by Ivan Eland, Independent Institute
A recent article in the New York Times reported that the military has become frustrated with President Barack Obama because he hasn’t quickly decided to risk more of their lives in an Afghan war that is likely to be unwinnable. In a post-World War II world that has featured a non-traditional militarized foreign policy of profligate interventions into the affairs of other nations, the U.S. military and its opinion have acquired great prestige and are accorded hushed reverence in American society. The military and flag are worshiped as never before. But is this really patriotism?
The nation’s founders would roll over in their graves at what patriotism has become. After their bad experience with British colonial military abuses and seeing European citizens paying with blood and treasure for the frequent wars of their monarchs, the founders feared standing armies for undermining liberty. The U.S. Constitution rejected European militarism in favor of tight congressional controls over the employment, organization, and funding of the U.S. armed forces. Since World War II, those controls—such as congressional declarations of war—have been severely eroded.
And the American public, still feeling guilty over the admittedly terrible treatment of returning draftees from the Vietnam War, has retained its awe of the now voluntary military as an institution, even as it has soured on the Iraq and Afghan Wars. Even while fighting two unpopular wars, the public has supported huge defense budgets all out of proportion to what is needed to defend the country. Is this healthy for a republic?
The politically incorrect answer to this question is a resounding “no!” Being genuinely patriotic means supporting the country’s society and culture. Excessive reverence for the U.S. government, military, and flag is merely nationalism and is similar to episodes in Russia, Germany, and Japan in the last century. And slathering the military with too many resources tempts politicos, such as George W. Bush and Madeleine Albright, to dream up unneeded military adventures overseas, which many times end in disaster.
True American patriotism, following in the tradition of the founding, rejects militarism without rejecting an appropriate role for the military. According to the Constitution, the active military should “provide for the common defense” and nothing more. This limited role should rule out the military being used to invade other nations for ostensibly lofty purposes.
To be even more politically incorrect, on 9/11, the U.S. military failed in this primary mission. No one was fired over this tragic fiasco. Since then, the military has been used to make things worse and actually undermine U.S. security. Armchair quasi-patriots—unfortunately, most of the country—don’t like to acknowledge what triggers al-Qaeda’s heinous attacks in the first place: U.S. interventions in Islamic countries. In both the counterproductive Afghan and Iraq invasions and occupations, the military made huge mistakes before having to relearn counterinsurgency warfare tactics purposefully forgotten in the wake of its debacle in Vietnam. Does repeated incompetence deserve veneration?
One might then say so much for the military organization and its leaders, but shouldn’t we still have reverence for the frontline soldier who risks his or her life for our freedom? Unfortunately, military personnel—like the general public from which they come—are under the same aforementioned delusion about what “patriotism” should be. One could argue that war is sometimes necessary for defense—although the current U.S. offensive-defensive strategy is unneeded, unconstitutional, and counterproductive—but war rarely leads to increased freedom, as the founders knew. The civil liberties erosion under the “war on terror” is illustrative. Also, military personnel should know, or take the time to learn if they don’t, that the U.S. has been the most aggressive country on the planet during the Cold War and since in terms of the number of foreign military interventions.
Therefore, a new patriotism is needed. As a start, let’s stop worshiping the military and flag and bring back the founders’ old-fashioned respect for liberty and the Constitution.
Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, and Recarving Rushmore.
11 comments ↓
Amen Brother Ivan
And we need to ashamed more than just not treating the soldiers right. We need to be ashamed that we allowed a madman and his henchmen to began an immoral war against an innocent people.
Patriotism does not mean flag waving and starting wars. Patriotism is defending the Constitution as well as defending the country when attacked.
We do need an Independent presence and the next election is soon enough for me.
i woukd agree 1000% with the thoughts and words of the author. Too bad the president who promised change we all can believe in hasn't called the troops home from places like Germany,italy,Japan and South Korea. We could use those troops to man and protect America's borders both the north and the southern…and maybe,just maybe the wide open ports where even my ead grandmother could ship in the makings of a dirty bomb of some type with little or no problem. But what would i know ? I'm just one man,who has one vote.
Steve 1949, many of us have been willing to put our lives on the line if called for. I'm a navy veteran and also put in a quarter century as a firefighter.
I do not subscribe to the paranoia that requires that we put up a Berlin Wall around the United States and seal our ports, while canceling out the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights (all for our own good and safety, of course)
When we had a functioning Constitution we dealt quite well with antisocial acts, using the courts. There was much less blowback from a public trial with either conviction or acquittal than with torture, black sites, and everything covered under the cloak of "National Security.
The nation that I was willing to fight and die for so many years ago has degenerated into the kind of fascist nation, with the same enabling acts, that my brother and many others fought to eliminate in the 1940's.
Of course, the MIC loves all of this fomenting of still more wars and chaos, as it just improves their bottom line, making war materials for both sides. All we lose is our national treasury to these parasites, and a few thousand more of our youthful cannonfodder. (Plenty more where they came from)
In Germany, the Junkers owned 98% of the wealth and property, the Wehermacht was given unlimited ability and resources to build an almost overwhelming force. The rubber stamp Reichstag approved every excess that the fuhrer instigated. The people were disenfranchised, spied upon, disappeared if they even had the wrong expression on their face. Jews, gypsies, thinkers, labor leaders, homosexuals, etc. were persecuted, watched, sent to concentration camps, tortured, executed.
