Only the Dead Stop Fighting

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/226809/only-the-dead-stop-fighting/



The U.S. loves its military to death.

Only the Dead Stop Fighting
der Freitag, Germany
By Konrad Ege
Translated By Kelly Barksdale
20 November 2013
Edited by Gillian Palmer

In the early ‘80s, the British band Gang of Four sang the song “I Love a Man in Uniform” with so much irony and zeal (“The girls, they love to see you shoot”) that the song was apparently banned by the BBC during the Falklands War in 1982. On the other side of the Atlantic the love affair is still in full swing, but this time it has a goal and no irony. Men and women in uniform are considered heroes in the U.S.; without the army and the intelligence services, the endless wars with targeted killings, drones and Special Forces units in a dozen countries wouldn’t be possible. There is hero-inflation in the United States, which historian William Astore has already compared to the German hero-worship in World War I.

~snip~


However, the 1.5 million men and women in uniform do not enjoy the same governmental care that they did after 9/11; the government feels even less responsible for the accompanying contractors. This despite the fact that in Iraq and Afghanistan, twice as many private contractors were in deployment as state-employed soldiers.

General Karl Eikenberry, U.S. commander in the Hindu Kush from 2005 to 2007, spoke critically of this sort of war. According to information from the Congressional Research Service, U.S. forces have been sent on foreign operations 144 times since the draft ended, compared to 19 times between World War II and 1973. Career soldiers make the decision for war easier, said Eikenberry in a commentary with the historian David Kennedy. “Americans are happy to thank the volunteer soldiers who make it possible for them not to serve and deem it is somehow unpatriotic to call their armed forces to task when things go awry.”

Founding father George Washington warned that the existence of a strong military during peacetime threatened the freedom of a nation. What old George couldn’t have imagined is what exists in the U.S. today: a strong military and nearly constant wars — big, small, secret — and economic interests which profit from them. Who governs in the White House at the moment … it makes less difference than the voters want to believe. As Obama explained in a highly viewed speech at the Washington National Defense University in May, all wars must end. So far this view seems rather devoid of substance. The U.S. loves its military to death.