What does it really mean in america to be 'at war' - if it even really means anything at all.
Given the economic downturn in the last few years of the dubya administration, one might have to question the religious belief that it was WWII that ended the great depression. Rather than the somewhat unpleasant thot that gosh, what if the balanced budget games of 1937 help stifled the economic recovery that had started with the FDR stimulus plan. Since clearly if war is good for bizniz, then, well, if the bizniz is shedding jobs and embarking upon a classical deflationary spiral towards the liquidity trap, one has to wonder why that is. Or how that could occur if the nation were 'at war'.
As such, if we are to believe the media, and that we are moving towards an economic recovery, never mind that we are still functionally in a liquidity trap, does that economic recovery come, as myth would have it, because Finally we are at war.
Fair warning advisory - the laws of land warfare are NOT limited to only a time of 'war', but are the rules with regards to the use of national military forces, what one would argue are are 'legitimate military forces'. So please, let us not folly around with that piece of frivolity.
Does a nation even need an enemy state to be at war with? Or can nations just opt to be 'at war', you know, for the heck of being 'at war', cause gosh, it is just so much more fun to be 'at war'. Thus a 'war on literacy' will work just as well as any other war, for the purpose of being 'at war' - or is there really something special about being 'at war' that should make a distinction.
If such a distinction exists, how would an american notice it?
We could then ask the question of whether there are various types of war that we can be in, and thus whether or not those various types offer any unique and interesting distinctions. Is the war on literacy more or less of a war in this context? Are imperial wars to maintain the Pax Americana a part of this process? Is there a difference when the nose count of contractors to welfare recipients a factor in when a war is more in column A as opposed to being in column B.
Would this be a bad time to talk about corporate wars - and should corporations be obliged to field their own military/paraMilitary forces - to achieve their independence from the limitations of the socialist welfare state. I mean it worked well for both the British and Dutch East India Companies.
I mean wouldn't that solve things? Since then it would no longer be a burden on american tax payers, and the whole cheering for one's team could be more effectively productized, and we could all buy the cool plush toys and T-Shirts.
Or is that also a part of the problem here. We wanted to believe that we were the civlized folks, that some how, majikally the american exceptionalism would make us more something... That it would not be the case that 'being at war' would itself become the sort of mere partisan political phootBaal that gets tossed around when it is politically expedient.
There is the other messy part in all of this, namely the core problems of asymmetric warfare. How do we decide that the problem has moved up the escalatory trail to a point where military units, as opposed to paramilitary units, are a required part of the process. This is a two edged sword, since the myth CONUS is that the posse comitatus act will some how majikally protect militias from the attack by American Military Forces. Ok, the PCA is an amusing piece of american history that starts with the compromise of how to end the jack booted occupation of the South by bible burning bayonet weilding blue bellies, and has been the fun all the way up to the recent repeal of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 which offered El Presidente the right to do as he would, in any condition when El Presidente felt it most important to send in federal troops to protect us from american citizens, or zombies, or which ever is the health risk problem.
{ yes, one has to wonder why that power was rescinded back in 2008? Were folks afraid of the power? or that it might fall to someone other than the War Presidente? }
Should americans take the time to actually become conversant in the actual problems of actual asymmetric warfare? Or should we support their myths about the majikal powers of warfare? In the hope that as they embrace the mystical and mythological, they will not take the time to sit down and work out the technical issues involved. I will confess that this is a very american approach:
Instead of building a better mouse trap,But I am afraid it never really works like that. We watched a generation of draft bait come home from vietnam and have to work out the complications. We watched the Oklahoma Bombing, being one of many, where the technical expertise was provide by former american military personnel. So we should simply skip over the actual flow of our actual american history and just hope that we will waltz forward into the sunset with no one calling for The League of Front Line Soldiers as the curative.
Breed Dumber Mice.
How are we as americans planning on dealing with these issues?
As a nation we do not have the anglo-french history of Imperial Storm Troopers, and the complications when the indigenous populations are tired of visitors who have over stayed their welcome. Unless we take into account what we might have learned from vietname. And may need to relearn with regards to Iraq, IF the nation actually must some day face allowing the american troops there to follow in the foot steps of the american occupation forces in france, and, well, leave.
Speaking of which, why is it that none of the psuedoCons ever whine about 'who lost france?' Or is that because most of them never took the time to learn about how one leaves one's military bases in foreign lands to the indigenous population.
What if the really unpleasant part of the problem is that the blithely simple jingoistic flag waving days of a jolly good war have come and left. That as a species, we need to find some other planet where we can send our valiant fighting forces. You know the sort of football hooligans who make a mess of so many major urban areas - folks who would do clearly far better under the old imperial policies of being posted abroad to the frontiers.
What if we really DO need starship troopers to go out there, just so that we can finally make planet earth the Rear Area.... Who knows, maybe even a nice place to get a good job, buy a new home, settle into boring weekends meeting with friends to discuss something other than our war winning ways, and why we must crush the unbelievers who are not supporting the president to support the troops to Total Victory.