In this country, the Oligarchy owns 98% of the wealth, owns the American Riechstag called Congress and most probably the Executive and the Judiciary. Our Wehermacht, the Pentagon, is given ever more money and resources to improve its already overwhelming military might. Muslims in this nation are becoming German Jews. Right wing "Christian" hate groups are taking the place of the SA, hounding, persecuting, sometimes killing those who don't agree with them, again including homosexuals, intellectuals, any creed, Christian or not, that doesn't subscribe to their narrow views and values. The US has built concentration camps, has a thought police that would do Orwell proud, has been making lists of those who will go into them and who, in the meantime can no longer fly, often cannot cross the borders of the country, and are unemployable.
Those who say history doesn't repeat itself should read some history.
I would agree with your "historical" take of what appears to be happening here & now. But the question does come and remains. When did the American public lose it's ideals, and principals that made America a great nation ? i feel that even before Teddy Roosevelt, there was a " progressive" political point of view slowly working it's ay into the moral fiber of America, it's way of life and how the "government" did it's job in serving We, The people. Then win several of the rich industrialists got together to find ways to "expand' at low costs to them. The federal reserve was put together so those who already had money and didn't want to risk what they had, and got the governement to do it for them.And since then things have gone down hill as it were for America to the poit that it never rally had the chance to be the Republic the founders had invisioned.
As time and life went on so did America's moral & fiscal decay. And now America is bordering on the brink to where our currency is all but useless. People like myself are looked at as being " paranoid" when we stand up and try to tell America the truth, just as many try to do in talk radio and those who have formed local and regional "tea parties" and other organizing attempts to get America to wake up. as a retired police officer and adminstrator i have seen sadly the sewage of life. yet i know rom experience that if you have no security and order the streets fill with choas and disorder. My idea of securing our borders does or woud accomplish several things.
1. it would shift monies spent of keeping troops in nations that really no longer have a real physical need for us to be there. Those funds in tuern would and could be used to better improve the lives of those who serve our nation. i don't know if you ever have seen some of the footage of what has been gong on in the drug war & battles on the Mexican side of the border, but in closing i'll say this: There is Nothing but air, stopping or preventing that kind of activity from happening here. Now and again you can call me paranoid,silly or being an alarmist, but wait sir, until you see and smell the blood,and hear the screams of families, Then maybe like all human beings then will the little light go off in our minds when the total reality & understanding hits home. So much for the "common" defence of America huh ?
i can see now that and while this site does claim to be of the Populist" persuasion, The I'm ok, you're ok, please don't tell the truth america needs as it might be seen as offencive or NOT politically correct is more the order of the day, then it would seem that I who is nothing more than a "watchman on the wall, who calls out and declares what he sees is wasting his time energy,and breath here. What if people like a glenn beck or lou dobbs are and were right all along / it can and will be too late sir The America you and i were born into will be cone…go ask Andy Stern and the good folks from SEIU who wantAmerica to reditribute the wealth…Have a great week sir…as i'm done
Thomas Jefferson warned us about the dangers of banks and speculation. So did Madison, ("History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.") Jackson (“Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country? Is there not cause to tremble for the purity of our elections in peace and for the independence of our country in war? Controlling our currency, receiving our public monies, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence, it would be more formidable and dangerous than a naval and military power of the enemy.”) and Lincoln (“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth of the nation is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.” ) amongst others.
Yes, the Creation of the Federal Reserve was a criminal act by the banking cartels to control first finance and then the government. Rothschild said, “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”
Both Roosevelts managed to check their predation for a while, and for a while it looked like the “American Dream” might succeed, then with the advent of Ronald Reagan and the almost complete deregulation of finance, banks, corporations, etc., we again began the slide. We now have a similar person in the White House. A slick “communicator” who follows orders and does not rock the boat. He and his predecessor have given the banksters and gamblers everything that wasn’t nailed down. Now the banksters are allowed to go in with prybars and take anything left that they can carry.
War is just a part of the problem, but a big and very profitable part. I would suggest that you watch the scene from the Movie “Network,” where Howard Beale (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”) meets Arthur Jensen and the Corporate world. The movie came out in 1978 and at the time I couldn’t believe that such an accurate statement of goals and beliefs would ever appear in public. However, that is what we are up against. The situation has deteriorated so badly that I don’t even know if it is now irretrievable, but if we just give up, then our future is behind us.
In my reply above, I had included some links, but apparently they don't transfer to this archaic system, so I'll just list them here as a sort of footnote.
Jefferson: http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/je...
Madison: http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/James.Ma...
Jackson: http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2008-01/KingAn...
Lincoln: http://www.uhuh.com/unreal/lincoln.htm
The Howard Beale link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BVqIjKyJh0&fe...
I hope this helps.
Speaking of the International Financial Influence and how it is afecting the life of every American even today.
I ask all of you to read the following statement made by the Mayor of NYC many years ago:
"The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states, and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses generally referred to as 'international bankers.' This little coterie… run our government for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen…[and] seizes…our executive officers… legislative bodies… schools… courts… newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.–John F. Hyland Mayor of New York City (1918-1925)"
This is what I mean when I speak of a Shadow Government. Today's Shadow Government includes the Neo-Con influence, and our Two Parties.
Our two Parties, Republican and Democrat are actually functional arms of this International Financial Cartel. They use their influence over their members to frame American policy that supports the aims of the Cartel – what I call the Shadow Government. This Government rules most of the world and remains in the deep background, but as the Mayor early in the 20th Century observed, their tentacles are in every thing.
I have proposed ways to get rid of the Two Headed Monster in Washington, and thus make it possible to cut the binding chains of the Shadow Government.
Until we replace the Corrupt Government that now occupies the drivers seat of our Government we will never again have the freedoms promised by our Forefathers.
It really is that simple.
It would seem that anyone, past or present, who warned about such things is either ignored or vilified. The day will probably come when they are simply disappeared.
Leave a Comment