Tomgram: William Astore, We Have Met the Alien and He Is Us
By William Astore
Posted on July 12, 2016, Printed on July 13, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176163/ ;
Imagine a secret government facility buried deep in the bowels of a
mountain; a deluxe bomb shelter -- encased within dense, almost fissure-less
rock -- for top government officials to ride out doomsday.
I did. A lot.
I spent an inordinate amount of time as a child reading everything I could
find about a top secret complex -- a White-House-in-waiting, hospital,
television studio, government offices, subterranean reservoirs, and who
knows what else -- all entombed in a Virginia mountain. It was difficult for
a youngster to locate much on it in those pre-Internet days, but what I did
find out about Mount Weather fascinated me.
Looking back, I realize that I was captivated, and perhaps subconsciously
unnerved, by the prospect of World War III. That future conflict was
seemingly omnipresent, looming large in the pop cultural broth in which my
brain was regularly bathed. Red Dawn and The Day After offered two possible
scenarios for how such a war might be fought -- Vietnam-style in the U.S.A.
or as a full-scale nuclear exchange between America and the Soviet Union.
The president of that moment suggested that we might be spared the atomic
devastation of The Day After through mammoth spending on a space-based
missile defense system that, in the cinematic spirit of the moment, critics
dubbed Star Wars. WarGames, on the other hand, indicated that some
combination of dumb luck, a smart computer, and an impossibly young Matthew
Broderick would -- at the very last moment -- save the day. (Thanks, Ferris
Bueller!) And what child of the 1980s can forget that moment when your last
city was destroyed in Ataris Missile Command?
A survey of 1,000 grammar and high-school students conducted by an American
Psychiatric Association task force from 1978 to 1980 found the imminent
threat of nuclear annihilation has penetrated deeply into their
consciousness. Their answers to questionnaires showed that these
adolescents are deeply disturbed by the threat of nuclear war, have doubt
about the future, and about their own survival, wrote John Mack, a
professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a member of the task
force. I dont recall being distressed by the prospect myself, but it
certainly caught my attention.
While I was reading and re-reading John Bradleys lavishly illustrated
coffee-table book, World War III: Strategies, Tactics, and Weapons, and
playing with my G.I. Joes, TomDispatch regular William Astore was heading
deep into another secret government facility buried within a mountain,
another ground zero designed to withstand (but by then likely to be
incinerated in) a nuclear holocaust. Today, Astore takes us from his younger
days at shadowy Cheyenne Mountain to the darkened recesses of the cinema,
where a steady diet of "space operas" and "alien disaster movies," from the
iconic Star Wars to the recent U.S. box-office bomb Independence Day:
Resurgence, provide a window on the twenty-first-century American experience
and a funhouse mirror offering unflattering reflections of ourselves and our
foundering, floundering wars. Nick Turse
We Are The Empire
Of U.S. Military Interventions, Alien Disaster Movies, and Star Wars
By William J. Astore
Perhaps youve heard the expression: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Cartoonist Walt Kellys famed possum, Pogo, first uttered that cry. In light
of alien disaster movies like the recent sequel Independence Day: Resurgence
and Americas disastrous wars of the twenty-first century, Id like to
suggest a slight change in that classic phrase: we have met the alien and he
is us.
Allow me to explain. I grew up reading and watching science fiction with a
fascination that bordered on passion. In my youth, I also felt great
admiration for the high-tech, futuristic nature of the U.S. military. When
it came time for college, I majored in mechanical engineering and joined the
U.S. Air Force. On graduating, I would immediately be assigned to one of the
more high-tech, sci-fi-like (not to say apocalyptic) military settings
possible: Air Force Space Commands Cheyenne Mountain.
For those of you who dont remember the looming, end-of-everything
atmosphere of the Cold War era, Cheyenne Mountain was a nuclear missile
command center tunneled out of solid granite inside an actual mountain in
Colorado. In those days, I saw myself as one of the good guys, protecting
America from alien invasions and the potential nuclear obliteration of the
country at the hands of godless communists from the Soviet Union. The year
was 1985 and back then my idea of an alien invasion movie was Red Dawn, a
film in which the Soviets and their Cuban allies invade the U.S., only to be
turned back by a group of wolverine-like all-American teen rebels. (Think:
the Vietcong, American-style, since the Vietnam War was then just a decade
past.)
