By Michael Randall
Over the course of my nearly 83 years, I have experienced many of life’s trials and pleasures, and borne witness to world events, both up-close and from afar. Consequently, my views of “being an American” are conflicted, and they will always remain in unresolvable tension.
On one hand, I love my community, family and friends. I also admire the US’s founding documents which remind us of aspirations which few other nations have ever considered important (ie, freedom, equality, the right to seek personal fulfillment unhindered by governmental oppression, to seek the common good through civic responsibility and self-rule.) And I admire my fellow citizens’ continuing efforts to bring these aspirations to fruition, even in the face of a violent regime that is relentlessly trying to strip those freedoms away. For all these things I am very grateful.
However, it is important to consider the truth of philosopher George Santayana’s statement that, “The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.” That is not a cynical statement. Stand back a bit from all our political, economic, and social arrangements, and observe. All human societies are composed of beings like ourselves: generous and selfish; heroic and cowardly, honorable and dishonorable, kind and cruel, empathetic and indifferent, humble and arrogant, grateful and embittered. Each of us embodies different portions of these qualities.
Two days after high school graduation, seeking adventure out in the great world, I went into the Marines for four years (1961-65). I was seventeen, had little life experience, was fit and energetic, naïve but curious, and absolutely without any knowledge about the lives of people or their civilizations, past or present, in other regions of the planet.
For nearly twelve weeks, our Drill Instructors (“DIs”) exhausted us each day from early until late, called us “shit-maggots” and worse, all part of the program to break down our individuality and build us back up as a trained platoon of Marines. They never let up, but the day did finally come when we graduated. Exuberant, we double-timed several miles around “the grinder” while calling cadence; all eighty of our spit-shined boots striking asphalt in nearly silent unison. And at the end of our graduation ceremony came the moment when our DIs shouted at us, “You men! You are US Marines! Congratulations!”
I was still over a month away from turning 18, in possession of a fit body, plus the normal, half-developed brain of a late-adolescent. My spit-shined memory of that distant day still has goose bumps, but I have also learned to detect our leaders’ lies when I hear them. There have been millions of young men and women before and after me who have stumbled eagerly down that same path. They were, for the most part still ignorant of the world, but they held high motives of service and a willingness to believe without questioning, and to act on whatever their “leaders” told them was true.
I feel kinship and great empathy for all of them (trouble makers, poets, fuzz-brained idealists, heroes-in-the-making) who have gone through similar training and service during the intervening 65 years. Unlike me who served only during peacetime, many of them bled and died in our nation’s several “wars of choice,” yet to what end? Ordered into battle by such people as Lyndon Johnson, George Bush, Donald Trump, and kept there wading in blood and exploded viscera even when victory was known to be impossible by such as people as Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, and (now again) Trump.
A number of America’s political and military “leaders” from Vietnam onward through Afghanistan and Iraq have admitted publicly or privately that they knew for years before those wars ended that they could not be won. But they kept on destroying American warriors and foreign forces and civilians, because they didn’t know how to extract our country or themselves without: (1) suffering defeat and the end of their political careers, and (2) ending the myth of America’s military invincibility.
Not one of those wars was necessary, and not one of them ended well. Since World War II, the US has increasingly reacted to the world based on an explosive mix of innocent ideals and national myths, lofty moral declarations and aspirations, and violent aggression pointed outward (and now inward toward those who legally protest against MAGA’s “Great Leader”). We have never understood, even while re-experiencing the lesson several times: any nation’s people who are invaded by a superior military force most often are able to wear it down and throw it out. That is true. Look it up.
Over the past 65 years or so, we have succumbed repeatedly to the “Thucydides Trap.” That “Trap” describes the anxious, violent reaction of a major regional or international power in decline. It fears another rising power that it sees as a competitor by which it might be displaced. The “Trap” is named after the ancient Athenian general and historian who wrote the “History of the Peloponnesian War,” the 27-year war (431-404 BC) between Sparta and Athens and their proxies. Powerful Sparta anxiously feared Athens’ growing economic and military power, and its fears led to bloody war that lasted for decades.
On that same basis, throughout history numerous other murderous raids and large and small wars have been conducted by villages, tribes, city-states, and nations. Many of these have disappeared into the forgotten past, remaining an unlearned lesson and a mystery to most of us, except to archaeologists who excavate their ruins all over the planet.
Fearing potential domination by the old Soviet Union and communist China, the USA built up forces and waged war in Vietnam, justifying that war on the basis of holding back Communist hordes from overwhelming Southeast Asia. The “Tonkin Gulf Incident” was the black lie used by the Johnson administration to justify sending more American troops into Vietnam. Eight years later the last of us evacuated from Saigon roof tops. (Result: 58,000 dead American warriors, and over 2,000,000 dead Vietnamese civilians).
Based on another black lie by the Bush administration, we invaded Iraq to strip it of non-existent nuclear weapons. We actually wanted unhindered access to its oil, and to “get Saddam.” (Result: We spent trillions of dollars, got Saddam, killed 4,600 Americans and 200,000 to 300,000 Iraqi civilians, and politically destabilized much of the middle east).
