Misplaced priorities
This week I spoke with the foreign policy aide of a United States Senator in a scheduled lobbying call for our antiwar organization. Rather than use the standard lobbying points about wasteful Pentagon spending, I asked for a frank discussion regarding ways our organization might find a successful strategy to cut the Pentagon budget. I wanted the perspective of somebody working on the Hill for a conservative senator.
The Senator’s aide obliged me. The chances of any bill passing both chambers of Congress that would trim the Pentagon budget by 10 per cent, according to the aide, were zero. When I asked if this was because the public perception was that we needed this amount to defend the country, the aide responded that it was not only the public perception but the reality. The Senator was convinced, as were most in Congress, that the Pentagon’s threat assessments were accurate and reliable (this despite the Pentagon’s history of failed forecasting).
As described to me, the military assesses threats across the globe including such countries as China and Russia, then designs a military strategy to counter those threats, works with weapons manufacturers to design weapons to integrate into that strategy, then produces a budget based on that strategy. Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, overwhelmingly approve the budget. After all, it’s the military. They clearly know the business of war. When a military begins with the notion that it must confront all problems arising from all locales across the globe, then it develops a global military strategy. This is not a defensive strategy, but a global policing strategy for every conceivable offense. When every conflict or area of instability is perceived as a threat, the world becomes the enemy.
What if such conflicts or instabilities were seen as opportunities rather than threats? What if we deployed doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers as quickly as we deployed drones, bullets, and bombs? Doctors in mobile hospitals are far less expensive than the current F-35 fighter jet which is closing in on a $1.6 trillion price tag. And doctors don’t mistakenly kill noncombatants in wedding parties or funerals thereby fueling anti-Americanism. In fact, they don’t see combatants or noncombatants, they see people. They treat patients.
The chorus decrying such an idea as “naïve” is immediately heard, war drums providing the charging beat. And so, an assessment is in order. According to Merriam-Webster, naive can mean “marked by unaffected simplicity,” or “deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment,” or “not previously subjected to experimentation or a particular experimental situation.”
The above proposal of doctors over drones does indeed sound simple and unaffected. Feeding people who are hungry, caring for them when they are sick, housing them when they have no shelter, is a relatively straightforward approach. Often the unaffected, simple way is the best. Guilty as charged here.
Excerpted: ‘How to Get the War Out of America’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org
