The U.S. government is delivering anti-mortar radars to Ukraine, reported here, where a U.S. general says they are “highly effective”. Does this keep America safe?
The manufacturer of this equipment is SRC, Inc., a non-profit defense contractor. SRC’s President’s message says that SRC’s mission is derived from that of its customers. It is “to help keep America safe and strong.”
This is a popular slogan. Elizabeth Cheney and William Kristol founded an organization named “Keep America Safe”. On the Board is “Debra Burlingame, the sister of a 9/11 victim and founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.”
What does government do that keeps America safe? Did attacking Iraq in 2003 keep America safe? Did attacking Libya in 2011 keep America safe? Did attacking Afghanistan in 2001 keep America safe? Has American intervention in Syria kept America safe? Is American intervention in Ukraine keeping America safe? Do American sanctions on Venezuela and Russia keep America safe? Does American deference to Israel keep America safe?
Is American government actually keeping America strong? Are the resources that go to defense spent effectively or wastefully? Does the “strong” translate into “safe”?
Men and women volunteered for U.S. armed forces, with the chance they’d be killed or wounded in Iraq. The number of them who died is about 4,493. The official number of their wounded is 32,021, but 320,000 have brain injuries. One might say they willingly took the chance of sacrificing themselves. One might also say that these Americans are a scarce resource and that the government decided to use that resource with the aim of keeping America safe. Was that mission accomplished? Was the price paid in American lives and treasure worth the additional safety?
We are told that between 112,000 and 123,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, based on actual reports in newspapers. Broader estimates are as many as 500,000. Iraq’s material wealth and society were devastated. Americans do not include any of this in the price they paid and no arm of justice holds American leaders responsible for this mass destruction. Does it morally suffice to say that this was all in a day’s work? Does it morally suffice for people like Elizabeth Cheney and William Kristol to say that this doesn’t count because America was made safer? And was America actually made any safer?
Who was responsible for these murders? American leaders and neocon pundits intoned moronic slogans about non-existent weapons of mass destruction and then created a situation in which hundreds of thousands of innocent people perished and an entire country was wrecked. They proceeded to repeat the catastrophe in Libya. They participated in the same kind of situation in Syria. In Ukraine once again, American government heavily influences if not outright controls the attacks of Kiev on their own people in Donbass.
When do we realize that keeping America safe and strong is but another moronic slogan that lacks real content? It provides no guidance whatsoever as to what decisions, processes and factors actually keep America safe and strong. It provides no guidance as to how to go about becoming safe and strong, and how much to spend and on what. It provides no guarantee that “more” dollars to the military budget of the U.S. actually buy more safety and more strength.
In the name of American safety and strength, one morally dubious war after another has been instigated and joined by the U.S. government. Safety and strength were undermined and wasted. Huge amounts have been wasted and made America less safe and less strong, while simultaneously executing evil policies in order to accomplish an empty slogan.
Keep America Safe is an empty slogan. It is fitting that Elizabeth Cheney and William Kristol founded an organization with that name. It reflects their own empty-headed ideas.
That organization’s web site is “scrubbed”, it appears. They will, however, keep pushing the same ideas in new forms. Their mission said
“Keep America Safe will make the case for an unapologetic approach to fighting terrorism around the world, for victory in the wars this country fights, for democracy and human rights, and for a strong American military that is needed in the dangerous world in which we live.”
These goals are empty of real meaning and content other than to call for an unbounded “more, more and ever more” devoted to military forces and wars. They are slogans propounded by warmongering ideologues who propose to use immoral means to achieve what they regard as morally good ends. Everything in their mission is flawed and backwards. They have it all wrong.
We have seen that their fight against terrorism has meant more terrorists than ever in more regions than ever. We have seen no victories in what were ill-conceived fights and wars to begin with. Their ignorance concerning democracy is monumental. We have seen that a good many societies in this world do not hold together as states without strong-man governments, and that when the top person is killed and the government demolished the result is often severe strife and internecine conflicts. Human rights take a nosedive in these situations. We have seen that the U.S. has made the world more dangerous partly because it has a strong military available to its leaders.
We need to stop being beguiled by slogans and propaganda. We need to pay a lot more attention to the realities. Safety is not a simple good. It is not homogenous. It comprises many goods. They are costly. More and fancier battleships and fighter planes do not automatically translate into more “safety”. Removing every threat, real or imagined, doesn’t produce more safety in every case. The cost may exceed the benefit. Attempted removal of a threat may cause more and greater threats to arise. Foreign policy cannot sensibly be run on the basis of simple-minded slogans like “Keep America Safe”. They do not even provide rough guidance. We can see in the case of the Cheney-Kristol mission statement that they can provide perverse guidance.
10:11 am on March 21, 2015
