I used to live 15 minutes from a naval air force base. Large military escort planes often hummed over our neighborhood, and some evenings I would drive by as they swooped in over the road. All around the base a series of shopping malls and various businesses offered everything a military base could need.
Over the years the local politicians debated the wisdom of having a military base on the edge of Philadelphia. Throughout the region similar debates cropped up from time to time about similar bases.
More often than not, the bases remained open. While some could make an argument for each base’s importance and function in the grand military scheme of things (though a “naval” base north of Philly strikes me as a hard sell), the loudest and most repeated argument proposed for keeping the bases was the local economy.
“If our little Naval Air base closed down, the local businesses around the base would experience a loss in business and put a lot of hard-working Americans out of work.” So we almost always kept the bases, kept spending our tax dollars on them, and kept folks employed.
A few years later, I began to notice that a lot of my friends had fathers who worked for a local business that built all kinds of stuff for the military. In fact, one of these companies still employs thousands of people in the Philadelphia area, doing business in both the civilian and military sectors.
A few years after that I began to notice that a lot of scientific research at universities is also funded by the United States Defense Department—which used to be aptly named the “War” Department. Some folks at universities can’t talk about their research projects from time to time because they are classified.
These scattered memories came to mind while I watched several commercials during the World Series that aim to support our troops and their families. It’s a nice sentiment to wish them well with the fast approaching holiday season and to pray for their safe return to their families.
However, while we may sing Christmas carols about peace on earth, pray for the safety of our soldiers, and the coming of the Prince of Peace, the three examples above hint that the stability of our economy depends on none of those things taking place. We need our soldiers to be placed into harm’s way even as we wish them the best. We need wars, we need enemies, and we need a military to fight them all so that we can keep our bases, businesses, and overall economy running.
I’m not willing to say that we need to scrap the entire military of the United States. Every secular state needs to make provisions for national defense (though the nature of that defense is debatable). What bothers me is the way our nation’s economy depends so heavily on military spending, keeping our soldiers in harm’s way, even while we’re told to honor them and to wish them season’s greetings
We could invest more money into nation-building, diplomacy, education, and development, but we already have an economy that depends on defense spending, so it’s way more comfortable to keep manufacturing arms and tearing apart families through lengthy deployments. But don’t worry! We are united in the support of our soldiers and wish them a happy holidays.
That should make things better, right?
The truth is that America has become cowardly and defeatist in its approach to the economy and to innovation. We have bought into the fear that we can’t survive economically by supporting global education, development, and peace. War can be good for business, and so we stay addicted to it.
Save an unnecessary military base for the sake of local jobs? Absolutely. Pump money out to defense contractors as we continue our fight in Afghanistan and keep Americans working in the production of war material? Of course! Seek other options for global peace and local economic development?
Nah. Let’s just keep putting our soldiers in harm’s way.
We tell ourselves that our soldiers like being honored, even if they have to risk their lives, get exposed to carcinogenic explosives, endure post-traumatic stress disorders, and miss out on irreplaceable time with their families. The American soldier is no doubt courageous, but in the midst of honoring them we fail to discuss our nation’s cowardice, our unwillingness to make sacrifices, and our fear of changing our systems and economy.
Perhaps we are guilty of hiding behind the bravery of our soldiers because we fear being exposed for what we are. Before we rush to honor the sacrifices of our soldiers, perhaps we should first ask what we are willing to sacrifice.
