WE’VE BEEN CONDITIONED TO ACCEPT WAR!
In my lifetime, I’ve lived through the Viet Nam War, two wars in Irac and one in Afghanistan, not a one of them receiving a Declaration of War by Congress. And also lesser engagements in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, ISIL and Syria. By my calculations, of my sixty years on this planet, we’ve been warless for only twenty of them. Here’s a run down”
| 1961 Cuba | The U.S. orchestrates the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, an unsuccessful attempt by Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist regime in Cuba. |
| 1961-1973 Vietnam War | In 1955, communist North Vietnam invades non-communist South Vietnam in an attempt to unify the country and impose communist rule. The United States joins the war on the side of South Vietnam in 1961, but withdraws combat troops in 1973. In 1975 North Vietnam succeeds in taking control of South Vietnam. The Vietnam War is the longest conflict the U.S. ever fought and the first war it lost. |
| 1965 Dominican Republic | U.S. president Lyndon Johnson sends marines and troops to quash a leftist uprising; he fears the Dominican Republic might follow in the footsteps of Cuba and turn communist. |
| 1982 Lebanon | U.S. troops form part of a multinational peacekeeping force to help the fragile Lebanese government maintain power in the politically volatile country. In 1983 241 U.S. Marines and 60 French soldiers are killed by a truck bomb. The multinational force withdraws in 1984. |
| 1983 Grenada | U.S. President Ronald Reagan invades the Caribbean island nation of Grenada to overthrow its socialist government, which has close ties with Cuba. A U.S. peace-keeping force remains until 1985. |
| 1989 Panama | U.S. President George H. W. Bush invades Panama and overthrows Panamanian dictator and drug-smuggler Manuel Noriega. Noriega is later tried and convicted on a number of charges, and is imprisoned in the United States. |
| 1991 Gulf War (Kuwait and Iraq) | Iraq invades the country of Kuwait. The Gulf War begins and ends swiftly when a U.S.-led multinational force comes to Kuwait’s aid and expels dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces. |
| 1993 Somalia | A U.S.-led multinational force attempts to restore order to war-torn Somalia so that food can be delivered and distributed within the famine-stricken country. |
| 1994 Haiti | After Haiti’s democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is ousted in a coup in 1991, a U.S. invasion three years later restores him to power. |
| 1994-1995 Bosnia | During the Bosnian civil war, which begins shortly after the country declares independence in 1992, the U.S. launches air strikes on Bosnia to prevent ethnic cleansing. It becomes a part of NATO’s peacekeeping force in the region. |
| 1999 Kosovo | Yugoslavia’s province of Kosovo erupts in war in the spring of 1999. A U.S.-led NATO force intervenes with air strikes after Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian forces uproot the population and embark on a plan of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population. |
| 2001-Present Afghanistan | The Taliban government harbored Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist group, responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. After Afghanistan refused to turn over Bin Laden, the U.S. and UN coalition forces invaded. The Taliban government was ousted and many terrorist camps in Afghanistan were destroyed. Thereafter, the Taliban begin regrouping. By 2005, the Taliban and coalition troops are it was engaged in ongoing clashes with coaltition troops. The year 2006 was the deadliest year for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001. On May 2, 2011 (May 1 in the U.S.), U.S. troops and CIA operatives shot and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. May 1, 2012, President Obama and President Karzai signed the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America. The Agreement provides for the possibility of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 2014, for the purposes of training Afghan Forces and targeting the remnants of al-Qaeda. Afghanistan will be a Major Non-NATO Allyand as such, the U.S. will support the training, equipping, advising and sustaining of Afghan National Security Forces, and social and economic assistance. Despite plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, ongoing instability (and continued U.S. interest in the region) has led to the U.S. remaining heavily involved. There is still no clear end in sight, as the Taliban has resumed offensive operations as of March 2020. |
| 2003-2010 Iraq War | The U.S. and Great Britain invade Iraq and topple the government of dictator Saddam Hussein. The U.S. engagement in Iraq continues for the next several years amid that country’s escalating violence and fragile political stability. On Aug. 31, 2010, President Obama announces the end of U.S. combat missions in Iraq. Effective September 1, 2010, the military operations in Iraq acquired a new official designation: ??Operation New Dawn”: the U.S. is still committed to providing support to Iraq for further development in the areas of defense and security; education and culture; energy; human rights; services; and trade. |
| 2011 Libya | In early 2011, a coalition of nineteen states began intervening in the civil infighting in Libya. By March, NATO officially took control of the situation, and assisted rebel forces against the government of Muammar Gaddafi. The intervention lasted until November, when fighting dropped off following Gaddafi’s death. |
| 2012-2019 War with ISIL | In 2012 militants in Iraq and Syria declared a new caliphate and rapidly seized a large territory. They began a widespread propaganda campaign to cultivate domestic terrorism in other countries and to recruit new members. The United States and other NATO allies began a long campaign to contain and reverse the spread of ISIL. By 2018, ISIL no longer held any territory in Iraq, and severely declined in Syria. The United States continued airstrikes against the Assad regime as well as against the remaining ISIL holdouts. These airstrikes, by March 2019, contributed to ISIL losing all of its remaining territory. InOctober 2019 a US airstrike caused the death of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. |
| 2017-Present Syria | After several years of launching airstrikes in Syria against ISIL, the United States pivoted to launching airstrikes against the Assad regime and its regional allies. The hostilities |
Now, we got out of Afghanistan last year, sort of, Americans still remain in peril there, but we are now at war with Russia although nobody wants to admit it. But we are. We supply arms, hands-on technical support and intelligence to Ukraine, just not combat troops, yet. We have declared economic war on Russia and the words coming out of Washington sure sound like we’re in a war. So, we’re in a war.
