The endless war
By David Brooks
From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada
NEW YORK – The military brass and their civilian bosses are very worried by two phenomena in the rank and file – significant increases in suicides and incidents of sexual assault – and nobody understands the reasons, or at least says so.
During the past 12 years, with two wars plus other military actions, the number of suicides among active-duty troops rose to a record of 350 in 2012, according to The New York Times. That figure is twice the number one decade ago and higher than the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan that year.
In 2002, the military’s suicide rate was 10.3 per 100,000 troops. Today, the rates are nearly the same, above 18 per 100,000 people. Despite multiple investigations and prevention programs, the experts admit that they don’t understand the causes.
On the other hand, in what some call “an epidemic of sexual assaults,” the Pentagon recently disclosed that the number of military personnel who are victims of sexual assault and related crimes has increased 35 percent in the past two years.
In 2012, 3,400 cases of sexual assault in the armed forces were reported officially, only a fraction of the more than 26,000 instances that the Pentagon suspects occurred.
Worse yet, some of the officers assigned to tackle and reduce the number of sexual assaults are now being accused of doing the same. First, the Air Force’s chief of prevention of sexual assaults, Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, was arrested on charges of groping and attacking a woman in Virginia.
Ten days later, an Army sergeant in charge of investigating sexual assault incidents in Texas was investigated for allegations of “abusive sexual contact” and possible forcing a subordinate into prostitution.
Although in almost every official, sports or cultural event, politicians invite the public to praise and thank the armed forces for their “sacrifice,” the treatment given to veterans and their families seems to contradict those sentiments.
The number of applications for disability submitted to the Veterans Affairs Administration – the main federal agency devoted to helping them, particularly on matters of health – that are overdue (they are catalogued thus if they haven’t been resolved in 125 days) is almost 600,000 and growing.
Although the incidents of suicide and sexual assault among uniformed personnel are complex issues that have no single cause, they wouldn’t exist outside the context of a superpower with an unprecedented military capability, military expenditures that account for 41 percent of the world’s total – according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) – and living something that has become a “normal” element of U.S. life: a never-ending war.
The “war on terrorism” that the United States declared after Sept. 11, 2001, is only part of the war history of this country, a history of continuous war from its founding until today. However, it seems to be the first war that is defined as open-ended.
Last week, Michael Sheehan, assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflicts, was asked at a Senate hearing how long he expects the war on terrorism will last. “At least 10 to 20 years,” he answered coolly, not including the past 12 years.
Apparently, there is neither a time limit nor a geographic limit for this war, waged from U.S. cities to the Middle East and Africa.
Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian, comments that “It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. […] it is also its own fuel. It is precisely this endless war – justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism – that is the single greatest cause of that threat.”
Historian and army veteran Andrew Bacevich has just published a book in which he warns that the “Holy Trinity” of U.S. military power, the Pentagon’s “worldwide footpath” and the United States’ propensity for interventionism generate “a permanent condition of crisis in the national security.” That, he says, establishes a justification for an endless war. Meanwhile, the public no longer questions it all, the expert says.
When his son, an Army lieutenant, died in combat in Iraq in 2007, Bacevich wrote in The Washington Post that official orators repeat the argument “that a G.I.’s life is priceless. Don’t believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life: I’ve been handed the check.”
If you are trained to be a participant in this endless war, told that the enemy is global, that he may be around the corner or in mountains or deserts miles away, taught that violence is a legitimate answer and that you have a right to use it, and are told that using violence is “heroic,” maybe that explains something.
If suddenly you return and there are no jobs, no housing and no support, not even for the disabilities you suffered for “defending” the nation, and the wars in which you participated were triggered by deceits and manipulation by your civilian commanders, maybe that also explains something.
Maybe the war and militarization dehumanize everyone. Maybe, through war, you destroy not only the enemy but yourself.
Maybe those are the costs of the endless war.
