Picasso’s “Guernica” countrsy of , https://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp
Albert Einstein may not have said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” but the thought is genius. An example would be acts of war. Homo sapiens have used violence to settle their disputes for centuries, even engaged in a war to end war with no good effect. So, what does war say about us?
Perhaps it means we aren’t satisfied with the amount of suffering we’ve exacted upon ourselves. Or, perhaps we’ve found war to be too profitable to banish.
Before leaving office as our 34th U. S. President, Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial, Complex. (MIC) He said the alliance between the war machine and government had grown too strong, and that the former was gobbling up a greater portion of taxpayer dollars than the existing danger warranted. Nothing has changed on that last score.
This year the federal budget reserves 1.5 trillion dollars for national defense, double what Congress spends annually on all nonmilitary purposes combined. (“War Profiteering,” by David Vine, The Nation, July 2024, pg. 12.) That’s a lot of “faith and credit” to give to an agency that has never passed a budget audit.
Some of the money produces weapons that aren’t battlefield-worthy or are inappropriate for the terrain in which they operate, as we saw in Vietnam. Some of the materials are overpriced. And, some are left on the battlefield. Win, lose, or draw, weapon suppliers turn a profit and use the proceeds to send lobbyists to Congress to ask for more money. (Ibid, The Nation, July, pg. 21)
For ordinary people, war is no bargain, especially not for soldiers. Few would view mayhem and death as a fair distribution of spoils. Many might say it’s another example where oligarchs prosper at the expense of the taxpayer. Along that vein, General Douglas MacArthur once observed, The hundreds of billions of dollars now spent in mutual preparedness [for war] could conceivably abolish poverty from the face of the earth.
The Pew Research Center verifies that war has done little to alleviate the disparity in wealth distribution. …the income gap between the top ten percent and the bottom ten percent of earners in the United States increased by 39 percent between 1980 and 2018. (“Hierarchies of Weakness,” by Amitav Acharya, Foreign Affairs, July/Aug. pg. 76.) .
Worldwide conditions are the same. A Credit Suisse report found that at the end of 2019, only one percent of the world’s population controlled over 43 percent of global personal wealth whereas 54 percent of adults accounted for just two percent. (Ibid, pg. 77.)
Divisions of this magnitude have consequences that lead to public unrest and political instability. Violence against women is also common, even in Western countries. Among them, the United States has a notably high rate of rape. (Ibid, pg. 80.)
If we are honest with ourselves, we should recognize that weapons of war do not make us safe. It’s also true that money may talk but it has no heart. Oligarchs of war will continue to pursue paths of destruction for personal profit, indifferent to the misery it creates in war-torn places like Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine.
In his pursuit of Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu displays a similar streak of indifference. He complains that President Joe Biden refuses him 200-pound bombs to crush his enemy. Mainly, those bombs fall on women, children, and old men. For an example of insanity, we need to look no further than the conflict in Palestine.
A few visionaries have attempted to shatter war’s paradigm. The Friends Committee of National Legislation (FCNL), a Quaker affiliate, has floated some ideas. Largely based on common sense, one suggestion calls for hybrid courts, like those in the Reckoning Project of Argentina. (FCNL, pg. 27) Another speaks to the use of heightened diplomacy rather than violence.
And, in cases of internal disruptions like the White Supremacist’s attack on our Capitol on January 6th, the report recommends more money for citizenship building together with conflict resolution training for local law enforcement agencies.
What is war good for? Not much, except to benefit a few. We’d do better to bend our minds to instruments of peace. As citizens, we can begin by electing representatives who put the country above themselves. A few of them exist, and we need more. Primarily, we must turn off the spigot of greed. Kicking money out of politics and obliging oligarchs to pay their fair share of taxes would be a start. Admittedly, achieving these aims will be difficult but we don’t need rocket science. We already know that corporations aren’t people. Let’s start there, with common sense. After all the legalese and political maneuverings, that would make a change.