And today, I changed the tire on a tractor, went to church, did field work, prepared fishing gear for the coming ice-out, dropped a massive Black Ash (my son did the chainsaw work), cut it up and split it into firewood, and Laura and I went to dinner at a friend’s house. The current war was barely on my mind, old news in a dark kind of way. Why? Because, I’ve been conditioned to accept war as a news story happening somewhere else with the worst consequences on my life being frustration with our leadership and higher gas prices which were rapidly clicking upward even before the war, anyway. And yet, an actual war is going on. Innocent people are dying. Homes and buildings and infrastructure are being obliterated. Peoples with DNA that could pass for cousins, because in some cases, they are cousins, are killing each other. A new ongoing refugee crisis is occurring. And, according to some military strategists, nuclear war is a possibility. But life goes on, especially when the war de jour is not in my backyard, right?
Life should not go on as usual. I mean these are real people dying, fighting, starving, freezing, hiding, fleeing, crying, losing everything they worked for their entire lives which in too many cases, includes their lives and the lives of loved ones. We need to get more vocal, take action, and with the current situation in the Ukraine, we need, as a world, to end this war. I know I sound like a peace-nik, maybe even somebody who might put a daisy in the barrel of a gun pointed at me (See 1967 march on the Pentagon to end the Viet Nam War conflict), but I am not that guy. I believe in peace through strength.
What I don’t believe in is dumb war and I have a broad definition of dumb war which literally includes all wars, because whenever some dictator or tyrant decides to wage war because they’re too stupid to buy, inspire or negotiate their objective, they act primitively, they act dumb. Let’s take the current war. Putin wanted the Ukraine, which wasn’t his, so he decided to take it through force. Is there any difference, other than magnitude, between Putin’s actions and the actions of a guy who holds up a liquor store? They both want something they’re not entitled to, so they go feral and try to take it. Feral may be too kind a word to describe these guys. Evil is probably better. So, let’s say they both go evil. But, unfortunately, there is one difference; way too often the dictators and tyrants go unpunished and without much of any personal consequence if they prevail. We all know that if Putin pulls the plug on his nation taking, he’ll still hold court with world leaders, still have a spot in the United Nations, still be president of Russia and will still be rich, even though he will have caused the deaths of more people than the combined deaths caused by all of the serial killers in the history of mankind. Why is it that when a world leader decides to institute a mass killing, we as a people, don’t hold them accountable just like we held Gacy, Bundy, David Berkowitz and Charles Manson accountable? Manson didn’t even do the actual killing, so he’s the best comparison. In law, a person can be a co-conspirator. If you hire a hit-man to kill somebody, you can go down for murder even though you never pulled the trigger. If you invade Irac because you claim there are weapons of mass destruction, you get re-elected. For the record, I was for Bush’s war in Irac and I was wrong. How stupid of George W. Bush? I mean Saddam liked American Cars, American Western movies, was secular, hated Iran and was a player when it came to women. A fifth grader could negotiate with a guy like that. But not George W. Bush, he had to go to war. Not surprisingly, he voted for Hillary.