Strange to say, though, as I progressed through the military, I found myself
growing increasingly uneasy about my good-guy stature and about who exactly
was doing what to whom. Why, for example, did we invade Iraq in 2003 when
that country had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11? Why were we so
focused on dominating the Earths resources, especially its oil? Why, after
declaring total victory over the alien commies in 1991 and putting the
Cold War to bed for forever (or so it seemed then), did our military
continue to strive for global reach, global power and what, with no sense
of overreach or irony, it liked to call full-spectrum dominance?
Still, whatever was simmering away inside me, only when I retired from the
Air Force in 2005 did I fully face what had been staring back at me all
those years: I had met the alien, and he was me.
The Alien Nature of U.S. Military Interventions
The latest Independence Day movie, despite earning disastrous reviews, is
probably still rumbling its way through a multiplex near you. The basic plot
hasnt changed: ruthless aliens from afar (yet again) invade, seeking to
exploit our precious planet while annihilating humanity (something that, to
the best of our knowledge, only we are actually capable of). But we humans,
in such movies as in reality, are a resilient lot. Enough of the plucky and
the lucky emerge from the rubble to organize a counterattack. Despite being
outclassed by the aliens shockingly superior technology and awe-inspiring
arsenal of firepower, humanity finds a way to save the Earth while -- you
wont be surprised to know -- thoroughly thrashing said aliens.
Remember the original Independence Day from two decades ago? Derivative and
predictable it may have been, but it was also a campy spectacle -- with Will
Smiths cigar-chomping military pilot, Bill Pullmans kickass president in a
cockpit, and the White House being blown to smithereens by those aliens.
That was 1996. The Soviet Union was half-a-decade gone and the U.S. was the
planets sole superpower. Still, who knew that seven years later, on the
deck of an aircraft carrier, an all-too-real American president would climb
out of a similar cockpit in a flight suit, having essentially just blown
part of the Middle East to smithereens, and declare his very own mission
accomplished moment?
In the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan and the shock and awe
assault on Iraq, the never-ending destructiveness of the wars that followed,
coupled with the U.S. governments deployment of deadly robotic drones and
special ops units across the globe, alien invasion movies arent -- at least
for me -- the campy fun they once were, and not just because the latest of
them is louder, dumber, and more cliché-ridden than ever. I suspect that
theres something else at work as well, something thats barely risen to
consciousness here: in these years, weve morphed into the planets invading
aliens.
Think about it. Over the last half-century, whenever and wherever the U.S.
military deploys, often to underdeveloped towns and villages in places
like Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, it arrives very much in the spirit of
those sci-fi aliens. After all, it brings with it dazzlingly destructive
futuristic weaponry and high-tech gadgetry of all sorts (known in the
military as force-multipliers). It then proceeds to build mothership-style
bases that are often like American small towns plopped down in a new
environment. Nowadays in such lands, American drones patrol the skies
(think: the Terminator films), blast walls accented with razor wire and
klieg lights provide force protection on the ground, and the usual attack
helicopters, combat jets, and gunships hover overhead like so many alien
craft. To designate targets to wipe out, U.S. forces even use lasers!
In the field, American military officers emerge from high-tech vehicles to
bark out commands in a harsh alien tongue. (You know: English.) Even as
American leaders offer reassuring words to the natives (and to the public in
the homeland) about the U.S. military being a force for human liberation,
the message couldnt be more unmistakable if you happen to be living in such
countries: the aliens are here, and theyre planning to take control,
weapons loaded and ready to fire.
Other U.S. military officers have noticed this dynamic. In 2004, near
Samarra in Iraqs Salahuddin province, for instance, then-Major Guy Parmeter
recalled asking a farmer if hed seen any foreign fighters about. The
farmers reply was as simple as it was telling: Yes, you. Parmeter noted,
You have a bunch of epiphanies over the course of your experience here [in
Iraq], and it made me think: How are we perceived, who are we to them?
Americans may see themselves as liberators, but to the Iraqis and so many
other peoples Washington has targeted with its drones, jets, and high-tech
weaponry, we are the invaders.
Do you recall what the aliens were after in the first Independence Day
movie? Resources. In that film, they were compared to locusts, traveling
from planet to planet, stripping them of their valuables while killing their
inhabitants. These days, that narrative should sound a lot less alien to us.
