Tapsearch Com EditorUnnessary Wars
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Here is a good article by my friend Tom Palaima, a professor at University of Texas and a frequent writer for the Austin Texas Statesman Newspaper.
Resource:
Shared suffering builds strong bonds
Shared Suffering builds bonds between people - in war
Tom asks why do wars join soldiers together in battle as one , but why have wars not brought us together as a people in the long run.
I go futher in my response below Tom's article about The Unnessary Wars.
One of the surest ways to build strong bonds between human beings is
through shared suffering. The military knows that and builds cohesion
among troops-to-be through the hardships they experience in basic
training. Troops become bands of brothers by going through the hell
of combat together.
However, it is much harder to figure out what can draw us together as a nation.
As we move into the year that will mark the 10th anniversary of the
terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, we might wonder why we are so
disunited. Where did the strong national unity in the days, weeks and
months after 9/11 go? When and why did it slip away?
If 9/11 is a modern Pearl Harbor, why have the wars our troops
continue to fight not brought us together? Why are we not ready to
move forward as we did during and after World War II?
Douglas L. Kriner and Francis X. Shen's book "The Casualty Gap"
traces statistically how in all of our wars since World War II, some
parts of American society and some classes of citizens get killed at
greater rates than others. Factors include income level, education,
race and ethnicity, political affiliation, employment opportunities,
and even regional histories.
The authors conducted surveys in 2007 and 2009. These proved that
Americans still believe in the principle of "shared sacrifice"
enunciated first by George Washington who said that every citizen who
enjoys the rights and privileges of citizenship "owes not only a
portion of his property, but even of his personal service to the
defense of it." But none of our wars in the last 60 years were waged
as truly shared sacrifices.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life's work and martyrdom are
sources of unity among many Americans, spoke out against the racism
that seemed to underlie the high rates of combat deaths of African
American soldiers in Vietnam. But Kriner and Shen argue that racism
itself did not cause such unfair losses. What caused it was wealth
disparity.
The casualty rates between the top and bottom income groups differ by
10 percent during the Vietnam and Korean wars and by 15 percent in
Iraq. Differences in educational opportunity are linked to casualty
disparities. But education levels, too, are correlated with income.
Recent statistics should shame anyone who advocates cutting funding
for public higher education. As Kriner and Shen report, "the
communities that have suffered the highest casualty rates in the Iraq
War possess levels of college educational attainment that are almost
40 percent lower, on average, than those of communities that have not
yet suffered a casualty."
If you are poor, you are likely to be less educated. So your
employment opportunities are limited. So you are more likely to
"volunteer" to become a soldier. Once you enlist, your lower
education level will ensure that you do poorly on armed services
aptitude tests. You will therefore have a greater chance of being
assigned to front-line infantry positions instead of support
positions that require educated know-how.
Thus it has always been. Ironically, the need for troops was so
urgent in WWII and skills tests so underdeveloped that assignments to
positions of maximum combat danger were more egalitarian.
It is hardly a cause for self-congratulation that we readily send the
children of the poor off to fight and die regardless of their skin
color. Most disturbing is that our poor communities experience
another gap. They lose confidence in government and disengage. In
Kriner's and Shen's words, "the populations with the most to lose in
war become those communities with the least to say to their elected
officials."
tpalaima@sbcglobal.net
Ray Tapajna adds,,,,,
History shows that wars cover a multitude of sins and act as a escape for the real issues in place many times. Many historians point to Pearl Harbor as a designed event to trigger the people to approve entering into World War 2.
President Bush used 9/11 to trigger his "shock and awe" pre-emptive war to hide the economic woes of our times. Only later did the real "shock and awe" war of free trade and globalization was revealed when the economic crisis enclosed the whole world in economic suffering.
We suggest all to read Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War by Patrick J. Buchanan which shows a pattern of political leaders opting for war rather than face the real issues at the time. Hitler could have been stopped much earlier if the political leaders of that time focused on the real issues which are almost always intertwined with economic events. When economic ethics are missing, war and suffering follow.
The lower classes and workers in general usually never have a voice in the matter. in our times, workers have no voice in the process of free trade and globalization - See Communications by Rank
