“The US military is never anywhere to protect human life, it is there to protect its interests. It couches its militarism in the language of the protection of human life while worsening/creating conditions that destroy human life. That’s the history of American interventionism.” (Sana Saeed)
i didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to say this on veterans day, while being bombarded with patriotism and pictures of people in military fatigues, but there’s nothing noble about war (especially its present incarnation). the power differentials between people and countries are so obscene that war is nothing more than theft, slaughter and genocide. we talk about white privilege and structural hierarchies within american society, but seem not to recognize those same inequalities when they apply to people outside the US. being american is also a kind of supremacy, a violent imperial blindness to the pain and suffering of others. i saw a disturbing discussion on fb where activists were trying to distance the police from the military, saying it’s ok to defund the police but without the military the US would be a sitting target. wow. don’t they realize white people feel the same way about the need for policing? that without it they would be open to the violence and criminality of people of color? they believe that white safety can only be guaranteed thru the oppression and harsh control of black and brown people. we can’t fight for our own liberation while justifying the killing and exploitation of other human beings. it doesn’t work that way.
here is a tribute to the great lebanese american poet, essayist, and visual artist etel adnan, who just passed away: “To Be in a Time of War”: An Homage to Etel Adnan (1925-2021)
from “to be in a time of war” by fady joudah:
To bomb, eliminate
a country, blow up a civilization, destroy the living.
To exit from one idea to enter another.
To admire the light,
bless the spring.
To consider the present time as sheer lead.
To create terror, that’s war.
To wallow in cruelty, conquest. To burn. To kill. To torture.
To humiliate: that’s war…