The wespeaks of Matt DiBlasi and David Knappenberger do not make identical arguments, but they share enough in common that I can respond to them at the same time. Because both wespeaks directed their remarks primarily at me rather than at Students for Ending the War in Iraq, I respond here as an individual rather than as a representative of my group, in contrast with SEWI’s April 10th wespeak.
DiBlasi and Knappenberger’s basic contention is that investing in military contractors is socially responsible because it supports the defense of the United States, its citizens, and the men and women who fight in the US military. Despite Knappenberger’s implication, I am not a pacifist; I agree in principle that a defensive war is morally justifiable. The first question, then, is whether US foreign policy is actually defensive in nature.
The last century or so suggests that it is not. When the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations invaded Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines starting in 1898—killing over 250,000 Filipino civilians—what did they defend? When Woodrow Wilson invaded and occupied Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, denying those populations their independence, what was he defending? When the CIA overthrew Guatemala’s first genuine democratically-elected government in 1954, ushering in four decades of brutal military dictatorship and, in the early 1980s, a US-backed genocide against Mayan peasants, what was defended? When the US government sent military aid to General Suharto in Indonesia from 1965 until the mid-1990s, facilitating the mass slaughter of between 500,000 and one million Indonesian and Timorese people, what did it defend? When the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations waged a twelve-year war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia that sought to prop up repressive dictators and squelch popular movements, killing perhaps three million people in Indochina and 58,000 US soldiers, how did this action protect democracy there, here, or anywhere else? When the CIA and US military sent weapons and training to support military dictatorships in Central America and to overthrow democratic rule in Nicaragua during the 1980s, assisting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, what was the defensive purpose? How have any of these military ventures protected democracy? The current Iraq war—preceded by twelve years of brutal sanctions which resulted in 500,000 dead Iraqi children in the early 1990s alone—is certainly no exception. The sanctions and subsequent invasion-occupation of Iraq have resulted in perhaps one million dead (see the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, Mr. Knappenberger, which offered a conservative estimate of around 34,000 civilian deaths in 2006 alone; a 2006 Lancet study estimated 655,000 “excess” Iraqi deaths since the war’s start, a figure which includes civilians and fighters).
This month is the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “A Time to Break Silence” speech against the Vietnam War, in which King characterized the US government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” Although the US is by no means the only violent aggressor government in the world today, it is difficult to argue that King’s statement does not also apply to the present. At what point in the past half-century have we ever been in danger of “living under despotic nations’ rules,” as Knappenberger insists we have? Looking back at the entire post-WWII period, I see no deployment of US military force that has not been preventable or that has been initiated in order to protect democracy for people here or elsewhere. In fact, I challenge DiBlasi and Knappenberger to offer a single example of a post-1898 US military or CIA intervention apart from World War II that has served the cause of defense or that was necessary to preserve democracy and freedom in the US.
There is, of course, at least the theoretical possibility of a morally-justifiable war of defense. The United States military should not be entirely eliminated, therefore, but drastically scaled-down and democratized. Maintaining a massive war machine while engaging in near-constant imperialist ventures serves only one sector of society: the economic, political, and military elites who make the decisions to go to war, and who profit from the suffering of soldiers, victims, and their families. All non-elites lose, especially the poor. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent each year to maintain the most powerful military machine in world history should be reallocated to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and to otherwise heal the fabric of a society in which 47 million have no health insurance, where two million rot in prisons, and where the majority of citizens are increasingly disillusioned, cynical, and apathetic about their lives and future possibilities. Wesleyan University can stain its hands with blood by investing in weapons contractors, or it can play a more socially responsible role by investing in the human development of this country.
DiBlasi and Knappenberger also perpetuate some other common delusions: namely, that the interests of the US government and the US people are synonymous, and that US military planners share the same interests as the rank-and-file (72 percent of the latter favor withdrawal from Iraq, according to a Feb. 2006 Zogby poll)—in short, that “the United States” is a homogeneous community of people who share a common interest in a militaristic foreign policy. The rich and their servants, corporate CEO’s and the janitors who clean their toilets, military generals and enlisted men and women, whites and minorities—all have an equal interest in overseas imperialism. The sort of corporatist rhetoric which asserts a commonality of interest among all members of the nation was an essential aspect of fascist discourse in Germany, Italy, Argentina, and elsewhere in the twentieth century. This rhetoric is often accompanied by the spirit of militarism which Dr. King so vehemently condemned. Knappenberger, on the other hand, praises what he calls “the militaristic aspects that America has had since its inception.” Strangely, 72 percent of US active-duty military personnel in Iraq don’t seem to share his enthusiasm for war.
Both authors imply that SEWI members are disconnected from the war, that we make the argument for divestment based on some dogmatic belief rather than concrete experience or knowledge. As Knappenberger eloquently puts it, “Take the silver spoons out of your asses and come to grip with reality.” Presumably he means that all we who favor divestment are rich liberal elites from New England or California, who do not “have familiarity with” the sectors of the population who are driven to enlist by economic desperation. While I have no personal experience with war, I do come from a high school in rural Appalachia in which high percentages of graduates enlist in the military. I have witnessed some of the effects of this and other wars on poor and working-class families, who are made to sacrifice to satisfy the greed and whims of elite policymakers in Washington. War does not bring “luxury” as Knappenberger implies, but deprivation: Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the total cost of the current war to be around $2 trillion—that means about $6,700 for every man, woman, and child in this country, a burden which disproportionately falls on the poor and working class. As Dr. King said about his own transformation during the Vietnam War, “I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” In any case, Mr. Knappenberger, support war and militarism if you will but never try to cast yourself as a populist speaking truth to spoiled liberal elites about the interests of the “rural and urban poor” who, as you correctly note, constitute the vast majority of the military’s rank-and-file.
Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, Knappenberger questions why SEWI is just as concerned with Iraqi life as with the life of US soldiers, asking “shouldn’t American dead concern you more [than Iraqi dead]?” This statement is pure racism, if we define racism as the belief that our countrymen’s lives are more valuable than the lives of others. To concern oneself with the lives of the “enemy” in addition to the lives of US soldiers does not imply a lack of love for one’s country. Furthermore, no SEWI member to my knowledge has ever implied that Iraqi lives are more valuable than US lives, and to level that accusation against any of us is absurd. King’s words from his April 1967 speech are again appropriate: “Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in the individual societies.” Supporting companies who produce heavy artillery for the US war machine is incompatible with this goal.
The arguments which refute DiBlasi and Knappenberger’s are nothing complex; they are apparent to anyone with even the most minimal ability to see through the bipartisan mantras surrounding this and other wars: that the United States government always acts with benevolent, humanitarian intentions; that our foreign wars are wars of defense; that anti-war activists are “out of touch with reality” and constitute fringe elements; that supporting our troops means supporting the rabid militarism and aggressive imperialism of elite policymakers. DiBlasi and Knappenberger clearly lack this analytical capacity as well as a basic familiarity with the history of US foreign policy in the last century. But on the plus side, they do possess the demagogical skills necessary to qualify them for jobs with most of the mainstream media outlets in this country. Good luck, guys, I’m sure you have very bright futures ahead of you.
Leave a Reply