War As Performance "Art"

Monday, January 27, 2014


As I hear more stories about people who have been affected by PTSD it's only natural I hear reference to stories related to Iraq...or Afghanistan.  As I was cleaning up my computer today I found a piece I wrote in 2009 for a class I was taking at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.  It still seems timely today...over four years later:

The Cost of a Myth

A Post-Modern Perspective on American Culture and War

Are you worth more dead than alive?  Well publicized events of America's cultural and political life might lead a person to believe our mainstream culture actually prizes life over death.  Consider the wrangling over abortion provisions that recently slowed progress on the House of Representatives' efforts to create a landmark health care overhaul bill.  Many Americans have very strong feelings on abortion.  Indeed, some people are so pro-life they destroy life as an expression of their respect for it.  A man responsible for the murder of a Wichita, Kansas abortion doctor recently expressed no remorse for his actions.  He cited the imminent danger to unborn lives as justification for the murder.  Taking life to preserve life apparently did not seem to be a contradiction in his own mental calculus.

Yet you can also learn much about a person, people or nation by what is not often openly shared.  America, all appearances to the contrary, espouses a culture of death.  Murder makes money.  Peace does not.  In his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges explores the statecraft of war.  He asserts all participants in the modern practice of war are defiled, regardless of position or intent.  Hedges worked as a war correspondent for many years and thus witnessed the cold cruelty that leads human beings to murder both adults and children as well as military enemies and civilians.  Hedges argues that the state legitimizes and subsequently prosecutes war (often quite easily with a large degree of impunity) by employing a number of techniques including destruction of the evidence of its inevitable horror, marginalizing dissident voices and revising history itself.  The common theme contained in these strategies is control of information.  The dead "become pieces of performance art" for use as state propaganda.

Any well educated statesman with a post modern perspective will affirm that power and knowledge are indeed intimately intertwined.  To gain and maintain the former you must know how to manage and cultivate the latter.  When information harmful to a reputation might possibly emerge, controlling knowledge is a paramount strategy.  The United States military is certainly aware of the power of knowledge.  To be otherwise would risk the American public's tolerance of war and its inevitable destruction.  Our culture's glorification of war necessarily requires a distorted understanding of what war is, and what it does to all it consumes.

Consider the eight year long conflict in Afghanistan.  Let us put aside all questions as to what the United States' motivations are for being there and whether the mission itself is a viable one.  Let us concentrate solely on the consequences.  Have you ever noticed how frequently American military deaths are repeated in media reports, and how comparatively infrequent are reports of the greater number of personnel seriously injured?  What ultimately becomes of these people and their profoundly altered futures?  Indeed, if our nation possesses such reverence for life, where is the widespread interest in the current lives of these personnel who survive?  If we care so much for life, where is our interest in these individuals' futures?

The paucity of data on the war injured can be appreciated by the name of one site that offers it: www.unknownnews.net.  According to the site, the number of troops seriously injured compared to the number killed is three and seven times greater for theaters in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.  Data from more well known sources is equally sobering.  A recent New York Times article provided an estimate that the costs of sending additional American troops to Afghanistan averages to $1,000,000.00 per soldier per annum.  The high cost is due in part to transportation and equipment costs for each soldier.  Regardless of what choice President Obama ultimately makes regarding the American presence in Afghanistan, the costs we have already incurred, and will continue to incur, are enormous. 

There is a saying that ignorance is bliss.  But we are ignorant of what our military personnel endure at our own peril.  We are truly burdened by this ignorance.  Long after the Afghanistan question is somehow answered, we here in America will be confronting the consequences.  Consider the many soldiers afflicted with PTSD.  But there is a still darker story, and this one comes from Iraq.  Consider the horror of depleted uranium.

The Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network of the Military Toxics Project provides data on the exposure of American military personnel to depleted uranium during the Gulf War of 1990-91.  The Gulf War was the first major conflict to feature the use of depleted uranium (DU) in weaponry.  The Army Environmental Policy Institute, in response to a Congressional requirement, generated a technical report on the environmental consequences of DU use.  The Depleted Uranium Citizens' Network reviewed the report and determined that "its conclusions are inconsistent with its creditable scientific statements."  The Network further states that "DU is a deadly substance from which soldiers, the public and the environment must be protected beforehand, because no technology can afterwards adequately mitigate its effects."  DU weapons later became available on the world market.  Does the glory of war include radiation poisoning?  America unleashed the pain of radiation related illness by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.  How can we tolerate the Department of Defense allowing our military personnel to be exposed to radioactive material?

Yet the horror widens still more.  For truly stomach churning material, read an article recently published by Justin O'Connell entitled "Copenhagen Treaty: Premises and Motivations."  The United States Department of Defense is recognized therein as "the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous wastes than the five largest US chemical companies together."  How can the largest polluter of the world simultaneously successfully provide for the security of a nation?  Have you heard of a greater contradiction?

A truly sustainable state is one that ensures the security of its own people.  And yet a sustainable state will also wisely recognize the need to provide a certain baseline of care and security for its military and security forces that ensure its own existence.  And on that second measure, the United States has a long distance to go.