Dystopian Paradox

One of McCain’s criticisms of Obama is that Obama is not qualified to be commander in chief. The problem with this argument is that the logic is faulty. It’s based on several underlying assumptions that are not necessarily true. One is that McCain’s military experience makes him more qualified to be commander in chief. Another is that the president as such holds a military position. If that’s true, he or she should be decked out in military attire at least some of the time.

I accidentally bought a book by Andrew Bacevich copyrighted in 2005 entitled The New American Militarism. Bacevich is a Vietnam war veteran and a professor of international relations at Boston College. I had intended to purchase his new offering Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, but I got Militarism by mistake at Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago. So I’ve been reading it. My comments here include views Bacevich expresses in Militarism.

At the end of the cold war, the U.S. remained the sole super power militarily. Post cold war, the U.S. has displayed that power both as show and in two wars to demonstrate what we can do in a conventional war. Our military power became the single facet of our foreign policy under the Bush administration. Diplomacy was out. You’re either for us or against us and we don’t care what the rest of the world thinks. It would seem we got to where Hitler wanted to be.

The problem with this attitude is that it didn’t and still doesn’t reflect reality. We were not the world hegemon in 2003 when we invaded Iraq nor are we now. But the problem is that militarism has become a part of our mindset. It’s a an accepted, and embraced, component of our mainstream culture. The citizenry for the most part, and irrespective of whether so called liberal or so called conservative, has bought into the idea that we have been imbued with the divine right and duty to make history.

Moreover, the president has been catapulted from the position of commander in chief as a citizen to commander in chief as the top military officer. Bacevich states that the “framers of our Constitution designated the president as commander-in-chief as a means of asserting unambiguous civilian control.” He notes presidents George Washington, Grant and Eisenhower went out of their way to avoid their prior military identity while in office.

So what does Bush do, one who was in the reserves and maybe awol from that light duty? He dons a Navy flight suit and hits the deck of an aircraft deck as commander in chief of the military in a grand photo op in which he states “Mission accomplished,” referring to the Iraq war.

In a recent Bill Moyer’s interview, Bacevich said that a new president will change nothing regarding how we deceive ourselves into believing that we are destined to be the world’s police (one of our many misconceptions). Bacevich’s statement is supported both by Obama’s and McCain’s campaign rhetoric. Obama said in his acceptance speech that he would rebuild our military. McCain’s campaign continues to tout his Vietnam experience as a credential for qualification as commander-in-chief. Both candidates know that campaigning on a promise to reduce our military is political suicide.

What’s suicide is spending money you don’t have, both personally, at the business level, and at the governmental level. And that’s what we’ve been doing at all three levels for the last eight years. GM for example owes tons of money because its management thinks that it must show its shareholders profits each quarter; they did that with SUVs and trucks and now where are they. We did it personally with homes and cars we can’t afford and credit card debt. The fed creates money to keep this insane economic model in place as long as possible so that they keep their jobs and get reelected. We have a huge military with 100 or more bases around the world allegedly to keep oil coming in to keep the cars going we can’t afford financially or environmentally.

There are similarities of the to the run up to St. Helens explosion in 1980, to warning signs of an impending financial disaster now.

With Mt. St. Helens and other explosive volcanic eruptions (Krakatoa for example), the warning signs were tremblers. Maybe not so big on the Richter scale, but a warning that something’s going on underneath a volcano.

With our economy, and our standing in the world as alleged hegemon, we have warning signs: extremely volatile markets that indicate nobody knows where things are going to be in the relative short term; a challenge to our military might by insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan along with Russia’s new assertiveness militarily.

David killed a giant with a rock. Achilles was done in by an arrow to his eponymous heal. Patrol boats sank heavy cruisers in WW II. A few missiles with conventional warheads can take out our aircraft carriers. A well placed bomb in a weak spot killed the Deathstar in Star Wars. The bigger and more complex our military hardware and organization designed to fight conventional wars, the more vulnerable they become to unconventional, cheaper, less ostentatious warfare.

A lot of bullies find out they’re not so tough just because they’re bigger. Kick ‘em in the crotch and suddenly they’re shorter than their intended victim. It’s fantasy to think that a huge military is going to keep us out of trouble. In reality, it’s a big part of our problem. Our main challenge doesn’t lie outside our borders. Our challenge is to come to grips with reality, to recognize that the problem is systemic- a disease within several aspects of our mainstream culture, and to take steps to treat not the symptoms but the disease itself.

Neither Obama nor McCain can bust our bubble during the campaign, the bubble that we are world hegemon, the bubble that was Dorothy’s vision while out of touch in lala land and in which the Good Witch of the North arrived. An apparition. As between Obama and McCain, the question is which one is more in touch reality and once in office will do something positive to get the U.S. headed in a sustainable direction.

For me the answer unequivocally is Barack. He’s demonstrated his executive skills in community organizing, and in his presidential campaign fueled on the audacity of hope.

Moreover, there’s no way I can buy into McCain’s Rovian guided, fear based campaign rhetoric. He plays on our citizens fears and prejudices. I can get a good feeling talking trash about somebody, especially a public figure that isn’t going to sue me. But I know it’s cheap to do so.

And I have hope that the U.S. citizenry will see above the baseness of McCain’s smear campaign, and elect Barack Obama, someone with proven organizational and executive talent.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Dystopian Paradox, Global Warming, Personal Stories, Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.