Bringing It All Back Home
Never Forget. It’s September again. You’re going to hear and see the lingering vestiges of American militarism-patriotism as people post memes and honour the US military veterans and dead. I want you to remember again, because you may not have realised how the wars came home to you. How we inherited the vicious energetic legacy of militarism that unleashed a storm of mass shootings and police violence on our country. We’ve passed the ten year mark, and in these days of rapid news cycles and a constant torrent of games, celebrity lists, body hacks, GIFs and other porn, it gets harder and harder to really engage people in truly taking a moment for remembrance. Take a deep breath, remember not to self-recriminate. Don’t get overwhelmed by guilt or pain. Read on. You can use this idea to reshape our reality.
Today, I’ve seen the usual posts about heroes and their sacrifices to our freedom, about bravery and courage. There have been remembrance ceremonies all over the country today - one was the objective of a failed bombing plot. But finally, at long last, there isn’t an overwhelming atmosphere of flag-waving or patriotic sentiment. But while the patriotic fervour - sometimes blinding, sometimes wistful, often mindless - slips away fourteen years later, I’m increasingly struck by the sort of karmic legacy of the two big wars started by Bush and inherited by Obama.
However murky and irrelevant the presence of weapons of mass destruction (half of the Bush regime’s stated motivation for invasion), the desire to go to war to avenge the 9/11 attacks never goes away. Never forget. The country music anthems by Charlie Daniels and Darryl Worley... A stunned nation responded desperately to the collective trauma. Never forget how hopping mad Americans were - how teeth were bared, eyes wild, fists clenched, murderous fantasies entertained. Never forget there were no weapons of mass destruction. Never mind that there was no connection to the 9/11 attacks. There barely was one in Afghanistan. Never forget.
When you demonise a person from another country, you find things to feel revulsion toward - their religion, their language, their dress, the way they look. You turn a human who could quite easily be your neighbour, depending on the ‘hood, into a monster. But could it also be that you, yourself, have become the monster? As millions of Americans lay in their beds, terrified about their brother, their father, their sister, daughter, over there, fighting, getting shot, thinking of themselves being victimised, endless daytime nightmares trapped in burning towers, fearing zombies, you name it - we were envisioning the world we’d be inhabiting in the 2010′s. We were bringing it all home, slowly but surely. We became the most heinous aggressor collectively.
1.5 milion total deployment of US troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - Each time someone joins the military, another “military family” is born. People begin to identify with militarist ideas, to see the country in the light of a binary military-civilian divide and generally resent criticism of the government, police and military. That’s 1.5 million new military families to help shape the future of American values.
The Iraq war killed around 4,500 US service members, untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s, including around 120,000 Iraqi civilians. Just take a second and digest that feast of destruction.
Hundreds of thousands of US troops injured, around 260,000 of those traumatic brain injuries. Destruction. Zombies. The dead mind. The broken brain. Mindlessness. This is what the War Machine does to real people.
Afghanistan: 360,000 total Afghani casualties, 2,156 US. Think of the drones combing the mountains. Think of the airstrike, the bus, the children...
10,500 cases of PTSD for every 100,000 US soldiers serving in Iraq. Our mad rush to avenge 9/11 and get “bad guys” (remember? that’s what Bush called them) shattered the emotional stability of a generation. Have you ever sat with a veteran experiencing a PTSD meltdown? I have. And I have a suggestion for you - will these people be our police force?
Some of those vets are becoming police. We brought it all home - tanks, guns, tactical gear, even the soldiers - to keep order in our once democratic nation as we shed the façade of freedom and equality. While that may be an abstraction, the industries that always lobby for war - chemical manufacturers, aerospace contractors, gun makers, oil companies, weapon builders, tech and communications business - were very concretely in on the deal. Those same gun makers arm the police, armed guards, rogue shooters and paramilitaries that increasingly threaten the security, safety and freedom of American citizens.
We’ll be fighting those two wars in our cities and our homes for the next two decades at least. Yes, we will. The business of America is Business - the gun business, the oil business, the policing and prison business. When people talk to you about freedom and the wars we fought to ensure ours, you’ll feel an odd emotion - part doubt, part fear, part guilt, part sorrow - take a deep breath and remind yourself they’re wrong. Those two wars were about resource grabs, about post-colonial imperialism masquerading as “globalism”. About war profiteering. It never goes away. Business. Nobody went over there to preserve American freedom - never forget.
What we have achieved through our patriotism and our revenge compulsion is the bitterest of ironies: we took our hearts to war and found nothing but hatred and destruction. From Sandy Hook, where a military style assault rifle was used on children, to Ferguson, where the militarised police force made itself known, to, Baltimore and on - you will see what it means to reap what you sow. We planted a grisly, revolting harvest. Never forget.
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