From: Paul Von Ward
Date: Wed, Sep 27, 2006 2:02 PM
Subject: Some Personal Thoughts on When War is Not a WarDear Friends and Colleagues,
Enclosed is a little piece that begins to address the government's inappropriate use of war as a way of ruling. It describes a way many administrations have misused the war analogy and the use of unilateral war to accrue power and resources which they cannot otherwise make the case for. This distortion of the democratic process has led to a serious erosion of the republican principles on which this country was founded.
Please feel free to share it with anyone you'd like and say anything you'd like to say about it.
With best regards, PaulWAR AS DIVERSION FROM FAILURE
By Paul Von Ward, 9/25/06"War on Terrorism." "War on Drugs." "War on Cancer." "War on Poverty." What do they all have in common? More than you might imagine.
They were all proposed by U.S. Presidents when their reputations seemed in trouble. Each President jumped on an issue of public concern, but instead of building a broad-based, studied approach, waved the "war flag". Waging war is always simpler for a leader than dealing with something as messy as history and human reality. If the war model can be foisted on the public, a would-be autocrat is given more centralized power and resources, even for a different and possibly covert agenda.
The "war on drugs" was nationalized through the Marijuana Act in 1937 under Franklin Roosevelt whose domestic policies had not succeeded in bringing America our of its economic depression (World War II would accomplish that). It ballooned under subsequent administrations, receiving more funding and legal authority.
Ronald Reagan centralized it with a "drug czar" while his reputation suffered from the Iran-Contra Affair. (Such czar-like positions have been invented in all the wars described here, the most recent in homeland security and intelligence.) That affair linked the sale of U.S. missiles to Iran for their timing of the American Embassy hostages release to favor his election. Proceeds from the sale illegally funded the Contras in Nicaragua, who, perhaps not paradoxically, reportedly used money from drug-running allegedly ignored by U.S. authorities.
The "war on poverty" was launched by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 when he felt the need to prove himself after Kennedy's assassination and in the midst of a growing Vietnam conflict. Do you see a pattern emerging here? Announcing a new war even diverts attention from old wars that are still underway, and failing.
The "war on cancer" was launched by Richard Nixon in 1971 while still in the unpopular war in Vietnam he had promised to stop. Nixon also intensified the war on drugs in 1971, labeling it "America's Public Enemy Number One". The lesson is that if you're really in bad trouble, you rally the public for two or three wars simultaneously.
The "war on terrorism" was launched by George W. Bush in 2001 who suffered from the absence of a compelling national or international agenda and from lingering doubts about the legitimacy of his Presidency. When in trouble domestically, you foment trouble abroad, even invading a country unrelated to the terrorist threat.
All four of these "wars" were rubber-stamped by an unquestioning Congress that failed to submit the Presidential proposals to the harsh tests of a real public debate. Members of Congress failed in their obligation to their constituencies to seek and take into account the best available evidence about both the alleged problem and the most likely ways to solve it before passing legislation. They also did a poor job of analyzing history and predicting possible unintended consequences of their actions.
But, the real problem is deeper. American citizens abdicated their responsibility for self-government. We got too frightened by people whose beliefs are different than ours, stumped about what to do with problems of groups alienated from larger society, afraid we and our communities cannot take care of our own health and well-being. We ceased to demand of our representatives that they involve us in solving these problems. We have found it too difficult to wrestle with making choices that make us responsible for what happens to in the world. We have allowed the institutions of government to become separated from ideals and values that we hold individually.
The results have been disastrous. All four wars are failing, with the threat each was supposed to conquer actually getting more out of control. The centerpiece of one, the invasion of Iraq, is now considered by 16 intelligence agencies to be increasing the global threat of terrorism rather than reducing it.
In all these so-called wars, elite power-brokers have benefitted financially, politically, and personally from the waging of war, while untold numbers of little people were disenfranchised, disadvantaged, wounded or killed. And none of the four wars has an end in sight. Most of us think calling them wars absolves us of self-accountability. Many of us may profit financially from it, but we do not have to deal with its victims and and the collateral damage.
The war on drugs has expanded the prison industry. America now has more than two million inmates, the largest such population on Earth. More than one-half million people were arrested for marijuana possession last year, the problem the 1937 law was supposed to solve. Fighting this "war" absorbs 400,000 police jobs, while serious crimes today are 480% higher than 1965.
Conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. pointed out that the price of this war (between $50-100 billion per year) is many times greater than what a public licensing of drugs for addicts and an effective education program would cost. The result is more drug abusers and drug busters, richer smugglers and middle men, fattened police and military budgets, and a more violent society.
There were 35 million poor in America in 1965 and there are still 35 million poor today. The U.S. has the most unequal rich-poor ratio of any wealthy democracy in the world, wider than 30 years ago. Twenty years ago CEOs made 40 times as much as the average employee. Today they make 400 times as much. Medicare, one of the largest components of the war on poverty, may be bankrupt by 2020 and it future costs will suck up any available tax revenues.
The 3 and 1/2-decade war on cancer still can't pinpoint the causes of cancer. We have been able only to conclude that beyond some genetic pre-dispositions, cancers are caused by variables in diet and life-style. Cancer is still the second leading cause of death, expected to be first by 2010. The medical industry seized on Nixon's initiative to seek funding for expensive technologies and treatments. It has been enriched by $200 billion per year. The slight extensions of longevity for most cancer survivors have been based on extended struggles with side-effects, the metastasizing of cancer, and sky-rocketing medical costs.
The latest official National Intelligence Estimate on global terrorism, alluded to above, concludes that the unrelated invasion of Iraq has metastasized into new self-generating groups of terrorists. By creating victims of violence each month equal to those of the 9/11 attacks, errant U.S. policies breed recruits with grievances that fuel fanatical opposition to America. The $300 billion-plus official cost of the war is multiplied several times in the domestic lives of Afghanistan, Iraq, other nations in the Middle East, our allies, and in most of America. And the root causes are being ignored, left to fester and provoke further hostilities.
As in the wars on drugs, poverty and cancer, the war on terrorism has enriched selected businesses and individuals in related professional fields, created more powerful bureaucratic centers, reduced the individual's control and responsibility for his or own own well-being and denied the humanity in its victims. It has created more grievances by those experimented on by people who want to try out ideas about security, democracy, and religion on others. In all these wars, it's the little guy who always get treated, arrested, attacked, or even killed. The powerful arrogate to themselves even more power and resources. As they make the problems worse, they audaciously ask for even more power and resources.
In a nation quick to require life-shaping grades of its third-graders, we need to grade the performance of such national wars. I would give the war on drugs an F, the war on poverty a D, the war on cancer a D+, and the war on terror an F-. Such grades call into question the seriousness of the current political system. The present campaign resembles the shifting of proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic heading into the ice-berg filled ocean. It will not change until private citizens are willing to discuss, face-to-face with people who don't think alike, in the public squares of this country basic questions about our national purpose and the role of government. If we don't, there may one day soon be a call for a "war on public debate".
(Author of Gods, Genes, & Consciousness and other books, Paul Von Ward brings a long career of public service as minister, naval officer, U.S. diplomat, and nonprofit leader to the concerns expressed here. He may be contacted by E-mail at paul@vonward.com,con or on his website at http://www.vonward.com.)
