That's Not What They're Doing

That’s Not What They’re Doing!

Reflections on the Role of the American Military 

Not long ago I turned on ESPN and got the pregame for a college men’s basketball game between my Oregon Ducks and Georgetown that was to be played at an American Army base in South Korea.  The commentators began their show by thanking every American serving in uniform for “protecting our freedom.”  They called them all heroes for “defending our democracy.”  I mean no disrespect for our people in the military, but I just wanted to scream at the television:  That’s not what they’re doing!  It just flat isn’t.  These simple sportscasters were mouthing the myths of the American military.  We justify maintaining a military apparatus grossly out of proportion to any legitimate defense needs by saying that whatever our military forces are doing it amounts to protecting our freedom and defending our democracy; and it’s all a lie.  The myth we tell connects our people to the military and to the purposes for which our political leaders use it, but it’s all a lie.  That’s not what they’re doing.

Consider the facts.  Who, if anyone, is threatening our freedom and our democracy today, other than the Republican Party of course (and no, I am not advocating using the Army against the Republican Party).  No nation is threatening us through a traditional, organized military force.  Yes, the Russians have the capability of hitting us with long range atomic weapons, but they certainly have no intention of doing so.  Why would they?  They have absolutely nothing to gain from it and human civilization to lose.  We have land borders with only two nations, Canada and Mexico.  We hardly need to spend nearly as much on the military as the rest of the world combined like we do to defend ourselves from nonexistent threats from Canada and Mexico.  No nation on earth has the ability to invade us from the sea.  There simply is no conventional military threat to our existence, to our freedom, or our democracy.  There just isn’t.

There is a threat to our safety from terrorists.  There’s no point in denying that painful and tragic reality.  They, however, are hardly a threat to our existence.  If they are a threat to our freedom or our democracy it’s our own doing, not theirs.  We are so willing to compromise our freedoms and pervert our democracy in the name of fighting terrorism that the terrorists have had some success in that regard, and they remain a threat in that way.  Yet what we need to be defended against is less the terrorists themselves than it is our reaction to their threat.  We’re really good at reacting in ways that compromise our freedom and generate wave after wave of new terrorists hell bent on hurting us.  No one can contend that what our military forces are doing is defending us from ourselves, so this reality doesn’t make the claim that our military is defending our freedom and protecting our democracy true.

So clearly our conventional military forces are not defending our freedom and protecting our democracy, so what are they doing?  They are projecting American imperial power around the globe.  We do not have what, by worldly standards, would be a reasonable military force.  We have an imperial military.  We have military forces that function not to defend us but to impose our presence around the world.  They may be protecting some of our interests, or, more correctly, they may be defending some of the interests of the wealthy elite who really run this country.  We have substantial military forces in the Persian Gulf region to protect our oil supply for example.  Our forces may still be fighting Communism, never mind that Communism is dead.  That’s why we still have those forces in South Korea for my Oregon Ducks to play basketball in front of.  It’s not that our military forces don’t function.  It’s not that they don’t have a mission.  That function and that mission are not, however, to defend our freedom and protect our democracy.

So why do we say that those things are their mission?  Why do the American people buy the lie that that is their mission despite all of the undeniable evidence to the contrary?  Because people are gullible.  Because the ruling elites have a massive investment in keeping the American people on the side of the military.  Because we have to convince ourselves that spending those massive amounts of money on the military is somehow worth it.  Because, since thank God we don’t have a draft, the military needs to keep getting people to volunteer for military service.  Because those who volunteer and their families need to believe that they are doing something worthwhile.  There are lots of reasons why we believe that our military is defending our freedom and protecting our democracy.  Problem is, that that claim is true isn’t one of those reasons.  That’s simply not what they are doing.  We will never have a sound, healthy nation until we stop living the lies we tell about our military and start dealing realistically with the world as it actually is.