Which brings me to another point. Is it not discomforting that the prospect of war in the Ukraine has united the lion’s share of D.C. Politicians? These guys and gals don’t give a squat about our borders but Ukrainian borders are apparently sacred. Not really, because it’s not about borders or nations and it’s definitely not about people. Check out Yemen, Darfur, Chad, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Niger, Mali, Bangladesh, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, Comoros, Georgia, Chechnya, and about two times more wars and conflicts that were barely a blip on the news radar.
War on the most fundamental level is evil. It is a criminal act used to effectuate an agenda that cannot be effectuated without violating moral principles. It is always caused by somebody acting unjustly. Sure, sometimes the aggressor is the just participant. Our civil war would be an example of this and certainly our war with Hitler was justified, but in both cases, all cases, the genesis of the war is somebody’s evil conduct. Thus, war can be necessary and honorable, if you are fighting against evil. And since we cannot excise the world of evil, there will always be the risk and at times necessity of war.
Unless we the people, reject evil at its roots. If we do that, we can minimize war. When we see evil and know about it, we must fight it. Now, I’m not suggesting we wage war on cultures that embrace cliterectomies, or follow a different religion, or out innovate us or economically beat us, but when it comes to issues like slavery or genocide or down and dirty fascism, where fundamental freedoms are denied, we should reject it and truly alienate those places, right from the start, no matter how much cheap labor or profit potential we might have to sacrifice. China is an example. China is enslaving its people, selling body parts, setting up concentration camps and they’ve been doing such God-awful things since Mao took over. But, the cheap labor and profit potential, it’s just too alluring to not turn and look away like Apple, the NBA and hundreds of other American corporations are doing. But what if they never did look away? What if the world never did look away? What if the world had a morality that would have said to China, sure, we’d like to do business with you, but not until you stop enslaving people and violating human rights? I’ll tell you what. China wouldn’t have much money, power or prominence in the world and a huge threat would have been abated, just by being moral and principled, without a single bullet being shot. And what if Russia’s human right violations hadn’t been tolerated? What if we put them in a nation state quarantine until they mended their ways? Again, if the world as a collective participated, Russia would have been shut down. It could work.
But, in the short term, it will not. The money and wealth of the world is too infiltrated into evil nations, like China, Russia and Iran. So, what do we do? Here’s my proposal. I’m calling it the anti-war pyramid scheme. It’s rather simple, imposes responsibility where the responsibility should be imposed and if it gets to a point where you and your loved ones are at risk of dying in a war, it’s probably legitimate and honorable. Here how it goes:
- If two nations decide to go to war, the leaders have to have a duel with loaded pistols, unless they can resolve the issue they desire to go to war over.
- If they don’t resolve it, they have the duel.
- After the duel, with one of them dead, the next in line can talk or if they still want war, they have a duel.
- If they don’t resolve it, one of them dies in the duel and the next in line steps up.
- The next in line can resolve it and if they can’t, they have a duel and one of them dies.
- And on and on and on, until either both sides have dueled themselves into extinction or finally, a resolution occurs.
The key here is that the primary instigators of the war suffer the primary consequences. And when aren’t consequences a good thing, the ultimate motivator?
We all know that if Putin had to put his life at risk, we wouldn’t be at war right now. If George Bush had to put his life at risk, we never would have gone into Irac for a second time or Afghanistan for that matter. If Hitler had to have had a duel with the leader of Poland we wouldn’t have had World War II. It is the grandest of injustices that the guys who get credit for winning and losing wars rarely have to suffer or even risk their lives for that matter. They get away with this because we as a people have been conditioned to accept war as part of life, a part that we, like ignorant sycophants, go along with, deeming it noble and honorable and patriotic. It is not noble, nowhere near honorable enough and, in today’s global world, questionable if you are in fact truly fighting for your nation rather than other peoples’ money and power.
So, since Biden, Putin and Zelenskyy are unlikely to agree to a duel (Zelenskyy might actually), we should shut Russia down. Not just sanction Russia, but quarantine it. No flights in or out. No financial transactions, none. No humanitarian aid, assistance or charity, nothing. And most importantly, no exceptions no matter what lobbyist paid what politician for whatever favor they feel they are entitled to from Washington. Come on folks, sanctions don’t work because they are riddled with carve outs and exceptions. (See Cuba, North Korea, Iran, China) But, a quarantine, that might work. And our politicians are good at imposing quarantines. Quarantines are right up their alley.
Want to stop the war in the Ukraine? Quarantine Russia. It’s as simple as that.
That’s my Reetzality for the day.
Thanks for the read.
Brett Reetz