PeteFree.comWe Must Honor Our Courageous Young Military People with Wiser Leadership - United States' De Facto Policy of Continual War is Immoral
© 2010 Peter Free
03 May 2010
The United States’ de facto policy of continual war is immoral
If one accepts the proposition that Age owes Youth wise guidance, then the United States’ de facto policy of continuous mistaken wars is ethically immoral.
A mix of political cynicism, economic self-interest, and geopolitically-unintelligent strategy have today substituted themselves for competent elder-wisdom.
Idealism and economic circumstances make young people willing participants in their own destruction. Cynical elders take advantage of these developmental traits to further their own ends. Ignorant elders harness youth’s enthusiasm and lack of worldly experience to unrealistic missions.
In this profligate wastefulness, the young, the nation, and the world lose.
As a nation, we overestimate our ability to control events
In Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the verbiage sent Iran’s way regarding nuclear proliferation, the United States overestimates its power to control geopolitical movements. Just as we did in Vietnam.
Repeated mistakes indicate that we are either stupid or someone profits
The fact that the United States has been making the same geopolitical mistake for at least fifty years indicates that:
(a) we elect and appoint ignorant and uninsightful people to leadership positions,
and/or
(b) leaders and corporations profit from these misguided armed conflicts.
President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell speech.
Who profits from perpetual war?
A significant portion of the plutocratic interests that have bought our government profit from war.
(i) The military-industrial corporate complex directly profits from the design, manufacturing, and supply efforts that go into armed conflict.
(ii) The oil business, which benefits from the sale of oil products to fuel military efforts, also benefits from war’s associated potential for increased access to foreign oil and gas fields.
(iii) Politicians benefit from the largesse the military-industrial complex dishes out. With war as an excuse, they can also put pressing social problems, which they do not want to confront, on hold. This increases incumbents’ political longevity.
(iv) High- and mid-ranking military officers benefit from the increased opportunities for advancement in rank and influence that war brings with it.
(v) Employees of the military-industrial complex, and the communities the complex is based in, benefit from the jobs that war (and preparation for war) creates.
(vi) An apathetic and consumerist public benefits by finding it psychologically much easier to blame other nations or foreign political movements for our woes, than it is to recognize that we cause most of our difficulties.
Psychological factors prevent us from learning from our mistakes
Psychological factors inhibit our ability to learn from even obvious mistakes. We justify errors by rewriting history. We avoid taking responsibility for our contributions to bad outcomes.
For these reasons, ill-advised wars eventually wind up teaching young and old the wrong lessons.
[On this subject, and in exceptionally readable form, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson’s Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)─ Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (2007) is excellent. The book is well-researched and footnoted.]
Perpetual war reflects spiritual weakness
Any society that acts as if it must control the world is spiritually deficient. It lacks humility. It lacks the kind of integrity that insists on critiquing the success and wisdom of its effects in the world. Ultimately, it defiles what the United States set out to be.
We are past the point of defiling the American Dream. We have become what we once hated.
We owe our courageous military youth wisdom in leadership
We owe our military youth better than we given them. We owe them wise elders.
It is time to step up to the task.