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Of
Empire, War, Propaganda, and Courage
September 14, 2002
By punpriate
 A
little over thirty-five years ago, I celebrated my impending
20th birthday in a riotous blow-out in a rented apartment
on Cape Cod. The night was both a celebration and forlorn
good-bye to freedom, for I was to be drafted into the army
two days later. My roommates had invited lots of people, many
of whom I did not know. At one point, late in the evening,
two people I did not know and had not met had apparently heard
of my fate, approached me, and said, "we know people in the
Quakers who can get you to Canada, if you want." They wrote
down a name and phone number. I shoved the slip of paper in
my shirt pocket and thanked them.
I was too blitzed to remember until the next day. On the
ride home, I found the piece of paper. I was twenty years
old, on my way home for a last birthday before going into
the army. This little slip of paper disturbed my thoughts
almost as much as my draft notice had. I could abandon my
family and virtually all of the past twenty years for the
prospect of a future, and I could be true to my own beliefs
about the war in Viet Nam. Unlike so many people my age who
ended up in Viet Nam, I'd read about the conflict there, knew
something of the history of the country, knew something about
the geopolitics of the region. I knew in my heart and my mind
that the war was wrong, but, in the end, I could not reconcile
the damage going to Canada would create in my family with
winding up in the military. I told myself, perhaps with some
self-deception, that I would simply go with the flow, do what
I was told, and never volunteer.
Six months later, I found myself in Hawaii, in a separate
infantry brigade (we occupied the same barracks recently vacated
by the 11th Brigade), supposedly training for Viet Nam (the
training consisted of calisthenics, a two-mile run every morning
and a full-dress inspection afterwards and any number of hours
picking up loose trash on post--in the five months in that
unit, I never even saw an M-16, let alone trained with one).
But, Lyndon Johnson changed his mind, turned down Westmoreland's
demand for an additional 266,000 troops. After an unnerving
month getting a series of orders for Viet Nam after the unit
was disbanded, only to have each cancelled, I was transferred
to the local garrison, and spent the rest of my time away
from Viet Nam.
In my case, reasonable caution nearly failed, but ultimately
did not. But, for the couple of million men who volunteered,
or whom the draft picked for destruction, and were killed
or maimed, many did not know that caution was required. They
did not know that they were being dropped into the hopper
of a meat grinder. If every one of them had been counseled
on the history of Viet Nam, of our involvement there, and
on their prospective role as cannon fodder in an absurd political
exercise, there would likely have been a great many more conscientious
objectors, more escapees to Canada, more people participating
in the civil strife which ultimately affected the course of
America's involvement in that war, and a lot fewer volunteers
for war duty in Viet Nam.
What made so many ordinarily sensible young men submit to
danger? Nothing more than the same concerted propaganda campaign
which has called young men to war then, and now. Not to respond
to that call, no matter the reason, was considered cowardly.
And, believe me, there's nothing surer to injure a young man's
sense of self than to be labelled as a coward. It's a powerful
inducement for young men to submit to war, as is the prospect
of prison for failing to offer one's self up to the Selective
Service Board.
Today, the country is in the same grip of propaganda no different
than that promoted during the Viet Nam war. Very lately, the
hawks are even describing any disagreement with the current
administration regarding Iraq as "appeasement." Those in the
administration who never had to consider service, or actively
avoided service, by legal means, are singularly the most strident
and vocal proponents of war in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in
any place where the United States believes force will influence
a foreign government to agree to our views and our demands.
This imperial, almost Roman, inclination to use force indiscriminately
is one of the current administration, not of the nation as
a whole. Convincing Americans of the need for war, these days,
is a simple desire on the part of the administration for consensus
to prop up their own desires for empire, and that requires
the use of propaganda. There's no need to convince the average
dogface, to use an antiquated term, of the need for war. They
are already in the hopper. Only their civilian citizen counterparts
can raise enough of a ruckus to make the adminstration believe
that war is not the wisest political course of action. In
that sense, if we value the lives of those now in the military,
even if they are all volunteers, we should be raising a ruckus.
