Military Might Is Our National Religion

Military Might Is Our National Religion: A Profession of 21st-Century All-American Faith, appeared in the Winter January 2020 issue of the Peace Action of Michigan newsletter entitled "FLASH!" The piece merits whatever added circulation this post can bring. 

#We believe in wars. From Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan to Iraq, the Cold War to the War on Terror, and also many military interventions in between, including Grenada, Panama, and Somalia, Americans are always fighting somewhere...

#We believe in weaponry, the more expensive the better. The under-performing F-35 stealth fighter may cost $1.45 trillion over its lifetime. An updated nuclear triad ... may cost $1.7 trillion. New (and malfunctioning) aircraft carriers cost us more than $10 billion each. And all such weaponry requests get funded ... despite a history of their redundancy, ridiculously high price, regular overruns, and mediocre performance. Meanwhile, Americans squabble bitterly over a few hundred million for the arts and humanities.

#We believe in weapons of mass destruction. ... We work overtime to ensure "infidels" and "atheists" (the Iranians and North Koreans, etc.) don't get them. Historically, no country has devoted more research or money to deadly nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry than the United States.

#We believe with missionary zeal in our military and seek to establish our "faith" everywhere. Hence, our global network of perhaps 800 (or more) overseas military bases. We don't hesitate to deploy our elite missionaries,like the Jesuits, the Special Operations forces to more than 130 countries annually. Our present supreme leader, Pope Trump I, boasts of military sales across the globe, most notably to the "infidel" Saudis. ... His rationale: weapons and profits should rule all.

#We believe in our college of cardinals,otherwise known as America's generals and admirals. We sometimes appoint them (or anoint them) to the highest positions in the land. While Trump's generals -- Flynn, Mattis, McMaster, and John Kelly -- have fallen from grace at the White House, America's generals and admirals continue to rule globally ... in sweeping geographical commands that... cover the planet (digitally, operationally and even with a planned space command) ... satirized in Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove") ... with the ability  to commit mass genocide and worldwide destruction with nuclear weapons. Indeed, Pope Trump ... his unelected college of cardinals with their mission of "full spectrum dominance" ... means they grant themselves god-like powers over our lives and that of our planet. 

#We believe that freedom comes through obedience. Those who break ranks from our militarized church and protest,like Chelsea Manning, are treated as heretics and literally tortured.

#We believe military spending brings wealth and jobs galore, even when it measurably doesn't. Military production is both increasingly automated and increasingly outsourced, leading to far fewer good-paying jobs compared to spending on education, infrastructure repairs of and improvements in roads, bridge, levees, and the like ...

#We believe, and our most senior leaders profess to believe, that our military represents the very best of us, that we have the "finest" one in human history.

#We believe in planning for a future marked by endless wars, whether against terrorism or "godless" states like China and Russia, which means our military church must be forever strengthened in the cause of winning ultimate victory.

#Finally, we believe our religion is the one true faith. More pacifist "religions" are dismissed as        weak, misguided, and exploitative.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

#...A more likely ending (than apocalyptic worldwide destruction) is a slow-motion collapse of America's imperial empire and the church of the military that goes with it, the resulting chaos possibly leading to a Second Coming,not of Christ but of medieval levels of meanness and misery. 

#Or maybe, we might start anew by questioning our militarized profession of faith. We might began to realize our warrior-church isn't all it's cracked up to be. We might begin to seek meaning and salvation not through wars and weaponry,not through generals and their admirers,not through impossible dreams of total dominance,but through compassion and a desire for global justice.

Edited by Dan Butts from William Astore, TomDispatch.com 8/13/19. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a TomDispatch regular.