Seven lessons learned from a quarter century in a war-oriented society.
It's 2001—the year the movies promised we'd make contact with aliens—and the United States has rather recently been attacked by terrorists who flew passenger planes into buildings.
I have a distinct memory from the day of the attacks, of a news anchor announcing—before the buildings even fell—that we were now at war, which we technically weren't yet; thanks to my high school civics class I knew that news anchors aren't empowered to declare war.
But sure enough, here in late 2001, old what's-his-name the news anchor has been proved right: we're heading to war in Afghanistan. Old what's-his-name knew, with the sage wisdom of somebody living in a war-oriented society; when you are attacked, war is not optional.
Afghanistan isn't the country where most of the terrorists who attacked us hail from, incidentally. It's where the terrorists operated, partly because we funded them to operate there—so bringing war to the region is something millions of us notice has made us less safe, not more.
And millions of others who've already learned a war-oriented society's lessons inform us that pointing this observable fact out means that we are suggesting that those who died in the terrorist attacks deserved it, that we denigrate their memories by suggesting we do nothing.
And now it is 2003, and we are fixing to go to war in Iraq, which means the people of Iraq will not have a choice about whether or not to experience war, and we do have a choice, but we are saying we do not.
For them war truly is not optional. They are going to have some. We will make sure.
We are going to deliver something called "shock and awe" to them; not just killing, but a lot of killing.
The only appropriate answer to killing is not only killing—it must be disproportionate killing—a hundred times more killing, a thousand times more.
This suggests that we believe almost instinctively that we are much more valuable as human beings than any other human beings from any other places—100x more, 1000x—so much more valuable, that it might be said we don't even think of those other people as human beings.
Iraq is not a country where most of the people who attacked us are from, either. It is a country some of our current leaders indicated they wanted to go to war with even before we were attacked, and they said they wanted to do this because there is a very bad guy in power there.
It is true that there is a bad person there. He is in power there in part because we helped put him there, which is also true but not mentioned. He does terrible things to the Iraqi people, we're told—also true. In response to this crime, we propose to ... do terrible things to the Iraqi people.
We put the bad guy in power there because doing so served our national interests, according to the people who decide. And sure, there's a lot of oil in Iraq, and our most prominent current leaders who most wanted war in Iraq are oil men, but never mind—we're talking about safety for American people.
Now our current leaders—some of whom were involved with putting the bad guys in power in Afghanistan and Iraq, are saying that Iraq—which has not attacked us, is about to attack us, very very very soon, and therefore it needs to be very very very attacked.
Any hypothetical future threat of potential attack justifies the same disproportionate violent response as an actual attack. Any imagined threat must be taken as the same as a real one.
So yes, our leaders say that Iraq poses an imminent threat. Our leaders say there is evidence. The experts whose jobs involve knowing such things say there actually isn't any evidence. We are told by our leaders that this means the experts are aligned with the terrorists.
The experts are aligned with terrorists, who apparently more than anything do not want us to go to war in Iraq, because terrorists want to kill Americans, and nothing apparently makes the job of killing Americans more difficult than if America opens a SECOND ground war.
And now it is 2005, and we have brought a lot more death to Iraq and Afghanistan than was ever brought to us. Maybe a million civilians. Maybe more. And 10,000 of our troops, and 10s of thousands more injured. And two countries broken forever, hi-ho.
Millions of us find all this death and maiming tragic. And we're told by millions more—the same who told us that we were aligned with terrorists for predicting this exact eventuality—that finding the death of foreign civilians tragic means we are aligned with the terrorists.
We are told that we hate our country and love the terrorists, because we have failed to recognize that the US is not to blame in any way for wars it started and continues to wage; the fault lies with the Iraqis themselves, who can stop fighting if they want to stop the war.
Any killing we do, not matter how indefensible it is, can only ever be self-defense. Anyone who suffers and dies is a victim not of us but of those who threaten or harm us, or even a victim of themselves.
Those who had no choice about whether or not to be at war are blamed for not ending the war, which is not something that is in their power to do. Our violence is not only pure; it is self-purifying.
But never mind, because now it is 2007, and it is time for even more war.
We were told that this war in Iraq would be over in a matter of days—months, maybe, not years—but it is 2007, and the war is somehow only getting bigger and more entrenched. We're now told that this means we need to deliver more death to more people, in the name of safety.
Millions of us think this is absolute bullshit. Those who brought the case for war have been exposed as terrible liars, and their rationale for the war has been exposed as a sham, and their operation of it has been an unmitigated corrupt cock-up on every level.
Many of us are dismayed by this betrayal of what we believed to be our nation's identity, and we don't want to be complicit in the killing of thousands of people who just wanted to live their lives, so we commit the great crime of opposing the war, and we oppose expanding it.
