If Only We Could Vote for Peace Instead of a 'Commander-in-Chief'
Published on
Thursday, October 20, 2016
by
Common Dreams
If Only We Could Vote for Peace Instead of a 'Commander-in-Chief'
by
Robert C. Koehler
President George W. Bush liked to play cowboy as commander-in-chief... and
the world paid (and is still paying) a terrible price. (Photo: Stephen
Jaffe/AFP/Getty Images)
Maybe it's the phrase - "commander in chief" - that best captures the
transcendent absurdity and unaddressed horrors of the 2016 election season
and the business as usual that will follow.
I don't want to elect anyone commander in chief: not the xenophobic
misogynist and egomaniac, not the Henry Kissinger acolyte and Libya hawk.
The big hole in this democracy is not the candidates; it's the bedrock,
founding belief that the rest of the world is our potential enemy, that war
with someone is always inevitable and only a strong military will keep us
safe.
In a million ways, we've outgrown this concept, or been pushed beyond it by
awareness of global human connectedness and the shared planetary risk of
eco-collapse. So whenever I hear someone in the media bring "commander in
chief" into the discussion - always superficially and without question -
what I hear is boys playing war. Yes, we wage war in a real way as well, but
when the public is invited to participate in the process by selecting its
next commander in chief, this is pretend war at its most surreal: all glory
and greatness and hammering ISIS in Mosul.
"What about our safety here?" Brian Williams asked Gen. Barry McCaffrey on
MSNBC the other night, as they were discussing the awfulness of terrorism
and the need to bomb the bad guys out of existence. I cringed. How long can
they keep selling this?
Our safety is far, far more imperiled by the fact that we have a military at
all than by any enemy that military is allegedly fighting, but is, in fact,
creating as it churns out endless collateral damage, a.k.a., dead and
injured civilians.
The essential truth about war is this: The enemies are always on the same
side. Regardless who "wins," what matters is that war itself continues. Just
ask the military-industrialists.
The only commander in chief I want to vote for is the one who will turn that
title over to the historians and cry out that war is an obsolete and
monstrous game, revered and coddled for five millennia now as the most
sacred of activities that a (male) human can engage in. We need a commander
in chief capable of leading us beyond the age of empire and the horrific
games of conquest that are killing this planet.
"What about our safety here?"
When Brian Williams threw this question out to the American public, I
thought, among much else, about the devastation and contamination the U.S.
military has wrought on our deserts and coastal waters over the last seven
decades by testing weapons - both nuclear and conventional - and playing,
good God, war games; and then, sooner or later, by disposing of its obsolete
toxins, usually with zero concern for the environmental safety of the
surrounding area, whether it be in Iraq or Louisiana. Because the military
is what it is, neither EPA regulations nor sanity itself usually applies.
For instance, as Dahr Jamail wrote recently at Truthout: "For decades, the
U.S. Navy, by its own admission, has been conducting war game exercises in
U.S. waters using bombs, missiles, sonobuoys (sonar buoys), high explosives,
bullets and other materials that contain toxic chemicals - including lead
and mercury - that are harmful to both humans and wildlife."
Why do we need to worry about ISIS when, as Jamail reports, "the batteries
from dead sonobuoys will leach lithium into the water for 55 years"?
And then there's depleted uranium, the extraordinarily toxic heavy metal the
U.S. military loves; DU missiles and shells rip through steel like it was
butter. They also spread radioactive contamination across Planet Earth. And
they help poison the waters off the Washington-Oregon coast, where the Navy
plays its games, just like they poisoned the waters surrounding Vieques, a
tropical paradise island off the coast of Puerto Rico, which, as I wrote
several years ago, "was commandeered by the U.S. military as a throwaway
site for weapons testing" for 62 years. The Navy finally left, but left
behind contaminated soil and water and many thousands of live shells that
had failed to detonate, along with a legacy of serious health problems for
the island's 10,000 residents.
"They are indeed the largest polluters on Earth," environmental toxicologist
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani told Truthout, speaking of the U.S. military, "as
they produce more toxic chemicals than the top three U.S. chemical
manufacturers combined. Historically, large global ecosystems and
significant human food sources have been contaminated by the U.S. military."
What does it mean to vote for the next commander in chief of the largest
polluter on the planet?
I confess that I do not know - at least not in the context of this absurd
and superficially debated election, with virtually every serious question or
issue pushed to the margins. How do we transcend nationalism and the game of
war - the reality of endless war - and engage in securing the safety of the
whole planet? How do we acknowledge that this planet is not just "a jumble
of insensate stuff, a random melee of subatomic particles" for us to
exploit, as Charles Eisestein writes, but a living entity of which we are,
crucially, a part? How do we learn to love this planet and one another?
Any potential "commander in chief" who asks lesser questions than these is
engaging in a childish game with real guns.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
Robert C. Koehler
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If Only We Could Vote for Peace Instead of a 'Commander-in-Chief'
Published on
Thursday, October 20, 2016
by
Common Dreams
If Only We Could Vote for Peace Instead of a 'Commander-in-Chief'
by
Robert C. Koehler
. 60 Comments
.