After all, would Washington have committed itself quite so fully to the
Greater Middle East if it hadnt possessed all that oil so vital to our
consumption-driven way of life? Thats what the Carter Doctrine of 1980 was
about: it defined the Persian Gulf as a U.S. vital interest precisely
because, to quote former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitzs apt
description of Iraq, it floats on a sea of oil.
Of Cold War Memories and Imperial Storm Troopers
Whether anyone notices or not, alien invasion flicks offer a telling analogy
when it comes to the destructive reality of Washingtons global ambitions;
so, too, do space operas like Star Wars. Im a fan of George Lucass
original trilogy, which appeared in my formative years. When I saw them in
the midst of the Cold War, I never doubted that Darth Vaders authoritarian
Empire in a galaxy far, far away was the Soviet Union. Werent the Soviets,
whom President Ronald Reagan would dub the evil empire, bent on imperial
domination? Didnt they have the equivalent of storm troopers, and wasnt it
our job to contain that threat?
Like most young Americans then, I saw myself as a plucky rebel, a mixture of
the free-wheeling, wisecracking Han Solo and the fresh-faced, idealistic
Luke Skywalker. Of course, George Lucas had a darker, more complex vision in
mind, one in which President Richard Nixon, not some sclerotic Soviet
premier, provided a model for the power-mad emperor, while the lovable Ewoks
in The Return of the Jedi -- with their simple if effective weaponry and
their anti-imperial insurgent tactics -- were clearly meant to evoke
Vietnamese resistance forces in an American war that Lucas had loathed. But
few enough Americans of the Cold War-era thought in such terms. (I didnt.)
It went without question that we werent the heartless evil empire. We were
the Jedi! And metaphorically speaking, werent we the ones who, in the end,
blew up the Soviet Death Star and won the Cold War?
How, then, did an increasingly gargantuan Pentagon become the Death Star of
our moment? We even had our own Darth Vader in Dick Cheney, a vice president
who actually took pride in the comparison.
Think for a moment, dear reader, about the optics of a typical
twenty-first-century U.S. military intervention. As our troops deploy to
places that for most Americans might as well be in a galaxy far, far away,
with all their depersonalizing body armor and high-tech weaponry, they
certainly have the look of imperial storm troopers.
Im hardly the first person to notice this. As Iraq war veteran Roy Scranton
recently wrote in the New York Times, I was the faceless storm trooper, and
the scrappy rebels were the Iraqis. Ouch.
American troops in that country often moved about in huge MRAPs
(mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles) described to me by an Army
battalion commander as ungainly and un-soldier like. Along with M1
Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, those MRAPs were the American
equivalents of the Imperial Walkers in Star Wars. Such vehicles, my
battalion commander friend noted drolly, were not conducive to social
engagements with Iraqis.
Its not the fault of the individual American soldier that, in these years,
hes been outfitted like a Star Wars storm trooper. His equipment is
designed to be rugged and redundant, meaning difficult to break, but it
comes at a cost. In Iraq, U.S. troops were often encased in 80 to 100 pounds
of equipment, including a rifle, body armor, helmet, ammunition, water,
radio, batteries, and night-vision goggles. And, light as they are, lets
not forget the ominous dark sunglasses meant to dim the glare of Iraqs
foreign sun.
Now, think how that soldier appeared to ordinary Iraqis -- or Afghans,
Yemenis, Libyans, or almost any other non-Western people. Wouldnt he or she
seem both intimidating and foreign, indeed, hostile and alien, especially
while pointing a rifle at you and jabbering away in a foreign tongue? Of
course, in Star Wars terms, it went both ways in Iraq. A colleague told me
that during her time there, she heard American troops refer to Iraqis as
sand people, the vicious desert raiders and scavengers of Star Wars. If
they seem like vicious aliens to us, should we be surprised that we just
might seem that way to them?
Meanwhile, consider the American enemy, whether the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or
any of our other opponents of this era. Typically unburdened by heavy armor
and loads of equipment, they move around in small bands, improvising as they
go. Such terrorists -- or freedom fighters, take your pick -- more
closely resemble (optically, at least) the plucky human survivors of
Independence Day or the ragtag yet determined rebels of Star Wars than heavy
patrols of U.S. troops do.
Now, think of the typical U.S. military response to the nimbleness and speed
of such rebels. It usually involves deploying yet more and bigger
technologies. The U.S. has even sent its version of Imperial Star Destroyers
(we call them B-52s) to Syria and Iraq to take out rebels riding their
version of Star Wars speeders (i.e. Toyota trucks).