And we're still told, by the same people as before—the ones who insisted on opposing terrorists that wanted to make a world of death by making a world of death—that by opposing the war (and our new torture program!), we have proved that we love the terrorists and their cause.
These same people are eager to tell me that because I oppose bringing death to people I do not know, it means that I want to do nothing, because our options are war or nothing.
And our institutions of power and influence are aligned with this binary framing.
The people who were wrong about everything are presumed to be right and normal and interested in our security and safety. The millions of us who were right about what would happen are presumed to be wrong, not real Americans but dangerous traitors, a threat to safety.
The very people who created the danger, then failed to prevent the attack, then increased our danger, are still invited to opine as trusted sources on what we should do about future dangers, and their answers always involve more killing.
They are considered real Americans, extended an indestructible credulity by our institutions of influence and power not in spite of wanting to create a world of killing, but because of it.
The millions of us who were right about what would happen are extended an indestructible skepticism by our institutions of influence and power, not in spite of our opposition to killing, but because of it.
There are still ignorant fools among us, and they still receive the most attention, to cast us as ignorant and foolish, when set against the wisdom of those who know that the choices are war or nothing.
Wanting to wage war makes you correct in a way that overcomes evidence or results or even coherence.
You don't have to have been correct about why you wanted to kill, and you don't have to have been correct about what the result of the killing would be—simply wanting to kill is right enough to make you perpetually right.
Or you can stand from a position of power and claim powerlessness, and claim that those with least power and influence have all power and influence, and are to blame for the reality you have created.
But never mind; now it is 2020, and the police are rioting—not for the first time.
I should explain the police to you. The police are our white supremacist standing army, accountable to nobody, who we use to wage war against our fellow civilians, neighbors who we treat as domestic enemies.
You can tell the police are an army because we give them military equipment to do their jobs. You can tell they are accountable to nobody because whenever those who are supposed to have the power to check them try to do so, they respond with threats and violence.
You can tell we use the police to wage war against our neighbors because we fund them, and the more violent they get, the more money we give them. They eat over half our city budgets in many places.
And if you want to know which of our neighbors we consider our domestic enemies, or understand why they are a white supremacist army, you just need to watch who the police menace and kill here in 2020.
On that subject, a police officer was recently waging war in one of our nations residential occupied zones—an area that just so happens to be predominantly Black—and while doing so, he murdered a Black man named George Floyd.
Floyd begged for his life as he was being killed, but the officer killed him all the same, using practices that were standard practice for cops, we all later learned, which is how you can tell that murdering Black people is sort of standard operating protocol for police.
Millions of us all over the country have found, almost to our surprise in some cases, that we are opposed to this, and thousands of us all over the country have taken to the streets and demonstrated for an end to police brutality.
The police have taken this questioning of their right to kill as an act of violence. In response, they are rioting and waging war all over the country against American citizens. All over the country, all summer long, they are brutalizing protesters.
It's been violent—as wars waged by the state against its own citizens tend to be. And millions of others have blamed not the police, but the protesters, for not protesting in a nonviolent enough fashion.
And the communities to whom we sent this standing army of police to wage war—who have no choice whether or not they are at war, because it is being waged against them in the name of safety—they are being blamed for all the violence that comes with the war we wage against them.
Millions of us are horrified by all this. And we are told by millions of others that this means we are aligned with crime and murder and death, for the crime of wanting to abolish this standing army of white supremacy and stop waging war against our neighbors.
And millions of us, who have been watching since 2001 or even before, can see how framing the apparatus of killing as indistinguishable from safety helps the apparatus of killing, but not how it helps make us safe
We can see how framing a country as indistinguishable from its murderous government helps that government, but not how it helps the country. We see how framing its citizens as indistinguishable from its murderous government helps that government, but not how it helps the people.
And we can see clearly how framing killing as the only way to bring safety, and any act other than killing as nothing, favors those who want to create a world of death, but not how it helps honor the dead or keeps any of the living safe.
Millions of us think the bigger problem might be the killing.
It seems to us that framing war as our only option represents the greatest possible failure of human imagination there can be, and our wealth and resources and ingenuity seem to present many other options.
To millions of us, it seems that perhaps, if we all put our heads together, we might think of something else to do, that isn't nothing but isn't war, either.
And, even if some of us are foolish and ignorant about what that something might be, we think that seeking that something is better than not seeking it.
And even if some of us are foolish and ignorant, many of us are not.
Yet we all see the way the solutions presented by those who are not ignorant fools are ignored, while those of us who are the most ignorant and foolish receive the most attention from institutions of influence and power, framing the antiwar act of imagination as ignorant foolishness.
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