Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com.
The wars in distant lands were always going to come home, but not this way.
It’s September 2016, year 15 of America’s “Long War” against terror. As weary troops return to the homeland, a bitter reality assails them: despite their sacrifices, America is losing.
Iraq is increasingly hostile to remaining occupation forces. Afghanistan is a riddle that remains unsolved: its army and police forces are untrustworthy, its government corrupt, and its tribal leaders unsympathetic to the vagaries of U.S. intervention. Since the Obama surge of 2010, a trillion more dollars have been devoted to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and other countries in the vast shatter zone that is central Asia, without measurable returns; nothing, that is, except the prolongation of America’s Great Recession, now entering its tenth year without a sustained recovery in sight.
Disillusioned veterans are unable to find decent jobs in a crumbling economy. Scarred by the physical and psychological violence of war, fed up with the happy talk of duplicitous politicians who only speak of shared sacrifices, they begin to organize. Their motto: take America back.
Meanwhile, a lame duck presidency, choking on foreign policy failures, finds itself attacked even for its putative successes. Health-care reform is now seen to have combined the inefficiency and inconsistency of government with the naked greed and exploitative talents of corporations. Medical rationing is a fact of life confronting anyone on the high side of 50. Presidential rhetoric that offered hope and change has lost all resonance. Mainstream media outlets are discredited and disintegrating, resulting in new levels of information anarchy.
Protest, whether electronic or in the streets, has become more common -- and the protestors in those streets increasingly carry guns, though as yet armed violence is minimal. A panicked administration responds with overlapping executive orders and legislation that is widely perceived as an attack on basic freedoms.
Tapping the frustration of protesters -- including a renascent and mainstreamed “tea bag” movement -- the former captains and sergeants, the ex-CIA operatives and out-of-work private mercenaries of the War on Terror take action. Conflict and confrontation they seek; laws and orders they increasingly ignore. As riot police are deployed in the streets, they face a grim choice: where to point their guns? Not at veterans, they decide, not at America’s erstwhile heroes.
A dwindling middle-class, still waving the flag and determined to keep its sliver-sized portion of the American dream, throws its support to the agitators. Wages shrinking, savings exhausted, bills rising, the sober middle can no longer hold. It vents its fear and rage by calling for a decisive leader and the overthrow of a can’t-do Congress.
Savvy members of traditional Washington elites are only too happy to oblige. They too crave order and can-do decisiveness -- on their terms. Where better to find that than in the ranks of America’s most respected institution: the military?
A retired senior officer who led America’s heroes in central Asia is anointed. His creed: end public disorder, fight the War on Terror to a victorious finish, put America back on top. The United States, he says, is the land of winners, and winners accept no substitute for victory. Nominated on September 11, 2016, Patriot Day, he marches to an overwhelming victory that November, embraced in the streets by an American version of the post-World War I German Freikorps and the police who refuse to suppress them. A concerned minority is left to wonder (and tremble) at the de facto military coup that occurred so quickly, and yet so silently, in their midst.
It Can Happen Here, Unless We Act
Yes, it can happen here. In some ways, it’s already happening. But the key question is: at this late date, how can it be stopped? Here are some vectors for a change in course, and in mindset as well, if we are to avoid our own stealth coup:
1. Somehow, we need to begin to reverse the ongoing militarization of this country, especially our ever-rising “defense” budgets. The most recent of these, we’ve just learned, is a staggering $708 billion for fiscal year 2011 -- and that doesn’t even include the $33 billion President Obama has requested for his latest surge in Afghanistan. We also need to get rid of the idea that anyone who suggests even minor cuts in defense spending is either hopelessly naïve or a terrorist sympathizer. It’s time as well to call a halt to the privatization of military activity and so halt the rise of security contractors like Xe (formerly Blackwater), thereby weakening the corporate profit motive that supports and underpins the American version of perpetual war. It’s time to begin feeling chastened, not proud, that we’re by far the number one country in the world in arms manufacturing and the global arms trade.