To navigate and negotiate the complex human terrain (actual U.S. Army
term) of planets like Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. troops call on a range of
space-age technologies, including direction-finding equipment, signal
intercept, terrain modeling, and satellite navigation using GPS. The enemy,
being part of that human terrain, has little need for such technology to
master it. Since understanding alien cultures and their peculiar human
terrains is not its forte, the U.S. military has been known to hire
anthropologists to help it try to grasp the strange behaviors of the peoples
of Planet Iraq and Planet Afghanistan.
Yet unlike the evil empire of Star Wars or the ruthless aliens of
Independence Day, the U.S. military never claimed to be seeking total
control (or destruction) of the lands it invaded, nor did it claim to desire
the total annihilation of their populations (unless you count the carpet
bombing fantasies of wannabe Sith Lord Ted Cruz). Instead, it promised to
leave quickly once its liberating mission was accomplished, taking its
troops, attack craft, and motherships with it.
After 15 years and counting on Planet Afghanistan and 13 on Planet Iraq,
tell me again how those promises have played out.
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Consider it an irony of alien disaster movies that they manage to critique
U.S. military ambitions vis-à-vis the "primitive" natives of far-off lands
(even if none of us and few of the filmmakers know it). Like it or not, as
the world's sole superpower, dependent on advanced technology to implement
its global ambitions, the U.S. provides a remarkably good model for the
imperial and imperious aliens of our screen life.
We Americans, proud denizens of the land of the gun and of the only
superpower left standing, dont, of course, want to think of ourselves as
aliens. Who does? We go to movies like Independence Day or Star Wars to
identify with the outgunned rebels. Evidence to the contrary, we still think
of ourselves as the underdogs, the rebels, the liberators. And so -- I still
believe -- we once were, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
We need to get back to that time and that galaxy. But we dont need a
high-tech time machine or sci-fi wormhole to do so. Instead, we need to take
a long hard look at ourselves. Like Pogo, we need to be willing to see the
evidence of our own invasive nature. Only then can we begin to become the
kind of land we say we want to be.
A TomDispatch regular, William Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF)
and history professor. He blogs at Bracing Views.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William J. Astore
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176163
Tomgram: William Astore, We Have Met the Alien and He Is Us
By William Astore
Posted on July 12, 2016, Printed on July 13, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176163/ ;
Imagine a secret government facility buried deep in the bowels of a
mountain; a deluxe bomb shelter -- encased within dense, almost fissure-less
rock -- for top government officials to ride out doomsday.
I did. A lot.
I spent an inordinate amount of time as a child reading everything I could
find about a top secret complex -- a White-House-in-waiting, hospital,
television studio, government offices, subterranean reservoirs, and who
knows what else -- all entombed in a Virginia mountain. It was difficult for
a youngster to locate much on it in those pre-Internet days, but what I did
find out about Mount Weather fascinated me.
Looking back, I realize that I was captivated, and perhaps subconsciously
unnerved, by the prospect of World War III. That future conflict was
seemingly omnipresent, looming large in the pop cultural broth in which my
brain was regularly bathed. Red Dawn and The Day After offered two possible
scenarios for how such a war might be fought -- Vietnam-style in the U.S.A.
or as a full-scale nuclear exchange between America and the Soviet Union.
The president of that moment suggested that we might be spared the atomic
devastation of The Day After through mammoth spending on a space-based
missile defense system that, in the cinematic spirit of the moment, critics
dubbed Star Wars. WarGames, on the other hand, indicated that some
combination of dumb luck, a smart computer, and an impossibly young Matthew
Broderick would -- at the very last moment -- save the day. (Thanks, Ferris
Bueller!) And what child of the 1980s can forget that moment when your last
city was destroyed in Ataris Missile Command?
A survey of 1,000 grammar and high-school students conducted by an American
Psychiatric Association task force from 1978 to 1980 found the imminent
threat of nuclear annihilation has penetrated deeply into their
consciousness. Their answers to questionnaires showed that these
adolescents are deeply disturbed by the threat of nuclear war, have doubt
about the future, and about their own survival, wrote John Mack, a
professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a member of the task
force. I dont recall being distressed by the prospect myself, but it
certainly caught my attention.
