I assume most Americans are deeply interested in creating a strong and prosperous future for generations to come. But because of the huge national debt, our children and grandchildren, we are regularly told, will have to bear the costly burden of paying it down.
But there are other vital issues that need everyone’s attention, such as America’s repeated involvement in wars. Far too many Americans who are hardly Washingtonian hawks have become too accepting of our past, present and future wars which, by the way, also cause our national debt to soar.
The best example is how the Bush administration convinced Americans, and especially the mass media, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The war in Iraq began soon after, cost us billions of dollars, and ended in something far less than “victory.”
All too many Americans have become so accepting of wars that they seem not even to flinch at the possibility of another conflict against Iran or North Korea. Robert Jay Lifton, psychiatrist and prolific author, has written extensively about this phenomenon, calling it psychic numbing. It is this numbing that comes into play when politicians and a pliant media convince us that it is America’s duty to fight yet another war.
I think about the wars the US has been involved in during my lifetime. In Vietnam we lost 58,209 young men and women — not to mention those scarred by grievous mental and physical wounds. In the Afghan and Iraqi wars we have lost at least 6,518 men and women, plus the wounded. Civilians have also paid a very heavy price.
What will it take to convince more and more Americans that nothing is gained by war? We lose too many young people and in the end nothing is gained, and so much is lost.