American Soldiers Died for a Lie — Period

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a culture enthralled by the magical power of the gun — an artificial phallus if ever there were one — would fail to appreciate how impotent it is.

Never have a people felt themselves more invincible than Americans when headed off to war. The hubris never dwindles, no matter how Quixotic the quest.

We convince ourselves that, of course, we’ll defeat the enemy because we have a bigger arsenal, the best-trained fighters, and that can-do attitude that manifested on the shores of Normandy and in all the John Wayne films.

And that’s what matters, or so we always think.

Like the song says, “We’ll put a boot in your ass; it’s the American way.”

And we do — in both Vietnam and Afghanistan our troops won nearly every major battle.

Yet, we lost the war in both cases because, oddly enough, Toby Keith is no expert on foreign policy, combat, or those into whose posteriors he would have us deposit our boots.

Which is why he didn’t foresee their reply to his bombastic lyrical threat, back when he issued it safely from the confines of some air-conditioned Nashville recording studio:

We’ll see your boot, cowboy, and raise you with patience.

Apparently, some folks didn’t get the memo: nations are no longer defeated — certainly political and ideological movements are not — by force of arms alone.

Those of us on the left told you this was a mistake. We even told you why.

We told you the world is different than when those soldiers hoisted the flag on Iwo Jima. We told you al-Qaeda was a different kind of enemy. Even if we defeated them — and it was inevitable we would, militarily — the ideology they represented would come back. Enter ISIS right on time, which not only filled the fundamentalist vacuum left by the defeat of bin Laden but which did the same after the defeat of Saddam Hussein in Iraq — replacing bad with much, much worse.

The Taliban or something like it would be back too. We told you this. Actually, we told you they would never really go away.

You said they were 7th-century barbarians whom America would push back into the caves whence they came, never to be heard from again.

Mmm-k.

All of this was predictable — not just predictable, predicted — by people you never want to listen to until it’s too late.

It was predictable the Taliban would reassert itself and find more than a few who were willing to hand them the keys and let them drive again.

After all, the people in the bombed-out territory — even if they have no love for the Taliban — remember who was responsible for that errant drone strike, or ten, or two hundred of them.

They remember who was occupying their land and propping up one corrupt puppet after another to keep another corrupt and brutal group at bay.

At some point, the masses get tired and just want you gone.

And if you wait long enough to make your inevitable exit — which we did — the people you hope will keep the bad guys from taking over won’t even be old enough to remember the bad guys you’re talking about.

Many of them will not fear the Taliban, however much they should. They have not experienced Taliban rule. They just remember you.

So now what?

There are no easy answers to that question, there or anywhere else in the world. We don’t even have the answers here at home when it comes to creating a more just and functional society.

I know that’s not a satisfying answer, but it’s the best we have.

However much it hurts to admit — especially having been raised with a sense of national superiority, such that we think the United States can solve every problem — we can’t save everyone.

We can’t even save ourselves.

It’s worth noting that while the passengers on Flight 93 were able to stop the fourth plane on 9/11 — the one that was headed for the Capitol — our law enforcement agencies were largely unable to stop the attack on that building by our own band of terrorists.

There was no one in DHS willing to say, in the words of Todd Beamer, “let’s roll,” and block American insurrectionists from attacking the seat of government.

But somehow, we think we can police the world effectively?

We only believe this because we have a God complex and have encouraged others to see us in that salvific light.

No one asks why the Swedes don’t do more for the people of Afghanistan, or the Dutch, or the Belgians. No one looks at Canada and rolls their eyes when some Canuck says they aren’t able to do more to protect the interests of girls wanting to do STEM in Kabul.

But Americans are expected to deliver everyone from evil as if ours were the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, forever and ever, Amen.

It must sting to realize you are not God — that no one elected you such and you haven’t the skill set in any event.

If there is any lesson from these past twenty years, it is this: we must relinquish our love affair with overwhelming force as the solution to all problems — even when force is used against us, as it was on 9/11.

We could have treated bin Laden as the international criminal he was and spent the years and money we spent bombing Afghanistan (not to mention Iraq), killing hundreds of thousands in the process, just hunting him and his closest associates.

We told you this at the time. We have the receipts.

As a nation, we had the intelligence and the resources to handle things that way. What we lacked was the patience.

A tactical operation would have been slow — too slow for people enraged by the Trade Center and Pentagon attacks and desperate for revenge. Not because revenge was in our best interests, but because it felt good and satisfied our primal desire to show those whom we consider our inferiors — culturally, religiously, and militarily — whose collective dick was bigger.

Well, now I guess we have our answer.

Stamina really does matter more than size.

Who knew?

Never mind — it’s a rhetorical question.

Everyone willing to pay attention knew.

The only ones who didn’t know either didn’t want to — the patriotic ball-grab was too irresistible — or have been raised, tragically, to believe their patriotic duty requires the regular sacrifice of their children to the gods of war.

Then they get their babies sent back home in caskets.

Now they wonder, what was it all for? Did their loved ones die in vain? And no one wants to tell them the truth.

But I will.

They died for America’s sins.

Not Osama bin Laden’s but America’s. They died for the sin of our cockiness, the sin of our arrogance, and the sin of our continued confidence — ignoring all evidence to the contrary — that ammunition and raw power are what matters.

Their children did not give their lives for this country.

Or for the interests of Afghan women.

Or for freedom.

Or democracy.

Or for the victims of 9/11.

Their lives were taken because of a lie — told, propagated, and sustained over multiple generations by our country.

And if that hurts some people to hear, I’m sorry.

But what’s more important? To wrap yourself in a flag and believe it was for a good cause, or to say enough and ensure no more families go through this?

At least my truthful words will get no one’s babies killed.

Meanwhile, the lies of so-called patriots fill graveyards.

If we cannot bring ourselves to let go of the need to think there was some higher purpose here — because we don’t want to besmirch the memory of the dead or hurt their parent’s feelings — then we guarantee this will keep happening.

We’ll continue chasing that higher purpose to the ends of Earth, like an addict chasing a perfect and lasting fix, never finding it.

Maybe we should decide, once and for all, that however nice it would be to provide existing Gold Star families with solace, there is something more important to do than that.

Namely, we must Stop. Creating. More of them.

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This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.

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