Intelligent people everywhere, therefore, have both the right
and the obligation to express doubt when doubt arises. We
have the right to demand honest answers from government (yes,
I know, I know the futility of that exercise with the Bush
administration). Had more of us, and more of our legislators,
expressed doubt about the evidence regarding the Gulf of Tonkin
incident in 1964, we might have prevented millions of unnecessary
deaths and disabilities, American and Vietnamese alike, might
have resolved a difficult problem with diplomacy instead of
militancy, and might have engendered in many parts of the
world a respect for the United States, instead of affirming
fear and suspicion of our country.
Today, that same fear and suspicion of us is rising in the
Arab and Islamic world because an administration purportedly
representing the people of the United States has consciously
chosen militancy over diplomacy and common sense. This current
administration has chosen to do so, without adequately informing
the American public of all the consequences, because of a
very narrow view held by the most extreme and conservative
elements of our society about America's determinist role as
an empire. The prospect of eternal war has been posited by
George W. Bush. Thus far, a majority of the American public
has succumbed to this imperial view of the United States.
If history, ancient and recent, holds true, it will only be
after great suffering that the American public will examine
the roots of our current conflicts worldwide and will eventually
demand the answers that they could demand today.
The history of empires is that, inevitably, their reach exceeded
their grasp. At perhaps no other time in our relatively brief
history is it more important to review the history of empires.
Rome fell, the great city of Alexandria was burned by religious
fanatics, the Saracens, Great Britain fell, the Ottoman empire
fell, the Third Reich (intended by Hitler to last a thousand
years) fell in little more than a decade, the Soviet Union,
with all its desperate attempts to preserve Mother Russia
by empire-building, fell. That we have, at this moment in
history, found ourselves without economic and military peer,
does not mean that we cannot fail. To believe so is little
more than to confirm in ourselves the same self-deception
in which previous empires engaged.
Every once in a while, in recent months, I get a reminder
of what modern war and empire-building actually accomplishes.
There is in my town a man wheeling himself down sidewalks
on a cart. He's approximately my age. I suppose he could have
been in an auto accident, except that he's been the recipient
of an operation which is much more common in time of war than
in peacetime. He's the recipient of a hemispherectomy. Perhaps,
thirty-five years ago, he was a healthy six-footer, maybe
played football in high school. Now, he's a little over two
feet tall, amputated above the hips. After seeing the look
in his eyes in a local grocery store one evening, I am loathe
to intrude on him, to ask any question of him for fear that
even an innocent question might turn out to be a painful one
for him. I cannot reassure him by lying, by saying to him
that his sacrifice was for a good cause. I suspect that the
look in his eyes is, in part, due to his understanding of
the lies he'd been told and the propaganda he believed in
that time years ago.
I have other friends and acquaintances who are war amputees,
but they have lost arms, and their lives have been relatively
unimpeded. They have jobs, families, children, hobbies and
aspirations. They are very strong people to have left parts
of themselves in a country ten thousand miles away and still
can find delight and pleasure in life.
But, I do not know how to understand the deep hollowness
in the eyes of the man in my home town who wheels himself
along our sidewalks on a cart. If I could, I would know, fully,
the deep hollowness which is war, and would know exactly what
to say to George W. Bush and his administration of chickenhawks,
and to those of the American public who, succumbing to this
ancient drumbeat of war propaganda, wish that our young men
of today rush headlong into eternal war.
Not being certain of what to say, I can only advise of the
desirability of preventing war, which in these times is prudent
and sensible. The opposition of war should not be perceived
as the occupation of cowards. It should, rather, be seen as
a sanctified respect for human beings and their rights.
Courage comes in many forms. There is the courage of public
servants trying to save the lives trapped in the wreckage
of the World Trade Center towers. There is the courage of
the soldier who, despite private concerns, believes his service
to be in the best interest of his country. There is also the
courage of the private citizen who, knowing right from wrong,
attempts to dissuade his government from the unnecessary sacrifice
of lives in the pursuit of empire.
punpirate is a writer in New Mexico who finds himself surrounded
by people of courage, none of whom are in our current administration.
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