for something greater than the unit. That larger purpose is a communal ideal. Call it truth, justice, and the American way. Or call it something else, a sense of rightness if not righteousness.
But where is the rightness in America’s wars today?
On America’s Standing Military and Congressional Authority: The nation’s founders knew there’d be national emergencies that would require a larger “standing” military (i.e., not just state militias of “minutemen”), but they wanted to prevent a state of permanent war, which they attempted to do with the two-year appropriation clause. They were well familiar with history and all those hundred years’, thirty years’, and seven years’, wars. By giving the people (Congress) the power of the purse, they hoped to prevent those long wars by cutting off open-ended funding.
Of course, today that doesn’t apply. The AUMF (authorization for the use of military force) that dates from 2001 is used to justify a state of perpetual war and the funding of the same. Congress has abnegated its responsibility to check overweening Executive power for war-making, but actually it’s worse than that: Congress has joined the Executive branch in pursuing perpetual war. We no longer even bother with formal Congressional declarations; permanent war is considered to be the new normal in America: business as usual.
Not only have we created a permanent standing military — we devote the lion’s share of federal resources to it and brag about how great it is. That reality is antithetical to our national ideals as imagined and articulated by this nation’s founders.
Sports, Movies, and the Military in America: There’s a tendency for people to dismiss sports as “just sports” or movies as “just movies.” Yet astute people recognize the power of both. The classic case is Nazi Germany and the 1936 Olympics, and of course Leni Riefenstahl and spectacles like “The Triumph of the Will.” These, of course, were blatant, in-your-face, rallies. Today, U.S. sports/military celebrations may not be as blatant, but sports connects powerfully to feel-good patriotism as fanatical boosterism, which is precisely why the military is so eager to appropriate sports imagery (and to infiltrate sporting events). The corporate sponsors see it as a win-win: a win for profits, and a win for their image as “patriots.”
Hollywood is the dream factory. Sports too has a strong fantasy element. Speaking as an American male, who hasn’t dreamed of hitting the big home run like Big Papi or pitching a no-hitter like Matt Scherzer?
Man does not live by bread alone; to a certain extent, we live by dreams. Through our aspirations. And our dreams and aspirations are being channeled along certain lines: along more military lines, both at and by sporting events as well as at the movie theater.
It’s not just crass commercialism. It’s about shaping dreams, defining what’s appropriate (and what isn’t).
Thank you for indulging me as I cram into this article a few observations I’ve been kicking around. I’d also like as ever to thank all my readers and especially my faithful commenters and correspondents. Fire away in the comments section, readers!
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Revolutionary wisdom
Words from an Irish patriot—![]()
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// by Jack Balkwill The sword inspires the romance of war in those who haven’t seen it slice open bellies That night, almost fifty years ago, I remember something wet hitting my cheek, so I reached up and wiped it off, noticing it was a bloody piece of flesh. It was then that I turned to see that the man sitting next to me in the ditch had just had his face blown off. This thought came to me often decades ago, and I strained to remember who the man was, but my memories always went dark at that point. I would push my memories day after day, but nothing came. I finally gave up, developing a theory that one’s mind creates “memory scars” to cover up events that would drive one mad if one could recall them entirely. In 1966-67 I represented Military Assistance Command and US Army Vietnam, the two biggest US military organizations in Vietnam. They sent me to combat units to gather information. I rarely spent more than two days anywhere and then travelled on, usually by helicopter or other aircraft. I saw the entire breadth of the war, from the southern Delta to the Demilitarized Zone in the north. There was death all around me. I got shot at nearly every day. Something would explode near me every week; claymore mines, mortar rounds, recoilless rifle fire, rocket propelled grenades. I was sometimes under fire for several nights, unable to sleep for days at a time. [dropcap]T[/dropcap]he movies never capture the reality of battles. The noise alone causes people to go deaf, and I lost my hearing in Vietnam. So the movies can’t even get the sound right. The fear, when everything is exploding around you, is fear on steroids, and you think your insides have melted. But the horror seems to always be capable of advancing to a higher level, just when you think you can’t take any more. One evening after finishing a visit to a recently-arrived First Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division at a place called Phan Rang, waiting for an aircraft that would take me to my next assignment, I got into a conversation with paramilitaries who looked to me to be Cambodian, so I asked about that and was told they were Vietnamese of Cambodian descent, probably used by the CIA to make raids into Cambodia. Then in the advancing darkness I noticed they were all wearing necklaces of human body parts. I hadn’t been able to make it out before, but as soon as I saw that I made excuses to get away to the edge of the runway to await my aircraft, thinking, “We are on the same side in this war.” US foreign policy has been in bed with the most horrid human rights abusers. But even knowing that covert part of war does not tell the whole story, the parts our martial mainstream media ignore, the truly unjust consequences of war. Vietnam Hanoi War Museum: Prisoner in Shackles. The death toll, wanton destruction of the nation, and suffering of the Vietnamese, first under the French and then under the Americans and their running dog allies, remains mind-boggling. I became so upset at seeing starving children, pathetic victims of war, that I bought food and set up a feeding station, but I had no expertise in this and it turned into a disaster, as thousands of children surrounded me, clawing at me, and children who got food were beaten by larger children who took the food from them. Thousands of little