The Crash and Burn of Old Regimes: Washington Court Culture and Its Endless Wars

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:




The Crash and Burn of Old Regimes
Washington Court Culture and Its Endless Wars

By William J. Astore


The killing of Osama bin Laden, “a testament to the greatness of our country” according to President Obama, should not be allowed to obscure a central reality of our post-9/11 world. Our conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya remain instances of undeclared war, a fact that contributes to their remoteness from our American world. They are remote geographically, but also remote from our day-to-day interests and, unless you are in the military or have a loved one who serves, remote from our collective consciousness (not to speak of our consciences).

And this remoteness is no accident. Our wars and their impact are kept in remarkable isolation from what passes for public affairs in this country, leaving most Americans with little knowledge and even less say about whether they should be, and how they are, waged.

In this sense, our wars are eerily like those pursued by European monarchs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: conflicts carried out by professional militaries and bands of mercenaries, largely at the whim of what we might now call a unitary executive, funded by deficit spending, for the purposes of protecting or extending the interests of a ruling elite.

Cynics might say it has always been thus in the United States. After all, the War of 1812 was known to critics as “Mr. Madison’s War” and the Mexican-American War of the 1840s was “Mr. Polk’s War.” The Spanish-American War of 1898 was a naked war of expansion vigorously denounced by American anti-imperialists. Yet in those conflicts there was at least genuine national debate, as well as formal declarations of war by Congress. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175391/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_a_new_age_of_%22enlightened%22_war_/#more (the story follows an intro titled 'A New Age of 'Enlightened' War')

[Uncle Joe]

1. I like the myth, but I don't believe this is new to the 20th century, that being the notion

of Congress not formally declaring war and keeping the American People separated from military adventurism.

To my knowledge the Congress never declared war against the Native Americans and as the frontier moved west, more Americans in the east became detached from the wars waged in pursuit of land and/or precious metals until the U.S. pretty much owned it all.

Toward the end of the 19th century, those same people back east were entertained with Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show, and that's about as close they got to the reality of the Indian Wars.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.