2. Let’s downsize our global mission rather than endlessly expanding our military footprint. It’s time to have a military capable of defending this country, not fighting endless wars in distant lands while garrisoning the globe.
3. Let’s stop paying attention to major TV and cable networks that rely on retired senior military officers, most of whom have ties both to the Pentagon and military contractors, for “unbiased” commentary on our wars. If we insist on fighting our perpetual “frontier” wars, let’s start insisting as well that they be covered in all their bitter reality: the death, the mayhem, the waste, the prisons, and the torture. Why is our war coverage invariably sanitized to “PG” or even “G,” when we can go to the movies anytime and see “R” rated, pornographically violent films? And by the way, it’s time to be more critical of the government’s and the media’s use of language and propaganda. Mindlessly parroting the Patriot Act doesn’t make you patriotic.
4. It’s time to elect a president who doesn’t surround himself with senior “civilian” advisors and ambassadors who are actually retired military generals and admirals, one who won’t accept a Nobel Peace Prize by defending war in theory and escalating it in practice.
5. Let’s toughen up. Let’s stop deferring to authority figures who promise to “protect” us while abridging our rights. Let’s stop bowing down before men and women in uniform, before they start thinking that it’s their right to be worshipped and act accordingly.
6. Let’s act now to relieve the sort of desperation bred by joblessness and hopelessness that could lead many -- notably male workers suffering from the “He-Cession” -- to see a militarized solution in “the homeland” as a credible last resort. It’s the economy, stupid, but with Main Street’s health, not Wall Street’s, in our focus.
7. Let’s take Sarah Palin and her followers seriously. They’re tapping into anger that’s real and spreading. Don’t let them become the voices of the angry working (and increasingly unemployed) classes.
8. Recognize that we face real enemies in our world, the most powerful of which aren’t in distant Afghanistan or Yemen but here at home. The essence of our struggle to sustain our faltering democracy should not be against “terrorists,” with their shoe and crotch bombs, but against various powerful, perfectly legal groups here whose interests lie in a Pentagon that only grows ever stronger.
9. Stop thinking the U.S. is uniquely privileged. Don’t take it on faith that God is on our side. Forget about God blessing America. If you believe in God, get out there and start trying to earn His blessing through deeds.
10. And, most important of all, remember that fear is the mind-killer that makes militarism possible. Ramping up “terror” is an amazingly effective way of shredding our Constitution. Putting our “safety” above all else is asking for trouble. The only way we’ll be completely safe from the big bad terrorists, after all, is when we’re all living in a maximum security state. Think of walking down the street while always being subject to a “full-body scan.”
That’s my top 10 things we need to do. It’s a daunting list and I’m sure you have a few ideas of your own. But have faith. Ultimately, it all boils down to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words to a nation suffering through the Great Depression: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. These words came to mind recently as I read the following missive from a friend and World War II veteran who’s seen tough times:
"It’s very hard for me to accept how soft the American people have become. In 1941, with the western world under assault by powerful and deadly forces, and a large armada of ships and planes attacking us directly, I never heard a word of fear as we faced three powerful nations as enemies. Sixteen million of us went into the military with the very real possibility of death and I never once heard of fear, except from those exposed to danger. Now, our people let [their leaders] terrify them into accepting the destruction of our economy, our image in the world, and our democracy... All this over a small group of religious fanatics [mostly] from Saudi Arabia whom we kowtow to so we can drive 8-cylinder SUV’s. Pathetic!
"How many times have I stood in ‘security lines’ at airports and when I complained of the indignity of taking off shoes and not having water and the manhandling of passengers, have well educated people smugly said to me, ‘Well, they’re just keeping us safe.’ I look at the airport bullshit as a training ground to turn Americans into docile sheep in a totalitarian state."
