Shock and Awe: The Sustainability of Forever Wars and Killing Fields
"Mission Accomplished" with dead in the ground and oil taken out of the country
Sustainability is such a buzzword of convoluted meaning.
I know because I was a natural resource auditor. That means I trekked in rainforests and oil palm and rubber plantations to check environmental and worker conditions.
It’s not easy to adhere to all the rules. And to keep everyone satisfied.
That’s why the war machine is so impressive.
They don’t play by the rules, they make it up as they over-extend budgets, overkill civilians, literally, and over-estimate their capabilities.
Despite all the failures, all the illegal actions and all the bad publicity, the sustainability of forever wars is astounding.
Even with daily reminders of murdered families, dead soldiers and destroyed communities.
Sustainability usually has three pillars: environmental, economic, and social.
Forever wars excel at destroying all three.
Only afterwards do consultants get paid to extract vital resources and build up the infrastructure with a new, customizable, government.
The Rewards of Shock and Awe
Back in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. Why?
Saddam Hussein was marshalling weapons of mass destruction with intentions to aid the terrorist group al-Qaeda. The world was at risk from a rogue state in the Middle East. In hindsight, not so much.
After only one month, the combat operations ceased, but the effects of this dirty war lasted until 2011. Iraq is a major oil producer. It takes time to steal such abundant resources.
In 2014, American forces returned to Iraq due to an “escalation of instability” in the region.
The military campaign that rolled into Baghdad was called “shock and awe”. A strategy to use overwhelming power and show of force to paralyze the enemy into submission on the battlefield.
In 2006, Neil Young wrote a musical tribute to the tactic, giving the song the same name.
Living With Forever Wars
Three years after the spectacle of the Iraq invasion, Neil Young wrote all the songs for his 29th album called Living With War.
It was critical expose of the war policies and conduct of the George W. Bush administration. Here’s the playlist:
"After the Garden"
"Living with War"
"The Restless Consumer"
"Shock and Awe"
"Families"
"Flags of Freedom"
"Let's Impeach the President"
"Lookin' for a Leader"
"Roger and Out"
"America the Beautiful"
According to Young, the lyrics were a nod back to the protest music era of the 1960s. He also wanted the album to spark some creative criticism from younger artists, who were not engaged or enraged yet.
The title song covers the usual atrocities of war: “bodies on the ground”, “children scarred for life” and the “tears for a soldier’s wife”.
However, the most insightful part of the song reverberates today as a painful reminder:
We had a chance to change our mind
But some how wisdom was hard to find
We went with what we knew and now we can't go back
But we had a chance to change our mind.
Coda
Wisdom and war are not compatible.
There are sinister forces that win out way too often over any rational thought of avoiding human suffering. Profits and people are not always compatible either. The latter are extinguishable to secure the former.
Today, oil is plundered out by U.S. occupation troops in northeastern Syria by tanker trucks to military bases in Iraq.
It’s a never-ending cycle to lubricate the war machine and pour the profits into the coffers of Wall Street bankers and financial benefactors.
And now, after the U.S. presidential election, what is going to happen in the Ukraine?
There are vast mineral resources and agricultural lands in the now Russian-occupied Donbas region. The current stakeholders, foreign and domestic, are not going to give up their “pot of gold” without a fight.
Maybe this time it will trigger a nuclear war and end the forever wars with a flourish.
Leaving only the killing fields to be contaminated and left alone.
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