Tiring American Platitudes, Part Two
During the absurd and wholly outrageous test-run assault on Venezuela, in which Donald Trump ordered an authoritarian president kidnapped and then “replaced” with that same president’s regime, all with the intention of grabbing control of that country’s oil reserves, though without having asked any of America’s leading oil men in advance whether they would be stupid enough to set up shop under the very same violent and anti-American conditions that forced them out of that country in the first place — of course they would not be that stupid, as they told Trump when finally asked, after the fact — during that entire, tawdry affair, which the administration has tried to obscure from memory, every member of the American media, punditry, and political class, regardless of political perspective, felt obliged to say that, whatever one thinks of Trump’s decisions, “we must all agree” that (1) It is good that Maduro is gone, and (2) America’s men and women in uniform are the bravest, most skilled, most powerful fighting force the world has ever seen.
Similarly, now that Trump has decided that the results of that test run were satisfying enough to justify going after bigger fish, namely an assault on Iran, all the same factions, pro or con with regard to Trump’s war itself, have unanimously insisted that (1) It is good that the Ayatollah Khamenei is gone (though of course the regime remains in place, and Trump has never voiced any interest in changing it), and (2) America’s men and women in uniform are the bravest, most skilled, most powerful fighting force the world has ever seen.
As you may have noticed, point 2 remains consistent, as it always does when America’s public voices talk about any sort of military action or threat, regardless of the presiding administration and the prevailing aims. And this is the platitude that I wish to question.
That America has the most powerful weapons, the biggest stockpiles, and the most advanced military technology, I would not doubt, though of course we probably do not quite know what China has — apart from the weapons technology that we know was handed to them by Clinton during his presidency, and the advanced AI chips that we know were handed to them by Trump during the current one. All in all, however, it almost goes without saying that when it comes to technological research and development — the sheer chemical reaction of applied science and piles of cash — the U.S. military has defined the state of the art for generations. I am also willing to grant, though I think this would be harder to prove, that the American armed forces have the best training and command structure, in the sense of learning how to use their machines and how to carry out tactical assignments with efficiency.
But it is very difficult for me to believe that, arsenal superiority aside, the U.S. military of today would be any match for their Ukrainian counterparts. The latter have been hardened by four years of life-or-death struggle against an invading force that vastly outstrips them in numbers and weaponry. They have fought through hunger, shortages, and finding their civilian countrymen executed in the streets of their villages and towns. They have withstood the degradation of being toyed with and abandoned by a mercenary U.S. administration ever more blatantly in the tank for their country’s bigger, better-armed invader. They have used wits, flexibility, history-changing technological inventiveness, and an apparently endless reserve of courage and resilience to keep fighting successfully while under-equipped, keep killing the enemy in droves, keep refusing to be disheartened or defeated. They know what it means to fight for something, to be in the fully righteous position, and to understand in their bones the meaning and necessity of facing down the spectre of death every hour, without shirking their duty or shrinking from the direst of threats, both immediate, i.e., the easier, adrenalin-based type that allows any ordinary person to face sudden danger, and long-term, i.e., the constant awareness, much harder to sustain in one’s heart, of what stands to be lost, both personally and nationally, should you relent or weaken for even one day.
Meanwhile, today’s American military, for all its equipment, skill, and preparedness to follow orders with meticulous precision, has no experience whatsoever in fighting for anything they actually understood or cared about, let alone believed in as a matter of deep principle. Though always strong and well-manned enough to win, they have made a remarkable habit of losing by pure fatigue and futility, often neglecting even to shut the door on their way out, and leaving a steaming mess behind them in their flight.
If, then, we are merely counting bombs and planes, America may indeed have the greatest military in human history. But it we are counting principles, courage, and a love of country that transcends flag-waving and swooshing Hollywood music, I sincerely question the alleged greatness of the U.S. armed forces at this point. They are great at carrying out an isolated, well-defined strike on this or that target. But a great military is more than a collection of obedient technicians or tacticians. This current U.S. military, unlike its predecessors of a few generations ago, has done little to show itself as a force to be reckoned with on the human level. Perhaps its leadership, including and especially its civilian leadership, bears much of the responsibility for this sad fact, but it remains true nonetheless.
America is a bloated, tired, morally decrepit nation, surviving on boastfulness, borrowed wealth, past glory, and the ability to impress with the “shock and awe” of a momentary display of gaudy gilt, but without any profound awareness of what it once was or why that former, more substantial existence mattered. I see no reason to believe that its military would be anything but a better-trained, better-organized microcosm of the national condition.
