WHITHER OUR WITHERED DEMOCRACY?

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
James Madison

Excitement in Egypt fades, unrest follows all over the Middle East and spreads to our Midwest. America, seemingly powerless in foreign affairs, has an effective option: to remove our military presence from Iraq and Afghanistan, now. No action would help the fortunes of people promoting true democracy in the region more than the cessation of U.S. warfare on people who live there. Ending our imperial adventures there would also be healthy for the state of American democracy. In addition to lives and money, Americans have lost precious freedoms, as a direct result of our prolonged state of war.
Whatever our objectives for these deadly, destructive wars were originally, they have not been fulfilled, and they won’t be. Wikileaks told us nothing new. The insanity of the wars and the ineffectiveness of the occupations have been obvious for some time. Our involvement is costing 2 1/2 billion dollars each week, in borrowed funds. While most Americans can still ignore the death and destruction, not being personally involved, many of our political, business and media leaders are screaming against our ballooning public debt. The debt can be dramatically reduced, with virtually universal consent, simply by bringing the troops home.
Mainstream conservatives and liberals, as well as peaceniks and tea partiers, are increasingly united in their calls for wars’ end. The neocons, loudly pounding the war drums in the beginning, drowning out all opposition, have gone undercover, excepting an occasional mumble about mistakes that were made. Only the heroism of our military people stands as an emotional, but not reasonable, excuse for “staying the course”. “We cannot let them die in vain.” But if we are sending others to die only because some have been killed already, then we must conclude that all have died in vain. “We cannot support the troops unless we also support the mission,” which means we must leave them there to kill or be killed. We can see why the founding fathers tried to make it difficult to go to war. How can we have the hubris to force democracy on Afghanistan and Iraq while lending only lukewarm support to democracy elsewhere in the area, and letting it die here?
Most people dislike war, and the more we learn about it, the less we approve. A special election nationwide would bring the troops home the next day. Yet we have continual warfare. The establishment, controlled by the scarcely hidden military-industrial complex, will make sure that the issue never gets to a popular vote. The peoples’ will always takes a drubbing in war, as do human rights. Wire-tapping, routine searches, citizens spying on each other, secret kidnappings and torture, imprisonment without habeas corpus, all get people to fear their government. The longer war lasts, the blurrier becomes the distinction, for the rulers, between “them” and “us.”
Despite growing resistance from all sides, our two ruling parties keep the wars going, each terrified that the other side might use the heroism of our troops against them. Regarding the casualties, one side would help the families of the dead and rehabilitate the wounded, while the other side would toss the “dead wood.” Nobody in actual power proposes to immediately stop the carnage. We see plans to start bringing the troops home in the near future, but the plans are rotten with loopholes, and already our leaders have begun to hedge. We are guaranteed a long lasting, unwanted American presence in the Middle East, killing, dying, and letting the future pay for it.
During the Vietnam conflict Eisenhower’s warnings about the power of the “military-industrial complex” to subvert our freedom were amplified. Those warnings have been proven true, though historical revisionism transformed the Vietnam War from an unneeded, colonial war to a “noble cause.” The revisionists were then able to get the country involved in more “noble causes” in the Middle East. The doublethink, whereby we know the military-industrial complex subverts our democracy at the same time we believe in the noble cause of all American warfare, allows war to continue indefinitely. And whenever someone dares to present the truth, the establishment counters by waving the bloody shirt, rendering further resistance futile.
The revolution in Egypt was peaceful. America can encourage peaceful steps to democracy by ending war with Egypt’s neighbours. At the same time we can start to repair the deep injuries to our democracy due to ceaseless war. Recent stories from Afghanistan tell us that the latest surge has been successful. People over there like us. How many times will we continue to believe the “light at the end of the tunnel” stories? Our fortunes will vastly improve, in the long run, when we stop blowing up people, places, and things. To build democracy there, we rebuild it here: if we play it right, we could get a win-win.