Veterans Day and the Last Day on Earth

       On the eve of Veterans Day, President Obama announced that he will send another 1,500 Americans troops to Iraq to advise the Iraqi military on how to fight militants in a civil war. 

         While not seeking Congressional approval for the troop surge, the White House intends to request $5.6 billion for this latest military campaign, the end of which is nowhere in sight.  This at a time when the cost of the decade-long war in Iraq has exceeded $2 trillion ($6,250 for each American citizen), which makes it one of the most expensive clusterfucks in modern history.  Yet war spells profit for numerous weapons manufacturers (roughly half of all the weapons in the world are sold by the United States), military contractors, and oil companies, all of which have joined hands with the mainstream media to churn out war propaganda and lies while funding the election campaigns of unscrupulous politicians whom later vote to re-direct taxpayer dollars to their corporate sponsors.  Mainstream media highlights the horrors of the enemy (who is often a former ally) and showcases U.S military successes, yet kept hidden from the television audience are the bodies of the tens of thousands innocent civilians killed by American bombs and by the military of the puppet government installed in Iraq.  We hear about the crimes of ISIS, but hear very little of the Hell on Earth that the U.S occupation has created for countless Iraqi families whom the $5.6 billion dollars could serve to assist if spent on medical aid, food, shelter, and programs of social uplift.  We hear nothing of the environmental destruction that modern warfare has brought upon the Iraqi ecosystems of deserts and alluvial plains, where rivers and marshlands lay devastated by the formidable munitions exploded by the U.S Department of Defense (formerly called the Department of War), which is largest contributor of pollution on Earth.  We also hear nothing of the U.S veteran suicide rates; amounting to at least 8,000 a year, this figure translates into twenty-two veterans killing themselves every day. 

        Some important questions we should be asking ourselves include:  How did this happen?  When will it end?  What is the solution?  And what does the current state of affairs say about humanity and the direction we’re headed?  Steven Pinker makes a good point in The Better Angels of our Nature, pointing out that in terms of a percentage of human population over time, the rate of violent deaths has declined and societies have become largely pacified since the rise of civilization.  Indeed, deaths from armed conflicts are down significantly from previous decades, especially when compared to the WWII and Cold War eras.  But this current deviation from global warfare doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re on the right track.  If you factor in the realities that humans cannot seem to curb their propensity toward violence and continue to build and stockpile nuclear arms despite the existence of international diplomatic forums and technologies which allows us to communicate instantaneously and take airplane flights halfway across the world in a matter of hours to either visit other people or bomb them – and in the latter scenario we sometimes end up knowingly killing little boys and girls – then something is drastically wrong.  These realities compounded with others such as human racism, religious bigotry, and an insatiable appetite for limited natural resources on a planet that may be experiencing a “sixth extinction” makes some of us wonder what the future holds. 

        Historically, our species, born of the same blood, has surmounted extremely challenging obstacles, such as transitioning away from ancient deistic and animistic religious hierarchies (i.e Egyptian pharaohs or Aztec god kings) and overthrowing monarchical tyrannies (i.e the French and American Revolutions), we’ve emerged from the Dark Ages into a period of enlightenment, stamped-out diseases and slave trades, and have recovered from myriad wars, including two massive ones in the past century.  So the question remains, as Aeschylus put it 2,500 years ago, can we “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world?”  And if not, shall humanity validate this prediction of Einstein: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”   Will we relapse into barbarism and attack each other like primitive tribesmen, only this time with the aid of hydrogen bombs, so as to deny all posterity – those would-be and yet unborn humans incubating in the invisible womb of time – a chance to improve this world and experience the rare and beautiful things that have filled countless lives with some sense of meaning and awe? 

       There will arrive a day which shall be the last for humans on Earth, a day when a person breathes humanity’s final dying breath or leaves this planet for the last time, and never again will our species bear witness to and experience the wonders of nature and miracle of existence in this particular world.  The arrival time of this day and the manner in which it manifests is dependent upon the actions of those alive today.  We can either speed it up or postpone it.  We may either bow out gracefully or go down with our hands wrapped around each others necks.  Ultimately, I’m not sure how much it even matters, but nevertheless, fifteen year-old Anne Frank makes good point: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” 

Calvin and Hobbes, scanned from the current (and last printed) issue of The War Crimes Times, a publication of Veterans for Peace.  www.warcrimestimes.org