While I was reading and re-reading John Bradleys lavishly illustrated
coffee-table book, World War III: Strategies, Tactics, and Weapons, and
playing with my G.I. Joes, TomDispatch regular William Astore was heading
deep into another secret government facility buried within a mountain,
another ground zero designed to withstand (but by then likely to be
incinerated in) a nuclear holocaust. Today, Astore takes us from his younger
days at shadowy Cheyenne Mountain to the darkened recesses of the cinema,
where a steady diet of "space operas" and "alien disaster movies," from the
iconic Star Wars to the recent U.S. box-office bomb Independence Day:
Resurgence, provide a window on the twenty-first-century American experience
and a funhouse mirror offering unflattering reflections of ourselves and our
foundering, floundering wars. Nick Turse
We Are The Empire
Of U.S. Military Interventions, Alien Disaster Movies, and Star Wars
By William J. Astore
Perhaps youve heard the expression: We have met the enemy and he is us.
Cartoonist Walt Kellys famed possum, Pogo, first uttered that cry. In light
of alien disaster movies like the recent sequel Independence Day: Resurgence
and Americas disastrous wars of the twenty-first century, Id like to
suggest a slight change in that classic phrase: we have met the alien and he
is us.
Allow me to explain. I grew up reading and watching science fiction with a
fascination that bordered on passion. In my youth, I also felt great
admiration for the high-tech, futuristic nature of the U.S. military. When
it came time for college, I majored in mechanical engineering and joined the
U.S. Air Force. On graduating, I would immediately be assigned to one of the
more high-tech, sci-fi-like (not to say apocalyptic) military settings
possible: Air Force Space Commands Cheyenne Mountain.
For those of you who dont remember the looming, end-of-everything
atmosphere of the Cold War era, Cheyenne Mountain was a nuclear missile
command center tunneled out of solid granite inside an actual mountain in
Colorado. In those days, I saw myself as one of the good guys, protecting
America from alien invasions and the potential nuclear obliteration of the
country at the hands of godless communists from the Soviet Union. The year
was 1985 and back then my idea of an alien invasion movie was Red Dawn, a
film in which the Soviets and their Cuban allies invade the U.S., only to be
turned back by a group of wolverine-like all-American teen rebels. (Think:
the Vietcong, American-style, since the Vietnam War was then just a decade
past.)
Strange to say, though, as I progressed through the military, I found myself
growing increasingly uneasy about my good-guy stature and about who exactly
was doing what to whom. Why, for example, did we invade Iraq in 2003 when
that country had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11? Why were we so
focused on dominating the Earths resources, especially its oil? Why, after
declaring total victory over the alien commies in 1991 and putting the
Cold War to bed for forever (or so it seemed then), did our military
continue to strive for global reach, global power and what, with no sense
of overreach or irony, it liked to call full-spectrum dominance?
Still, whatever was simmering away inside me, only when I retired from the
Air Force in 2005 did I fully face what had been staring back at me all
those years: I had met the alien, and he was me.
The Alien Nature of U.S. Military Interventions
The latest Independence Day movie, despite earning disastrous reviews, is
probably still rumbling its way through a multiplex near you. The basic plot
hasnt changed: ruthless aliens from afar (yet again) invade, seeking to
exploit our precious planet while annihilating humanity (something that, to
the best of our knowledge, only we are actually capable of). But we humans,
in such movies as in reality, are a resilient lot. Enough of the plucky and
the lucky emerge from the rubble to organize a counterattack. Despite being
outclassed by the aliens shockingly superior technology and awe-inspiring
arsenal of firepower, humanity finds a way to save the Earth while -- you
wont be surprised to know -- thoroughly thrashing said aliens.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20Remember
the original Independence Day from two decades ago? Derivative and
predictable it may have been, but it was also a campy spectacle -- with Will
Smiths cigar-chomping military pilot, Bill Pullmans kickass president in a
cockpit, and the White House being blown to smithereens by those aliens.
That was 1996. The Soviet Union was half-a-decade gone and the U.S. was the
planets sole superpower. Still, who knew that seven years later, on the
deck of an aircraft carrier, an all-too-real American president would climb
out of a similar cockpit in a flight suit, having essentially just blown
part of the Middle East to smithereens, and declare his very own mission
accomplished moment?
In the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan and the shock and awe
assault on Iraq, the never-ending destructiveness of the wars that followed,
coupled with the U.S. governments deployment of deadly robotic drones and
special ops units across the globe, alien invasion movies arent -- at least
for me -- the campy fun they once were, and not just because the latest of
them is louder, dumber, and more cliché-ridden than ever. I suspect that
theres something else at work as well, something thats barely risen to
consciousness here: in these years, weve morphed into the planets invading
aliens.