A public conditioned to act like sheep, to “support our troops” no matter what, to cower before the idea of terrorism, is a public ready to be herded. A military that’s being used to fight unwinnable wars is a military prone to return home disaffected and with scores to settle.
Angry and desperate veterans and mercenaries already conditioned to violence, merging with “tea baggers” and other alienated groups, could one day form our own Freikorps units, rioting for violent solutions to national decline. Recall that the Nazi movement ultimately succeeded in the early 1930s because so many middle-class Germans were scared as they saw their wealth, standard of living, and status all threatened by the Great Depression.
If our Great Recession continues, if decent jobs remain scarce, if the mainstream media continue to foster fear and hatred, if returning troops are disaffected and their leaders blame politicians for “not being tough enough,” if one or two more terrorist attacks succeed on U.S. soil, wouldn’t this country be well primed for a coup by any other name?
Don’t expect a “Seven Days in May” scenario. No American Caesar will return to Washington with his legions to decapitate governmental authority. Why not? Because he won’t have to.
As long as we continue to live in perpetual fear in an increasingly militarized state, we establish the preconditions under which Americans will be nailed to, and crucified on, a cross of iron.
William J. Astore teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology (wastore@pct.edu). A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), he has also taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism.
Copyright 2010 William J. Astore
While none of the article(s) meniton any military or police training on the part of the gunman suspect, they do mention guns & weapons training... the identifying trait of the "survivalists" and "Militia" and "resistance" sub-culture of which McVeigh was a charter member (attending gun shows, buying & selling guns) before he went off the deep end.
Timmy McVeigh went off on his DOMESTIC TERRORISM jihad after he came home from Gulf War-1 a US Army COMBAT DECORATED HERO, but COULD NOT FIND A JOB during the Bush-1 Recession.
As if the above wasn't bad enough, McVeigh was PUSHED OVER THE EDGE when the Army demanded he REPAY them some $1,000 in "overpayments" they claim they accidentally paid him.
Gulf-War-1 was "the GOOD US vs Iraq war" - over almost before it started, US troops treated as returning heroes, with (relatively) minimal actual Combat injuries & fatalities.
THIS war - WARS, plural, is FAR WORSE, by every measure, of those items that drove McVeigh over the edge - with ONE exception, this time the Military is not kicking out people who want to stay in the Army (as McVeigh was involuntarily discharged) - as long as you want to fight in America's EXPANDING WARS of slow-burn genocide.
The WARS and ECONOMIC PREDATION that led to the BUSH-1 RECESSION, are now being REPEATED on a far larger scale... and the TIMMY McVeigh syndrome is STILL OUT THERE, nurturing both a Domestic Terrorism undercurrent, AND a GOVERNMENT REPESSION reactionary undercurrent.
These wars & coups are US COLONIAL IMPERIALISM writ large, as in all colonial occupations, the idea is to render the local population as impotent & disempowered as possible... wiping 'em off the map is the far easiest means to do so.
(See the book, "The War Nerd" about how England's army, navy, & businessmen were MASTERS at that game!)
Which is exactly the point: The AYN RAND / "neo-Liberal" / "neo-Conservative" ("neo-con" for short) US wars & coups are the EXACT 'economic model' as England's lords, landlords, AND BANKERS perpetrated on English rural towns, & throughout Scotland, AND IRELAND during the "ENCLOSURES" period,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
which led to both the great poverty of DICKENSIAN ENGLAND, and the even far worse GREAT IRISH FAMINE, 1845-1852.
There is a simple reason why, by 1845, the IRISH were DEPENDENT on POTATOES as a mono-subsistence crop - EVEN THOUGH Europe DID NOT EVEN HAVE potatoes before Columbus' voyage to "the New World" in 1492...
...Because, by 1845, the VAST MAJORITY of Irish people had been FORCED OFF the GRAIN FIELDS which had sustained them for millenia, the Irish people FORCED OFF those fields by the BRITISH ARMY of conquest & occupation.
