Letter to The War System Sally Campbell
As I lay awake last night wondering about you, it occurred to me that you have not had a break or a vacation in a very long time. You have been hard at it for so many decades now – full-on, 24/7 – in many locations throughout the world. I guess that’s why you need to keep 900 US military bases going. Wow. That is a really impressive commitment, and I’m not surprised it costs you so much money. It’s actually hard to envision exactly how much the US military budget is – I mean, a trillion dollars a year. A billion is a thousand million, and a trillion is a thousand billion. That’s an astonishing amount of money to be provided every year by taxpayers, your funders.
You used to be called the “military-industrial” complex but we don’t use that term anymore. Maybe it makes the links between corporate capitalism and the military a bit too obvious.
Well you work hard and tirelessly, that’s for sure. In fact, the last time I think you took a slight break was after the Vietnam War, and those of us not part of the War System actually became lulled into thinking you might be retiring. Oh, the folly of the young! What were we thinking? Your work is so very profitable and the possibilities so limitless, why on earth would you think of retiring?
And you have so many willing to tell the story from your point of view, so many journalists happily “embedded” in your wars so they could get the exciting story close-up and from your point of view. You also have much of Hollywood with you. You made a brilliant offer to provide weapons, planes, and advice on how to stage war to Hollywood as long as they gave you final oversight on the product. An offer very hard to refuse it would appear. Any perusal of American films these days reveals just how much uptake you got on that. Plenty!
Of course, you really do have to feed the violence to keep it in the forefront, there has to be so much of it that people become somewhat numbed to it, and it gets normalized. Like constantly using the “f word”, it loses its sting. Violence has to be an integral part of entertainment, right down to children’s toys and games. And your progress on tv content is really remarkable; it’s hard to find an American made-for-tv movie that doesn’t have lots of enemies, threats & violence. Right on!
And your work recruiting in the schools is a really smart manouevre as well – get them while they’re young and unsure of what they’re gonna do next. Especially go after the ones who are poor and have no chance of a university education now that the state doesn’t fund post- secondary learning any more. Here in Canada we have private Jewish schools doing the same thing – get those idealistic young kids so indoctrinated in supporting apartheid Israel that they join the Israeli military. And let “charities” like Indigo owner Heather Reisman’s Heseg Foundation provide funding to “lone soldiers”, meaning soldiers “who don’t have family in Israel”. Better yet, get the Canadian taxpayers to foot the bill by giving Heather the tax writeoff. Now that is genius. Most of us don’t even know we’re subsidizing the Israeli military.
And then of course, you tie your US War System tightly into patriotism, so that any criticism of your wars is deemed unpatriotic. Politicians learned long ago to stop calling it the “War Department”. Always call it “Defense” and “protecting our security interests”. Divide your budget into various government entities so it won’t look so huge. Put nuclear weapons into “Energy” for instance. That removes a big chunk! Don’t include in the military budget anything to do with Veterans – their “benefits”, their care, their therapy, etc. Spread it out as much as you can.
But it’s always better to have the war happening “over there” – in Ukraine, in “The Middle East”
– so it never looks as if they are your wars. Oh no, they are someone else’s wars that you are “working tirelessly” to bring to an end. A closer look would reveal your primary role in these wars, so you have to be very, very clever to dupe the people who are paying for them in countless ways. You’ve made such good use of the “terrorism” threat since 9/11.
Keep people afraid and they’ll stay submissive.
Use fear and distraction together. Oh yes, sports entertainment! What an avenue for the War System – have some war planes fly over a tennis match, get everyone on their feet singing the national anthem and waving flags during a basketball or football game; here in Canada get those Snowbirds doing their high-flying tricks via a big Canadian military airshow, that gets the kids engaged early on and gets patriotism linked right in with the military. Maybe then the people won’t complain about the armed drones soon to come to Comox Base. After all, according to the Canadian military’s own website, it will all be benign – mapping and observing, and of course, they’re only gonna be surveilling “dissidents” and targeting “terrorists”, right?
(Next week: More ways of the War System)
