Celebrating the War Machine

I seem to be one of the few people concerned about the militarization of the United States. This weekend – wrapped around Veterans’ Day – has been a love-fest for our military, not just veterans but more so our current service members. I certainly have nothing against veterans (my father and four of my uncles served in WWII, and two friends of mine died (for no reason) in Vietnam), nor against those now serving (though the idea that they are a “voluntary” force is belied by the fact that many if not most “volunteered” because they couldn’t find work anywhere else and were offered the false promise of “training”). But I don’t at all like the exploitation of the military that I see going on in at least the past decade or so. Patriotism is one thing, military empire is another. We are in at least one war that we’ve been in for more than a decade and are supposedly getting out of another (though not very neatly). We have troops stationed around the world in some 150 countries. The sun does not set on our empire. We’ve been in one or more wars for most of the past 150 years. Our economy is a perpetual war economy, the military-industrial-congressional complex being the engine. We spend more on our military (though relatively squat on the personnel, especially when they become veterans) than just about all other countries in the world combined. The current constant celebration of our troops is little more than propaganda that elevates the “sacrifice” of the “heroes” in order to mask the ongoing spread of the war machine. I appreciate and support our troops – I just don’t join in the jingoistic propaganda that exploits the troops for the benefit of the capitalist war machine (which by the way is fueled by the blood of the men and women who are sucked into it, and then ironically celebrated).