War Is Not The Answer

War Is Not the Answer

By Tom Ewell

Despite the fact that our nation is weary after 13 years of post-9/11 wars, we are becoming again embroiled in yet another war, this time with the so-called Islamic State. Our bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan produced neither peace nor stability but rather unleashed a firestorm of tribal and sectarian violence and a flood of arms to the area. And now we are being led into doing it all over again. War has become a national addiction.

Our homeland was not bombed nor pillaged; thousands of our citizens were not killed or wounded or scattered in refugee camps; we have not had our country endure years of violence, hunger, shortage of water and health care that follows warfare. Yet Americans are beginning to understand that war costs us dearly, too, as we deal with its effects on our national debt, our neglected infrastructure and human needs, and most tragically, the cost to the lives of those who fought these wars.

Of the 2.5 million combat troops deployed over 50% suffer chronic pain; 20% conservatively wrestle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and/or depression; another 20% suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury. These signature injuries translate into a suicide rate of one active service member and 22 veterans each and every day. This in addition to the death of more than 6,800 American troops and the estimated 970,000 new disability claims pending before the VA.

And the economic cost is equally staggering. While Congress trims the budgets for human needs, the cost of the wars since 9/11 stand at $4.4 trillion in addition to the $7.6 trillion spent on defense and homeland security, amounts which exceed almost all other nations combined. All the while spending even a portion of those dollars on peaceful industry – education, health care, infrastructure, and renewable energy, for example – produces more and, in most cases, better paying jobs and a stronger society.

And, as noted above, perhaps even more tragically, our present wars are not effective in addressing the presumed goal of defeating terrorism. It does not make us safer nor does it reduce terrorism because the impact of torture, drones and U.S. bombs have only led to the recruitment of new members to terrorist groups such as the Islamic State. In a study by our own State Department they found that in 2013 alone incidences of terrorism increased by 47%. Imagine any other policy that spends trillions of dollars to address a problem such as eradicating Ebola or polio and then we find that the incidence of the disease has increased 47% in one year! That would be a failed policy, and so is our military approach in fighting terrorism.

Our nation cannot continue to ignore these negative consequences of war. It is like ignoring a self-destructing addiction. There are historically proven alternatives to our present war addiction: conducting a vigorous diplomacy program; offering human and structural assistance to the poor countries we oppose; controlling the Pentagon budget; and now that we have the opportunity, demanding that Congress assert its Constitutional responsibility to declare war and thus engage our reluctant and war-weary public in the debate as the public did in effectively stopping the proposed “surgical strikes” on Syria in 2013.

Breaking free of our addiction will not be easy, and any proposals will be met with skepticism and resistance from elected officials, from the war profiteers benefiting from the military-industrial complex, and even from the general public until the American people truly become sufficiently disenchanted with war that we seriously consider withdrawing our support.

As with all addictions, we begin a withdrawal process by acknowledging that war does not make us safer, stronger or more secure. As strong as our military is, it cannot bend other peoples and other nations to our will by bombing them.

We then need to recognize that a “higher power” of moral character and conscience calls us and our elected officials to begin to abolish our dependency on war as we when we were so dependent on slavery.

We also need to acknowledge with deep remorse and regret the incredible harm caused by our warfare and begin to make amends to those who have suffered, beginning with our own veterans and those whose countries and lives we so brutally disrupted.

We need to establish a new code of conduct in which we commit to working cooperatively with other nations through the United Nations and other international allies to support humanitarian needs and the planetary environment.

And finally, we need to stop feeding the addiction within our selves and others by halting arms sales.

Kicking an addiction of any sort is difficult and requires a fundamental transformation. Working toward the abolition of war will challenge our moral character and will. But the alternative is the ultimate destruction of self (nation) and those around us (all victims of war). It is a struggle worth pursuing.