More War - again

So, it seems we are adding to the tally of years our country has been at War.  Over our country’s 250 years nearly 230 of them have been spent fighting one war or another, or over 91% of our entire history as a country.   The latter seems the craziest to me, 91%.  They always say how important it is we learn from history so as not to be doomed to repeat it.  From my perspective, the only thing we seem to have learned is that we don’t, or can’t learn from history, no matter what or no matter how recent the history.

In the 20 years between 2001 and 2021 the United states alone has spent $1,637,297,000,000 in total in the wars against Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.  These numbers don’t include the classified costs for the military and other agencies.  Those could easily be that much again.  Yeah, that is 1.6 trillion dollars that we the taxpayers footed the bill for.  Here is a link to our Governments own data on this Cost of Wars and I would say those numbers are WAY low, but that is just my opinion. 

There are other costs that come with war as well, most importantly our brave young Men and Women who volunteer in service to our country.  The average age being 28 for enlisted and 34 for officers (2023-24).  Over 7,000 have made the ultimate sacrifice between 2001 and 2021, the number we can verify.   I absolutely certain many did not get counted due to being on classified missions.  In those countries over 800,000 folks were killed, that number is comprised of combatants and non-combatants using the available data, which I am sure skews way low.

I wonder how many of those US troops had a spouse, kids a dog and I wonder what the long term impact on them is?  How many hours of counseling are needed?  How many bankruptcies happened as the result of that?  How many parents lost children, how many friends and loved ones now simply have a hole in their heart where their friend or loved one should be?   And beyond those numbers there is real human fallout, what about all those folks who knew and loved those 800 thousand people, can we even calculate that impact?  How many now and how many generations to come will hold the US in a very dim view?  How many may be radicalized to carry out further attacks?

For me, when we strip away the dollar signs and the line items, what’s left isn’t strategy or national interest, it is human wreckage.  No one wants to tally it, because it doesn’t fit neatly in a spread sheet or a Pentagon power point.  We throw around numbers like they are abstract concepts, I’ve even done that here.  But behind each and every one of them is family that got their entire world blown apart so some Politian could thump their chest, or as I see it measuring their dicks to see whose is bigger.  It’s childish and frankly repulsive and disappointing.

The disconnect between decision makers and the people who pay the price is infuriating.  It should infuriate every single American.  They are clearly not serving our interests or representing us.  If I am being honest, it is not hard to look at it all and wonder if anyone in Washington has actually learned a damn thing over the last two decades.  It also makes me wonder if learning was ever the point, because it sure as hell does not seem like it was or is, at least to me.  These things have always been about rich people protecting their interests by sending poor or lower class folks to do their bidding.  It is about who is being enriched by the actions.

Behind each of these actions are brave men and women.  They are real humans, not action figures, not avatars from a war game but people, our parents, our kids, our friends, our neighbors, loved ones of all sorts.  There will be dogs pacing nervously while they wait for their human to return.  Cats will be acting like cats do when their Human is not there for them to torment.  For what?  Another war we will we eventually pretend didn’t happen?  For another batch of unanswered and ridiculously hollow thoughts and prayers?  The emotional debt we pack on the backs of our military families is fucking obscene, and somehow, we act like it is just the cost of doing business in America and that makes me question whether we ought to be in another business instead of this one. 

So where does this leave us?  Do we keep repeating the cycle, like we are trapped in some nauseating national ground hog day of bad decisions?  At what point do we stop letting those elected to represent us wave off ambiguous outcomes with polished platitudes focused on patriotic soundbites?

What will it finally take for us to hold those fuckers to account, really hold them to account not in just a slap on the wrist.  Or easily passing it by at the speed of the news cycle.  We need to have an accounting of our tax dollars.  We should get that as a matter of course from those we elect to represent our interests, which is not currently the case for me and my interests.  

If we don’t hold them to account, nothing changes and we sink billions into this test of whose dick is bigger,  There will always be someone who is sure theirs is, and we will be left mourning the loss of another generations dead while the people who sent them continue on with their lives unaffected by the problems of the little people.

Maybe the first step is our own, maybe we can admit and stop pretending this is all somehow normal or necessary or inevitable.  It feels like a curse that says America must always be at war.   Dwight Eisenhower warned us to guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex.  We didn’t.  I feel like that is played out in real time in front of our very eyes, who is benefiting the most from war?  Perhaps it is the ones with the best lobbyists.  Every time we let political leaders skate by without a single real consequence we embolden and empower them, we ourselves have normalized this bullshit.   

We should be demanding transparency so aggressively that it makes them squirm in their chairs.  Every penny tracked, every classified program scrutinized but people who don’t owe their careers to the same defense contractors writing the check for favorable legislation.  We need decision making in the daylight.  If they can’t face Gold Star Families and explain why the sacrifice mattered, they don’t get to send anyone else.  And we should ensure when we send Americans into harm’s way, it is absolutely clear that it is an action of last resort.  And that should be made clear to all Americans, we deserve no less from those we send to Washington to represent us.  

We could start redirecting war fighting budgets, even if it is just a sliver from the endless river or trillions.  We could spend that actually taking care of people.  Imagine what would happen if we treated the root causes of conflict the same way we treat defense budgets.  As a tech dude I spend a lot of time thinking about root causes.  In today’s case, as with many before, it seems to be an unwillingness to learn and engage in dialog to find resolution to conflict.  I guess that is unrealistic for the 542 elected federal officials, so it seems impossible for that to work on a larger global scale.   

We could invest in diplomacy that isn’t a photo op.  In education that teaches critical thinking.  In communities that give young people options besides enlisting because they cannot afford college or health care.  We could hole public hearings where decision makers don’t get to hide behind closed doors, as we see them doing with the Epstein circus.  We could build a culture in our country that is more focused on collaboration, that values life over profits and that see service members as people, not pawns.  And that stops treating war as some kind of recurring subscription that we forgot to cancel.  Maybe a national Rocket Mortgage check that can cancel them for us.

If we want a different future, we’d better put down our devices and find the spine to demand one.  It’s obvious no one in Washington is going to magically hand it to us out of the goodness of their heart.  If we do not start demanding better, making it louder and harder and more relentlessly than ever, then we must admit we are simply bystanders.  We are then complicit in and actively supporting our own demise.  And at that point, we should stop pretending we value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or that truth means something or anything else worth having a flag to stand under.