We invaded Afghanistan to rid it of Al Qaeda’s training camps that spawned the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. So far so good, but then for twenty years we tried unsuccessfully to install democracy there, a naïve effort doomed at the outset in an ancient tribal land made up of contending clans. We plastered righteous lipstick and heavy make-up on our dubious project to make our more “patriotic” folks feel morally elevated. Of course, the Taliban finally evicted us. (Result: 2,461 Americans killed, and 46,000 to 47,000 Afghan civilians killed directly in the fighting.)
In none of those wars did we accomplish anything but massive destruction: killing our own young men and women and millions of foreign civilians. However, these misadventures did greatly empower our weapons manufacturers, and boosted their domestic and foreign sales dramatically. Even though their profits are huge, their lobbyists have been able to convince the US Congress to continue subsidizing them with taxpayer money. Today the USA exports 42 percent of the world’s weapons. Combined, China and Russia export 13 percent, less than a third of our weapons exports, so we can claim the distinction of being the world’s biggest murder-enabling nation. Not a pleasant realization to have about our “land of the free and the home of the brave,” but nonetheless true.
Our chosen invasions of other countries have engendered multiple generations of hatred for the USA among relatives of those we have killed. When we look into America’s mirror, many of us feel shame for what has been done in our name. Aside from the blood-drenched profits made by American arms manufacturers, there have been no benefits derived from our “forever wars.”
But there is another related, impactful outcome: many of our local and state police departments have become more militaristic due in part to receiving lots of pointlessly costly, excess military equipment that makes them more effective at fighting the “war within” against our protesting citizen “terrorists.” And, one big plus for clothing manufacturers: camo clothing and gear have become immensely fashionable during our forever wars, even though few of us ever serve in the military any more. Many among us seem to hope that strangers will mistake us for navy seals or Marines.
Now we have attacked Iran, bolstered by Trump’s transparently black lie regarding its “threat of imminent nuclear attack on the US,” plus several other reasons that MAGA’s “Great Leader” names then contradicts, then backs away from almost daily. He does not qualify as a mentally healthy grown-up, but only as a blabber-mouth, “lumbering zombie” (a term used in a recent news article to describe the USA itself).
Inside the darkly remote, wet cavities of MAGA brains, Trump and his dodos are learning the hard way that Iran’s regime has plenty of firepower, and an excellent geographic position. They are sustained and hardened by nearly 4,000 years of Persian history, diplomacy, wars, and a rich and varied culture. Led (hopefully temporarily) by a ruthlessly brutal regime of zealots that is determined to survive, they will eat stones and dirt before they take a knee to Trump.
Trump’s ignorance of history and other nations, plus his delusions of personal grandeur, have started and lost this war before he even realizes it. Iran’s cruel regime has outwitted him at every turn. They will outwait him, too. Trump already is bored with his war, but now must stumble along to try to redress his blunder. His attacks will remain pointlessly destructive, have already cost us roughly $150 billion, and are an international embarrassment to the United States. If you do not believe this, stay tuned to Trump’s unfolding saga.
Our old friends and former allies now openly mock us, stunned at the 77 million voters who elected this sad, destructive nincompoop. Canadian writer, Stephen Marche, recently wrote that people around the world who believe in democracy and freedom and human dignity should work to reduce the US’s ability to project military power, and to end the strange hold we have over the world. He wrote that, so far, no one is doing better at that than the USA itself.
“Human nature” was born during our origins in the trees, and in the conditions of life in this beautiful yet brutal world that poet Alfred Tennyson described as “…red in tooth and claw….” We possess and daily exhibit a great capacity for compassion and for reaching out with empathy to others, though mostly to those we know personally. Just as often we react with suspicion, fear, resentment, even violence, against those strangers who look different, who speak in strange words, who have different myths and beliefs than our own. Habits picked up in ancient forests when we were still “prey” more often than “predator,” die slowly, if they die at all.
Our worst human qualities—enjoyment of cruelty, domination, inflicting pain, humiliation, and vengeance—find their fullest expression in the pleasures of MAGA’s “Great Leader,” and he is cheered on by millions. So far, during Trump’s two terms in office, he has authorized military force against ten countries: Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Iraq, and Iran. How have those attacks been of any use to our country?
Truly, human irrationality and savagery (our own and those of other peoples) cannot be engineered away. Then what to do? Geopolitical historian and author, Robert Kaplan, has urged the elevation of wise leaders who exhibit “anxious foresight,” who have developed a mindset of constructive pessimism and a tragic sensibility that allows them to prepare for unanticipated crises, crises which always arise.
It is absolutely necessary that the USA maintain formidable military capabilities, develop and empower effective diplomats and wise internationalist thinkers. We must always be ready to defend ourselves. But a long-dead philosopher, Francois Fenelon, said a true thing: “The blood of a nation ought never to be shed except for its own preservation in the utmost extremity.”
Also, will we ever again recognize and place into power leaders who truly understand what ancient Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu meant when he wrote: “There are roads which must not be followed, armies and walled cities not to be attacked.” We have not been thoughtful or cautious about that for a long time.
Mike Randall has written freelance articles and opinion columns for several newspapers here and in the Midwest. He is author of the non-fiction book, “Becoming Human: A Servant of the Map,” and a novel, “Into the Unknown Country.” He recently published his book, “Trying to See.” All three books are available for purchase on Amazon.
