[Peace-discuss] A sobering, chilling portrayal of American militarism

[Morton K.Brussel]

An excerpt: The full article, entitled New American Militarism , by  
Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and Director 
of the Center for International Relations at Boston University, is at :

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=7697


…"The old twentieth-century aesthetic of armed conflict as barbarism, 
brutality, ugliness, and sheer waste grew out of World War I, as 
depicted by writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque, and 
Robert Graves. World War II, Korea, and Vietnam reaffirmed that 
aesthetic, in the latter case with films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, 
and Full Metal Jacket.
 
"The intersection of art and war gave birth to two large truths. The 
first was that the modern battlefield was a slaughterhouse, and modern 
war an orgy of destruction that devoured guilty and innocent alike. The 
second, stemming from the first, was that military service was an 
inherently degrading experience and military institutions by their very 
nature repressive and inhumane. After 1914, only fascists dared to 
challenge these truths. Only fascists celebrated war and depicted 
armies as forward-looking -- expressions of national unity and 
collective purpose that paved the way for utopia. To be a genuine 
progressive, liberal in instinct, enlightened in sensibility, was to 
reject such notions as preposterous.
 
"But by the turn of the twenty-first century, a new image of war had 
emerged …

--mkb
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