Think about it. Over the last half-century, whenever and wherever the U.S.
military deploys, often to underdeveloped towns and villages in places
like Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, it arrives very much in the spirit of
those sci-fi aliens. After all, it brings with it dazzlingly destructive
futuristic weaponry and high-tech gadgetry of all sorts (known in the
military as force-multipliers). It then proceeds to build mothership-style
bases that are often like American small towns plopped down in a new
environment. Nowadays in such lands, American drones patrol the skies
(think: the Terminator films), blast walls accented with razor wire and
klieg lights provide force protection on the ground, and the usual attack
helicopters, combat jets, and gunships hover overhead like so many alien
craft. To designate targets to wipe out, U.S. forces even use lasers!
In the field, American military officers emerge from high-tech vehicles to
bark out commands in a harsh alien tongue. (You know: English.) Even as
American leaders offer reassuring words to the natives (and to the public in
the homeland) about the U.S. military being a force for human liberation,
the message couldnt be more unmistakable if you happen to be living in such
countries: the aliens are here, and theyre planning to take control,
weapons loaded and ready to fire.
Other U.S. military officers have noticed this dynamic. In 2004, near
Samarra in Iraqs Salahuddin province, for instance, then-Major Guy Parmeter
recalled asking a farmer if hed seen any foreign fighters about. The
farmers reply was as simple as it was telling: Yes, you. Parmeter noted,
You have a bunch of epiphanies over the course of your experience here [in
Iraq], and it made me think: How are we perceived, who are we to them?
Americans may see themselves as liberators, but to the Iraqis and so many
other peoples Washington has targeted with its drones, jets, and high-tech
weaponry, we are the invaders.
Do you recall what the aliens were after in the first Independence Day
movie? Resources. In that film, they were compared to locusts, traveling
from planet to planet, stripping them of their valuables while killing their
inhabitants. These days, that narrative should sound a lot less alien to us.
After all, would Washington have committed itself quite so fully to the
Greater Middle East if it hadnt possessed all that oil so vital to our
consumption-driven way of life? Thats what the Carter Doctrine of 1980 was
about: it defined the Persian Gulf as a U.S. vital interest precisely
because, to quote former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitzs apt
description of Iraq, it floats on a sea of oil.
Of Cold War Memories and Imperial Storm Troopers
Whether anyone notices or not, alien invasion flicks offer a telling analogy
when it comes to the destructive reality of Washingtons global ambitions;
so, too, do space operas like Star Wars. Im a fan of George Lucass
original trilogy, which appeared in my formative years. When I saw them in
the midst of the Cold War, I never doubted that Darth Vaders authoritarian
Empire in a galaxy far, far away was the Soviet Union. Werent the Soviets,
whom President Ronald Reagan would dub the evil empire, bent on imperial
domination? Didnt they have the equivalent of storm troopers, and wasnt it
our job to contain that threat?
Like most young Americans then, I saw myself as a plucky rebel, a mixture of
the free-wheeling, wisecracking Han Solo and the fresh-faced, idealistic
Luke Skywalker. Of course, George Lucas had a darker, more complex vision in
mind, one in which President Richard Nixon, not some sclerotic Soviet
premier, provided a model for the power-mad emperor, while the lovable Ewoks
in The Return of the Jedi -- with their simple if effective weaponry and
their anti-imperial insurgent tactics -- were clearly meant to evoke
Vietnamese resistance forces in an American war that Lucas had loathed. But
few enough Americans of the Cold War-era thought in such terms. (I didnt.)
It went without question that we werent the heartless evil empire. We were
the Jedi! And metaphorically speaking, werent we the ones who, in the end,
blew up the Soviet Death Star and won the Cold War?
How, then, did an increasingly gargantuan Pentagon become the Death Star of
our moment? We even had our own Darth Vader in Dick Cheney, a vice president
who actually took pride in the comparison.
Think for a moment, dear reader, about the optics of a typical
twenty-first-century U.S. military intervention. As our troops deploy to
places that for most Americans might as well be in a galaxy far, far away,
with all their depersonalizing body armor and high-tech weaponry, they
certainly have the look of imperial storm troopers.