THIS is the Ayn Rand "NEO-LIBERAL" fantasy - a market that is SO "FREE" that lords & bankers can CONSPIRE to DRIVE PEOPLE TO MASS
Eisenhower warned in his last state of the union address to beware the growth of the military-industrial complex. This was ignored and the American people grew fat and soft, at the expense of their freedom and their democracy. The question today is, has the US military and corporations gained too much power to be stopped? Or is the terminal decline of the US empire inevitable?
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Part 1 of 2
Strategy: stop voting for Democrats AND Republicans.
The ONLY 'good' thing I see that might develop from the Teaparter movement (and that is still stretching the meaning of 'good') is potentially the creation of an at least locally viable 3rd party to compete with the corporate-controlled, right-of-center, Republicans and Democrats.
I would love a third party choice that believes in social Liberalism as a safety net, strong personal responsibility & rights, and fiscal responsibility. And by fiscal responsibility I DON'T mean lowering taxes,... I mean actually deciding what IS important, and figuring out how to pay for it if we really want it.
When I was in high school, we used to laugh at one of the teachers, who (despite being in good health) would drive from his house, which was four houses away from the school, to the school parking lot. He had to walk almost as far from his car to the school as he would have had to walk from home, but he did it anyway. These days, you'll see maybe one person on foot at a grocery store for every hundred that drove there. Soft, soft, soft!
And, it's worth noting, a lot of our foreign policy is formed around access to oil, so that we can continue to drive so much...
The USA will continues down then plutocratic, warmongering fascist road the conservatives so love.
Second, many of our WWII veterans DID come back into very difficult situations. Read about the origins of the Hell's Angels MC and similar groups for background on that. (Hunter Thompson wrote a good book about it, and got beat up for it.)
But you've got a very good point.
The veterans of WWII mostly returned to a nation creating the most well-to-do Middle Class any society has ever had. Back then one wage-earner was all a family needed for a good life in a rapidly-expanding economy, despite the highest taxes we've ever had. (Of course, back then it was sufficient for a corporate CEO to make one- or two-hundred times the pay of his workers... not the thousands of times higher as now.) (Let's not discuss the current world of High Finance, which needs no blue-collar workers at all since they don't make anything.)
Something went very badly wrong with the American Dream. It was set in motion in the late 1800s, when our Supreme Court decided that corporations are people too. It took a long time for the full unintended consequences to manifest, but that's where we are now.
Deregulate People, Not Corporations!
Regarding the column's item number 2: "Let’s downsize our global mission rather than endlessly expanding our military footprint. It’s time to have a military capable of defending this country, not fighting endless wars in distant lands while garrisoning the globe.":
THAT is one we really need to push hard on. The USA now has somewhere between 700 and 1,000 military bases on foreign soil. (The variance depends largely on what you mean by the word "base".) We are spending well over One Hundred Billion Dollars per Year for those bases (not counting the military personnel and equipment staged on those bases). This includes over 200 bases just in Germany alone.
The Cold War is over. Let's bring our troops home... not just from the Middle East / South Central Asia theaters we hear so much about, but from EVERYWHERE!
And let's also do what our Founding Fathers said to do, and Provide for the Common Defense. We do not have to outspend the rest of the planet to accomplish that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid's_Tale
The last Republican president who did not do major damage to this nation was Dwight D. Eisenhower, for what it's worth.
I don't believe the author of this column is opposed to former military officers entering politics. The real danger is from politicians who believe that American society needs some good old military discipline.
I had 8 Uncles serve in the military and my Dad. One was killed at age 19 on Iwojima. They would all be disgusted at the Republican party. Are these people really that afraid or are they manipulating our nation so they can have complete control?
If we do not hold the media accoutable for inciting fear, hatred and sedition I do believe something terrible could happen. The irony is that the enemy within is far more dangerous.