"When I
was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who
they were," he said. "It was us vs. them, and it was
clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are,
but we know they're there." George W. Bush
Militarism
is the use of the military to pursue the misguided and selfish
personal interests of ruling politicians. In a militaristic
society, military spending is bloated and prioritized. Hundreds
of billions of dollars are annually spent on the military,
dollars that end up in the pockets of a few wealthy people
with a vested interest in keeping military spending high.
Militarism requires the regular propping up of satanic enemies
by the ruling politicians
— bogeymen used to scare Americans into believing that more and
more of our tax dollars should be spent on the military, rather than
on constructive and peaceful endeavors. Often, these "enemies" are
created by the very military that wants to destroy them, as
was Manual Noreiga (Reagan/Bush administration), Saddam Hussein
(Reagan/Bush administration, and Osama bin Laden (Reagan/Bush
administration). Rather than destroying the bogeymen, militarism
destroys innocent civilians and their property.
Whoever
came up with the idea that one man should have the power to
command the largest army in the world? Such a scenario
is both dangerous and foolish; 200 years ago when the US
was founded, we were a few hundred thousand people in the
wilderness, not 280 million with the largest arsenal of
nuclear weapons ever to exist. In today’s
world, our collective, secure, peaceful future requires the
condemnation of war, the elimination of all weapons of
mass destruction, and the demilitarization of the planet.
Certainly, the notion that one unelected Texas businessman
can command, at will, a huge army with a nuclear arsenal,
is terribly misguided, obsolete, and potentially devastating
to the planet and its people.
There is no question that the US needs a national defense, however,
we can fully support our military while ardently denouncing militarism.
Alternatives to militarism should be obvious:
1)
The US military should be used for the defense of our country,
or for international peacekeeping, period. It should not be used
to force the personal ideologies of ruling US politicians upon
the rest of the world; it should not be used to pave the way for
American corporate expansion across the planet; and it should not
be used to gain access to natural resources in other countries.
2)
War should be denounced as a crime against humanity and anyone
who plans for, or wages war should be brought to justice by the
world community. To be responsible for starting a needless war
is unquestionably the greatest failure of any politician at any
time in history, past or present.
3)
All weapons of mass destruction in any country in the world should
be destroyed. Their very existence is an abomination, an insult,
and a threat to every decent person on Earth.
4)
The United States should pledge to respect international law and
thereby become an example to the rest of the world.
5)
Our “country” should be recognized by our citizens as
the land we live on and all of its inhabitants. Our “country” is
neither a flag nor the small group of politicians who currently
control the government. We owe no allegiance to the politicians;
they are hired by us to serve our country and we must stand
up and demand this from them. Otherwise they will continue
to bleed our economy, our natural resources, our young men
and women, and our planet, to satisfy their egotistical addiction
to militarism.
Feedback:
"I think it's natural that
people look mostly at the visible evidence of militarism, but if
one stops there, one cannot be very effective in trying to "defeat" it.
That is, if we work to stop U.S. military intervention somewhere,
if we try to prevent an increase in the military budget, if
we lobby to keep a particular weapons system from receiving
funding from Congress, we might partially succeed with some
of these goals once in a great while, but it will do nothing
to affect the foundation of militarism that makes such manifestations
continue to arise and come back to haunt us.
To do so, we have to publicly
talk about the value system that supports militarism and how
that value system is cultivated. This means looking at institutions
of socialization and the process of teaching values, and addressing
the problem at that level--as opposed to focusing only on the
surface level where we see the manifestations.
Militarism in the U.S. is
taught largely through our culture and educational institutions,
especially through the military's involvement in schools, the
media, etc. Until we do more to counter militarism at this level,
it will be impossible to every work effectively to stop the wars,
military spending, and the exploitative foreign policy that our
military is used to enforce.
As an example of the kind
of definition of militarism I am talking about, please see: http://www.comdsd.org/militarism.htm."
R. J.