NOTE: This is the third and final installment in my series on the US military industrial complex. If you haven’t had a chance to read the first two, you can do so here and here.
We don’t have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have, where.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks
The American public is estranged from its military. Military service was once a shared experience for enormous numbers of Americans. Today, less than 1 per cent of the population serves on the all-volunteer force of the world’s most potent military. Most Americans encounter the high-gloss version of the US Military at NFL halftime shows. The uniforms are shiny, the million-dollar flyovers enthralling, the salutes crisp, and the air of invincibility complete. The halftime show is not the place for the issues that Jon Stewart raised with Deputy Secretary Hicks. The crowd would likely be bored around the issues of food insecurity in the families of the enlisted ranks — never mind the incompatibility of computers between the DOD and VA. The heroism of America’s special operations forces and their extraordinary abilities are deemed more worthy of remembrance by the American people than the cancer treatments for the veterans who were poisoned by burn pits and then abandoned by their government.
It makes sense. Retching in the toilet after chemotherapy treatments is definitely harder to watch than the scenes of Navy Seals killing Bin Laden on the big screen.
America’s wars in the Middle East were high-tech affairs against inferior militaries and insurgents. The American people’s perception of warfare and casualties have been shaped by those conflicts. The images of Navy Seals gunning down pirates in “Captain Phillips,” rappelling onto rooftops, or of precision drone strikes, are what Americans think war is because it is what war has been — at least for the last 20 years.
There is an old saw about generals fighting the last war at the expense of preparing for the next. Here is what is certain: there will be another war, and it won’t look anything like the last one. Young Americans will be killed in combat. They will be buried with honors, and mourned forever by their families and colleagues. They will be honored at a halftime show, and cheered for a few minutes by the American people.
Here is what is uncertain: will we win the war?