hands clawed at me until my uniform became shredded and I was bleeding everywhere. In the end all the food was gone and thousands of children remained hungry. I could find nobody to help me with this, the military command didn’t care, it was not their job. One day I heard two soldiers complaining when a sergeant intervened with “You shouldn’t have volunteered.” The two quickly pointed out they were drafted, insisting they didn’t volunteer. The sergeant returned, “You could have gone to prison, you could have committed suicide, but no, you volunteered.” Many, of course, “volunteer” because they are poor and have no other place to go. [dropcap]A[/dropcap]s a combat veteran, I understand war from the inside. I have seen the suffering and wonder how it is that “winners” can be declared in wars. It seems to me that everyone loses except the capitalists, who appear to love war– the wars are fought, after all, for them. As usual, Washington dragged in its habitual accomplices, including the British and their former dominions, the “Little Brits.” Pictured: Australian Special Forces. It didn’t take a combat experience for me to understand this. When I was fifteen years old I remember wondering how nations could go to war and destroy cities that took so very long to build. It is one reason human beings never seem to advance to their potential. We are spending our time rebuilding cities while wasting resources to prepare for perpetual wars which rise up to damn us. None of this is new. Homer told us thousands of years ago that war is futile. Some see his depictions of the Trojan war as romanticizing war, but the ancient Greeks were famous for strong irony, and Homer was a master at it in his classical tales. B-52s carpet bomb Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder, one of those idiotically named sociopathic campaigns mounted by the corporatized military. The Pentagon is still at it in other battlefields. In his Iliad, Homer showed how the losers of war suffered, as the hero of Troy, Hector, was killed and dragged behind a chariot until pieces of his flesh were scattered before the walls of the city. Hector’s wife Andromache became a slave of his enemies, and his infant son Astyanax was thrown from the walls of Troy to his death on the rocks below, so that even Hector’s genetic line was lost. The people of Troy suffered, the men slaughtered and the women taken as slaves. In his Odyssey, Homer showed how the winners suffered, taking ten years to return to their homes after the ten-year war. How could any of their numerous dead be winners? Only fools and capitalists may find victory anywhere in war. The Greek god of war, Ares, was depicted as an idiot who would run naked onto the battlefield and be defeated by his enemies. This was clearly intended to show how nonsensical and futile is war, as statues of Ares were painted red to depict the blood he would shed in losing battles. By contrast, the goddess Athena attempted to negotiate with reason rather than fight her perceived enemies, but unlike Ares she wore armor and never lost if forced to go to war. The antiwar movement did it its part, but the war was lost in the battlefield. Only then did the Americans withdrew. In every war there are writers who warn us of the consequences, some of the most beautiful writing existing. A favorite of mine is Mark Twain’s The War Prayer. It captures, in very few words, the truth about war– that there is horror for those involved in place of the romance our leaders and corporate media portray. Every young student should be required to read it, as a counter to the ridiculous history our schools propagandize to the young, with their romanticized wars for “freedom” and “democracy,” things our ruling Establishment, in truth, despise and do not allow anywhere, as much as possible. Another of the finest works about war is the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, a British private in the First World War, who died shortly after penning it. Its last line is as powerful as any ever written, when Owen tells us that if we could see what he saw, we would not tell our children the “old lie,” “Dulce et decomum est, pro patria mori” (it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country). Parents should have a responsibility to teach their children that war is wrong and that nations and individuals should not practice it. My father had been a sailor in World War Two, having been on the battleship California which sank at Pearl Harbor to start the war, and other ships that sank during major battles of that war. I grew up learning the lie that Wilfred Owen so eloquently exposed. North Vietnamese tank breaks through in Saigon, as the city is liberated by the NVA. An iconic moment. If indeed the armed forces of nations exist to defend those nations, they should not be allowed to leave their own countries unless attacked, and any nation’s armed forces that does so would be considered to have committed a war crime and be tried by the international community. We need to change the definition of “civilized” to “those who do not engage in war.” Without war spending and related “security” spending on weapons, foreign spying, national police spying and the like, we would have the resources to clean up our ravaged environment, provide a college education to all citizens, provide quality medical care to all, wipe out homelessness and hunger, provide jobs to anyone in need at a living wage, advance science and the arts, and generally create a more harmonious world. The thing that holds us back is war, and those who tightly control our government against the will of the people. Peace is popular with the masses, all over the world, except for the tiny number of oligarchs and plutocrats who run the world, using wars for their intimidation and profit. https://youtu.be/1dPQ1Y2d2cs One of my trips in Vietnam was to the Fifth Special Forces HQ at Nha Trang. In that city I watched a crowd form– hundreds of people with somber faces– so curiously edged closer to see what was happening. A Buddhist monk sat cross-legged at one corner of an intersection, his assistant pouring liquid over him. I thought it might be water, as part of a ceremony, not understanding what was happening. Tears ran down the cheeks of the assistant. And then he lit a match, and flames shot up a thousand feet into the air, as I realized the liquid was gasoline. Before he died the monk appeared to be staring through the lambent flames straight into my face, imploring, “If I can do this to encourage peace, what can you do?” Note to Commenters We apologize for this inconvenience. |