Are "We the People" collectively responsible for the United States' misbegotten wars? — retired Army colonel and current historian, Andrew Bacevich, thinks so

07 July 2021

Up the posterior, boys and girls?

Retired Army colonel and now well-known historian, Andrew Bacevich, said the following recently — in reference to arguably evil Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's passing:

Where does responsibility lie?

I've come to believe that there is a collective responsibility — that We the People . . . are implicated in the Iraq War.

We the People embraced a conception of America's role in the world that really amounted to support for militarized global hegemony and that, in response to 9/11, we collectively concurred with the tragically misguided response of the George W. Bush administration that said we should embark on a Global War on Terrorism.

That was a strategic mistake. It was a moral mistake. But it's one that the majority of American people, shocked by the events of 9/11, signed up to.

I think that responsibility for these mistakes, huge mistakes, tends to be rather widely shared.

We need to circle back to the realization that we are a democracy.

In 2004, we reelected George W. Bush to a second term. And in doing that, of course, agreed to have Donald Rumsfeld continue for a couple more years as Defense Secretary.

Attributing war guilt to "a single person" is, Bacevich concludes, "too easy".

Why might we care what Professor Bacevich thinks?

Bacevich lost his son in the Iraq War.

Bacevich's ruminations about attributable war guilt are (we can infer) not casually and painlessly reached.

But from another angle

Is the United States a democracy?

Not in my view. American society runs (and is designed) to benefit its pillaging Oligarchy.

It seems unlikely that — absent widespread, bullet-spewing revolt — that the Deep State (and the Fat Cats that own it) would pay much attention to the expressed wishes of We the People.

So, is Bacevich overstating his collective responsibility case?

We saw, for instance, how the Vietnam War dragged on and on and on, in spite of much of the population's in-the-streets rage against it.

I have deep doubts about what an irate population can accomplish, when working from within an obviously not-democratic country.

On the other hand . . .

The moral? — We the (acquiescent, violently inclined) People do make American war criminality too easy

Most American national administrations, beginning with the Vietnam War, are undeniably 'war criminal' in nature.

If I were King of the World, those presidencies' top levels would have been executed. That, as a means of providing ostensible 'moral' instruction to the 'leaders' that follow.

Absent this power of (almost cosmic) retribution, we reluctantly have to drag ourselves back to the Cynicism Proposition that I addressed in an earlier writing:

Do the Bad Guys almost always win?

Should they?

By what means might a 'wannabe just' society correct this perennially blood-spilling penchant of ours?

Do people with power always stink?

PeteFree.com

Are "We the People" collectively responsible for the United States' misbegotten wars? — retired Army colonel and current historian, Andrew Bacevich, thinks so