A theft from those who hunger

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  As Congress and the public debate issues regarding the U.S. budget, particularly the growing deficit and the status of the debt ceiling, we again welcome guest contributor John Hess, who writes about the financial and other consequences of war.]

Homeless veteran in Boston
Homeless veteran in Boston. Photo by Matthew Woitunski. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Both Congress and the American public continue to ignore the warnings from earlier lovers of this country–conservative as well as liberal, military as well as civilian.

In a earlier post, I quoted from the final speech of President Dwight Eisenhower, a conservative Republican, but now I want to include a reminder from his first term: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Eisenhower’s warning was echoed in the Vietnam War years by Senator J. William Fulbright in his book The Arrogance of Power: “An excessive preoccupation with foreign relations over a long period of time is more than a manifestation of arrogance; it is a drain on the power that gave rise to it, because it diverts a nation from the sources of its strength, which are its domestic life….” (pp. 20-21).

Finally, the late Chalmers Johnson brought that warning up to date in an essay titled “Going Bankrupt,” collected in his final book Dismantling the Empire: “going into 2008, the United States found itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment” (p. 135).    The “time of reckoning,” he said, “is fast approaching,” unless we correct three major problems (p. 136):

“First, we are spending insane amounts of money on ‘defense’ projects that bear no relationship to the national security of the United States …. Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our manufacturing base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures … Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources) we are failing to invest in social infrastructures and other requirements for the long-term health of our country” (p. 136).

Saturday, May 21, is Armed Forces Day, a good day to reflect on the fact that perhaps nobody suffers more from our devotion to militarism than former members of the armed forces. Their return from battle is often greeted by a lack of jobs and health care; enduring physical and psychological problems pushing them into drug abuse, homelessness, assault on others, and ever-increasing rates of suicide.

Our returning warriors discover that this is a country that forgot their sacrifices once they returned home.

John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Osama bin Laden: A “just” killing? (Just war, part 7)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Continuing the series on just war, Dr. Mike Corgan offers some reflections about whether the killing of Osama bin Laden meets the criteria for just war.]

Though details are still being released it seems the raid at Abbottabad and the killing of Osama bin Laden do meet the requirements of just war.

Poster of Bin Laden with words violence cycle
Poster by Eric Gulliver, 2011

Bin Laden certainly made himself a legitimate target for military and even lethal retaliation by his continuing orchestration and advocacy of attacks directed at civilians, and not just military or police, in Muslim and in Western countries.

The raid itself was risky precisely because it was a proportionate use of force and not a dropping of a dozen or twenty 2,000 lb bombs on the compound which certainly would have caused many civilian deaths.

The women and children were unharmed except for the wife who rushed the attackers; she was shot in the leg, not the head. Of course bin Laden was shot in the head, twice, though he appeared to have had no weapon in hand. However, the use of suicide bomb vests by Al Qaeda is well documented and the shooter, who had one or two seconds to make a decision, had no reason to assume bin Laden did not wear one.

There seems to have been no “collateral damage.” It was about as well carried out as these things can ever be.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University

Revolting against tyranny: Then and now

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today’s post is by our guest contributor Dr. Mike Corgan.]

The protests against tyranny suddenly sweeping the Middle East still focus on the achievement of the Egyptian people and what they accomplished. Now the world waits to see what the army will do.

George Washington portrait by Peale
George Washington, 1776, by Charles Wilson Peale (Photographic reproduction in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons)

As we in the U.S. celebrate this Presidents’ Day weekend, it is well to think beyond the car and flat screen TV sales and reflect on just how lucky we were with our revolution and why we honor these two presidents.

George Washington was unquestionably the ablest military man among the Americans who chose to fight British absentee governance and taxation. Qualities far beyond his generalship immortalize his  service to democracy and his country.

When the war was over and the British had surrendered he could have been king if he wanted it. Instead he went to Congress and laid his sword on a table and said his work was done. How many other military leaders of a victorious revolutionary army have ever surrendered to civilian control like that? None–before or since. We were lucky beyond all others.

Yet again, when the army later threatened to march on Congress in Philadelphia to get promised benefits, Washington went to the plotters in Newburgh and defused the situation. He pleaded with his officers not to undo all they had stood for in the name of democracy against tyranny and force with a military show of force.

His oratory and sincerity and even his dramatic putting on of glasses and saying that he himself had grown blind in the service of his country ended the affair, many plotters leaving the meeting in tears. Our revolution succeeded in its aims for many reasons, but George Washington was one of the most important ones.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University