. President George W. Bush liked to play cowboy as
commander-in-chief... and the world paid (and is still paying) a terrible
price. (Photo: Stephen Jaffe/AFP/Getty Images)
. Maybe it's the phrase - "commander in chief" - that best captures
the transcendent absurdity and unaddressed horrors of the 2016 election
season and the business as usual that will follow.
. I don't want to elect anyone commander in chief: not the xenophobic
misogynist and egomaniac, not the Henry Kissinger acolyte and Libya hawk.
The big hole in this democracy is not the candidates; it's the bedrock,
founding belief that the rest of the world is our potential enemy, that war
with someone is always inevitable and only a strong military will keep us
safe.
. In a million ways, we've outgrown this concept, or been pushed
beyond it by awareness of global human connectedness and the shared
planetary risk of eco-collapse. So whenever I hear someone in the media
bring "commander in chief" into the discussion - always superficially and
without question - what I hear is boys playing war. Yes, we wage war in a
real way as well, but when the public is invited to participate in the
process by selecting its next commander in chief, this is pretend war at its
most surreal: all glory and greatness and hammering ISIS in Mosul.
. "What about our safety here?" Brian Williams asked Gen. Barry
McCaffrey on MSNBC the other night, as they were discussing the awfulness of
terrorism and the need to bomb the bad guys out of existence. I cringed. How
long can they keep selling this?
Our safety is far, far more imperiled by the fact that we have a military at
all than by any enemy that military is allegedly fighting, but is, in fact,
creating as it churns out endless collateral damage, a.k.a., dead and
injured civilians.
The essential truth about war is this: The enemies are always on the same
side. Regardless who "wins," what matters is that war itself continues. Just
ask the military-industrialists.
http://www.commondreams.org/fall-campaign-2016http://www.commondreams.org/fa
ll-campaign-2016
The only commander in chief I want to vote for is the one who will turn that
title over to the historians and cry out that war is an obsolete and
monstrous game, revered and coddled for five millennia now as the most
sacred of activities that a (male) human can engage in. We need a commander
in chief capable of leading us beyond the age of empire and the horrific
games of conquest that are killing this planet.
"What about our safety here?"
When Brian Williams threw this question out to the American public, I
thought, among much else, about the devastation and contamination the U.S.
military has wrought on our deserts and coastal waters over the last seven
decades by testing weapons - both nuclear and conventional - and playing,
good God, war games; and then, sooner or later, by disposing of its obsolete
toxins, usually with zero concern for the environmental safety of the
surrounding area, whether it be in Iraq or Louisiana. Because the military
is what it is, neither EPA regulations nor sanity itself usually applies.
For instance, as Dahr Jamail wrote recently at Truthout: "For decades, the
U.S. Navy, by its own admission, has been conducting war game exercises in
U.S. waters using bombs, missiles, sonobuoys (sonar buoys), high explosives,
bullets and other materials that contain toxic chemicals - including lead
and mercury - that are harmful to both humans and wildlife."
Why do we need to worry about ISIS when, as Jamail reports, "the batteries
from dead sonobuoys will leach lithium into the water for 55 years"?
And then there's depleted uranium, the extraordinarily toxic heavy metal the
U.S. military loves; DU missiles and shells rip through steel like it was
butter. They also spread radioactive contamination across Planet Earth. And
they help poison the waters off the Washington-Oregon coast, where the Navy
plays its games, just like they poisoned the waters surrounding Vieques, a
tropical paradise island off the coast of Puerto Rico, which, as I wrote
several years ago, "was commandeered by the U.S. military as a throwaway
site for weapons testing" for 62 years. The Navy finally left, but left
behind contaminated soil and water and many thousands of live shells that
had failed to detonate, along with a legacy of serious health problems for
the island's 10,000 residents.
"They are indeed the largest polluters on Earth," environmental toxicologist
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani told Truthout, speaking of the U.S. military, "as
they produce more toxic chemicals than the top three U.S. chemical
manufacturers combined. Historically, large global ecosystems and
significant human food sources have been contaminated by the U.S. military."
What does it mean to vote for the next commander in chief of the largest
polluter on the planet?
I confess that I do not know - at least not in the context of this absurd
and superficially debated election, with virtually every serious question or
issue pushed to the margins. How do we transcend nationalism and the game of
war - the reality of endless war - and engage in securing the safety of the
whole planet? How do we acknowledge that this planet is not just "a jumble
of insensate stuff, a random melee of subatomic particles" for us to
exploit, as Charles Eisestein writes, but a living entity of which we are,
crucially, a part? How do we learn to love this planet and one another?
Any potential "commander in chief" who asks lesser questions than these is
engaging in a childish game with real guns.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
/author/robert-c-koehler
http://www.commondreams.org/author/robert-c-koehler
