The US has always been a keen practitioner of war, if not starting war then instigating then supplying the conflict….but let’s talk about the last 30 years….from Iraq to the Balkans back to Iraq and now Ukraine and Gaza….we could go further back….since the end of WW2 the US has been involved in what some call ‘forever war’.

In most of that time the US has totally ignored alternative answers to international conflicts.

The fog of war makes it difficult for most people to think beyond the here and now. In the wake of the chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan in August 2021, policymakers, the military and others focused on the bungling of the singular operation — the withdrawal — and not the overall feasibility or desirability of U.S. foreign policy. 

Any window for broader introspection closed with the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which led to renewed calls for American involvement abroad. The following year, in October 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. Most recently, the governments of Israel and Iran have engaged in tit-for-tat military strikes. 

These conflicts have spawned constant arguments about aid and other involvement. Concerns over China, North Korea and other unfriendly regimes generate further debate about how U.S. policymakers should respond to specific scenarios. 

Although these conversations are relevant, they highlight an important blind spot in foreign policy. It is exceptionally difficult for many to rise above the fog of war and look at the big picture. But they must do so, or else we will remain mired in a myopic and continuous cycle of war-making, moving from one crisis to the next. 

Our never-ending proactive foreign policy has normalized war-making, with its significant costs and brutal realities. When war and foreign intervention are treated as immutable facts of life, our focus shifts from understanding their realities and causes to their violent execution. We treat the symptom while ignoring the disease that caused it.  

Writing in the late 19th century, Argentine political theorist John Baptist Alberdi noted that war legitimizes crimes such as robbery, murder, arson and destruction on a massive scale. These activities, outlawed and viewed as wrong throughout the world, become business as usual.  

“War sanctions [these crimes],” he wrote, “and converts them into just and lawful acts…a horrible and sacrilegious perversion of sense, which is a sarcasm on civilization.” 

What Alberdi asked us to realize is that our myopic focus on today’s conflict requires us to think in simple dichotomies — “good” and “bad,” or “us” versus “them” — while neglecting the true horrors of the enterprise of war itself. The treatment of war as something unavoidable presumes from the start that the atrocities of war cannot be avoided. 

In the fog of forever war, the US no longer recognizes alternatives

How much longer can the US finance war after war?

When faced with the brutal actions of others, proponents of war say, “What are we to do other than use force in response to force?” One simple but neglected answer is to not respond with violence, precisely because we recognize the inherent savagery of the war-making enterprise.

The typical reaction to this answer is that it is naive. But that reaction is itself naive. How confident can we be that, in all cases of war-making, all other feasible, nonviolent means of navigating conflicts have been exhausted, leaving war as the only remaining option? Are we confident that there are clear and attainable objectives with a high likelihood of success; that the wide range of unintended consequences have been fully considered?

There are always alternatives….always.

This from a country that values the ‘center road’ but apparently not in war….it is all out without compromise.

With each election there should be a chance of a peaceful world but instead we elect people that want these wars to go on forever and help the industry thrive.

Silly notions.

I Read, I Write, You Kjnow

“lego ergo scribo”