Guys Like Me: Five Wars, Five Veterans for Peace - Softcover

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Chapter 1
Projects of Peace
 
If I step outside the door of my home in South Pasadena at just the right time on New Year's Day, I stand a chance of witnessing the tail end of a B-2 Stealth Bomber's flyover of the nearby Rose Bowl. A neighbor who viewed this spectacle gushed to me that the low-flying bomber was 'just the coolest thing ever.' I agreed that seeing the bat-like stealth bomber so close up was awe-inspiring, but wondered aloud why we need to start a football game by celebrating a $2 billion machine that has dropped bombs on Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. When I suggested that the flyover, to me, was yet another troubling instance of the militarization of everyday life, my neighbor replied that, well, perhaps it was thanks to such sophisticated war machines that we are now enjoying a long period of peace. I reminded him that we are still fighting a war in Afghanistan, that we have troops still in Iraq, and that even this past fall, four US special forces soldiers died in battle in Niger. It may feel like peace to many of us at home, but for US troops, and for people on the receiving end of US bombs, drone missile strikes, and extended ground occupations, it must feel like permanent war.
 
War Is Both Everywhere and Nowhere
The fact that my neighbor and I talked past one another should come as no surprise. For most Americans today, war is both everywhere and nowhere. On the one hand, it seems omnipresent. Politicians continually raise fears among the citizenry, insisting that we pony up huge proportions of our nation's financial and human capital to fight a borderless and apparently endless 'Global War on Terror.' We're inundated with war imagery'an unending stream of films and TV shows depicting past and current wars,[i] pageantry like the Rose Bowl flyover, and celebrations of the military in sports programming, exploiting sports to recruit the next generation of soldiers.[ii] The result, according to social scientist Adam Rugg, is 'a diffused military presence' in everyday life.[iii]

Following the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, US wars in the Middle East have continued to rage, spilling over national borders and introducing new and troubling questions about modern warfare. Though scaled back since the initial invasions, these wars continue. Through fiscal year 2018, the financial cost of our 'Post-9/11 Wars' has surpassed $1.8 trillion, and Brown University's Costs of War Project puts that number at $5.6 trillion, taking into account interest on borrowed money to pay for these wars and estimates of  'future obligations' in caring for medical needs of veterans.[iv]  The human toll has been even costlier. By 2018, 6,860 US military personnel had been killed in the Global War on Terror, and more than 52,000 had been wounded.[v] Most of these have been young men. Through the end of 2014, 391,759 military veterans had been treated in Veterans Administration (VA) facilities for 'potential or provisional Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)' following their return from Afghanistan or Iraq.[vi] It's difficult to accurately measure the carnage inflicted on the populations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but the Costs of War Project estimates that between 2001 and 2018 more than 109,000 'opposition fighters' and over 200,000 civilians have been directly killed, and 800,000 more 'have died as an indirect result of the wars.'[vii]

Military conscription was halted in the US in 1973, a direct legacy of the mass movement that helped to end the War in Vietnam. With no draft in place, the military shifted to an all-volunteer force that required intensifying recruitment strategies, especially in times of escalating wars. During the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the volunteer military faced dire personnel shortages that led to multiple redeployments, placing huge burdens on military personnel and their families.[viii] Two years into the Iraq War, US military desertions were on the rise, and ''recruiters were consistently failing to meet monthly enlistment quotas, despite deep penetration into high schools, sponsorship of NASCAR and other sporting events, and a $3-billion Pentagon recruitment budget.'[ix] In response, the military stepped up recruitment ads on TV and in movie theatres, and launched direct recruitment efforts in American high schools and community colleges.[x] The American high school, faced with increased recruiting efforts and opposition from parents and others, became, in education scholar William Ayers' words, 'a battlefield for hearts and minds.'[xi]

Since 9/11, the military seems omnipresent and a state of war permanent, while paradoxically, the vast majority of Americans feel untouched by it all. Disconnected from the wars, we go about our daily lives as though we're living in a period of extended peace. For most of us, war is nowhere. How is this Orwellian situation tolerable, or even possible? Following America's defeat in Vietnam, the government has engaged in a carefully controlled, public relations framing of news of all wars and invasions,[xii] containing contrary views that could emerge from critical investigative reporting. Examples include 'embedding' reporters with US troops during the invasion of Iraq and prohibiting the news media from filming or photographing flag-draped coffins as they're unloaded from military transport planes.

Another reason most people experience these omnipresent wars as 'nowhere' lies in the shifting nature of warfare. Today, the military can deploy new technologies to minimize the number of US casualties while maximizing the carnage of those designated as terrorists, enemies, or targets. The normalization of drone strikes'escalated by President Obama and expanded by President Trump'is the epitome of this 'out of sight, out of mind' warfare. As the US deploys drone strikes, ''war becomes 'unilateral'a kind of permanent, low-level military action that threatens to erase the boundary between war and peace and'makes it easier for the United States to engage in casualty-free, and therefore debate-free, intervention while further militarizing the relationship between the US and the Muslim world," according to anthropologist Hugh Gusterson.[xiii]

 Another reason for the electorate's distance from current wars is the vast divide between civilians and the military. Only ½ of 1 percent of the population is in the military, the lowest rate since between the world wars. LA Timesreporters David Zucchino and David Cloud also note that...