Im hardly the first person to notice this. As Iraq war veteran Roy Scranton
recently wrote in the New York Times, I was the faceless storm trooper, and
the scrappy rebels were the Iraqis. Ouch.
American troops in that country often moved about in huge MRAPs
(mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles) described to me by an Army
battalion commander as ungainly and un-soldier like. Along with M1
Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, those MRAPs were the American
equivalents of the Imperial Walkers in Star Wars. Such vehicles, my
battalion commander friend noted drolly, were not conducive to social
engagements with Iraqis.
Its not the fault of the individual American soldier that, in these years,
hes been outfitted like a Star Wars storm trooper. His equipment is
designed to be rugged and redundant, meaning difficult to break, but it
comes at a cost. In Iraq, U.S. troops were often encased in 80 to 100 pounds
of equipment, including a rifle, body armor, helmet, ammunition, water,
radio, batteries, and night-vision goggles. And, light as they are, lets
not forget the ominous dark sunglasses meant to dim the glare of Iraqs
foreign sun.
Now, think how that soldier appeared to ordinary Iraqis -- or Afghans,
Yemenis, Libyans, or almost any other non-Western people. Wouldnt he or she
seem both intimidating and foreign, indeed, hostile and alien, especially
while pointing a rifle at you and jabbering away in a foreign tongue? Of
course, in Star Wars terms, it went both ways in Iraq. A colleague told me
that during her time there, she heard American troops refer to Iraqis as
sand people, the vicious desert raiders and scavengers of Star Wars. If
they seem like vicious aliens to us, should we be surprised that we just
might seem that way to them?
Meanwhile, consider the American enemy, whether the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or
any of our other opponents of this era. Typically unburdened by heavy armor
and loads of equipment, they move around in small bands, improvising as they
go. Such terrorists -- or freedom fighters, take your pick -- more
closely resemble (optically, at least) the plucky human survivors of
Independence Day or the ragtag yet determined rebels of Star Wars than heavy
patrols of U.S. troops do.
Now, think of the typical U.S. military response to the nimbleness and speed
of such rebels. It usually involves deploying yet more and bigger
technologies. The U.S. has even sent its version of Imperial Star Destroyers
(we call them B-52s) to Syria and Iraq to take out rebels riding their
version of Star Wars speeders (i.e. Toyota trucks).
To navigate and negotiate the complex human terrain (actual U.S. Army
term) of planets like Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. troops call on a range of
space-age technologies, including direction-finding equipment, signal
intercept, terrain modeling, and satellite navigation using GPS. The enemy,
being part of that human terrain, has little need for such technology to
master it. Since understanding alien cultures and their peculiar human
terrains is not its forte, the U.S. military has been known to hire
anthropologists to help it try to grasp the strange behaviors of the peoples
of Planet Iraq and Planet Afghanistan.
Yet unlike the evil empire of Star Wars or the ruthless aliens of
Independence Day, the U.S. military never claimed to be seeking total
control (or destruction) of the lands it invaded, nor did it claim to desire
the total annihilation of their populations (unless you count the carpet
bombing fantasies of wannabe Sith Lord Ted Cruz). Instead, it promised to
leave quickly once its liberating mission was accomplished, taking its
troops, attack craft, and motherships with it.
After 15 years and counting on Planet Afghanistan and 13 on Planet Iraq,
tell me again how those promises have played out.
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Consider it an irony of alien disaster movies that they manage to critique
U.S. military ambitions vis-à-vis the "primitive" natives of far-off lands
(even if none of us and few of the filmmakers know it). Like it or not, as
the world's sole superpower, dependent on advanced technology to implement
its global ambitions, the U.S. provides a remarkably good model for the
imperial and imperious aliens of our screen life.
We Americans, proud denizens of the land of the gun and of the only
superpower left standing, dont, of course, want to think of ourselves as
aliens. Who does? We go to movies like Independence Day or Star Wars to
identify with the outgunned rebels. Evidence to the contrary, we still think
of ourselves as the underdogs, the rebels, the liberators. And so -- I still
believe -- we once were, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
We need to get back to that time and that galaxy. But we dont need a
high-tech time machine or sci-fi wormhole to do so. Instead, we need to take
a long hard look at ourselves. Like Pogo, we need to be willing to see the
evidence of our own invasive nature. Only then can we begin to become the
kind of land we say we want to be.
A TomDispatch regular, William Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF)
and history professor. He blogs at Bracing Views.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and
Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars,
and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 William J. Astore
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176163
