For as long as most of us can remember, America has been the world’s superpower, which is both a blessing and a curse. With rights come responsibilities; specifically, for America, we have a responsibility to remember what has happened, and what could have been.
As the number of American citizens with any memory of WWII declines, so does our ability to understand what America could have become, as that was the last great conflict we undertook. America now lives in relative peace. In the aftermath came American supremacy, and over time, a glorification of power, war, and conflict that other nations simply do not have. This glorification of power, like the responsibility of power, comes with status, I suppose. Can this relative peace last? Given the historical fact that empires wax and wane, can our position in the world remain the same?
I ask myself these questions after ten days in Europe; namely, Munich, Germany, and Warsaw, Poland. I wonder why I experienced what I did, why I saw what I saw, in these two vastly different – yet related – cities. Munich is the former headquarters of fascism, the Nazi Party; Warsaw is perhaps its greatest casualty. Things are different for me now, having walked these city streets.
This trip, however, was not my only experience seeing casualties of conflict; here in the States, I have seen the (thankfully) few and far between indications of conflict. I’ve seen both Ground Zero in New York City and the USS ARIZONA Memorial at Pearl Harbor. I was an Officer in our Navy and currently work for the Navy. I’ve been a cog in the wheel of the American war machine. I’ve been stationed on ships with armament, captured Somali Pirates, and had skirmishes with the Iranian Navy. I was stationed at the Navy Annex, outside the resting place of many of our military’s casualties, Arlington Cemetery, up the hill from the Pentagon. I’ve been to all the memorials in DC on a number of occasions, and have visited the Holocaust Museum four times.
But New York, Honolulu, and the DC area are thriving, although there are warning signs this may be coming to an end. Throughout the second half of the 20th Century, Europe has struggled to rebuild itself. So it is in Warsaw; Warsaw is what it is because of Munich. Warsaw, at the end of the day, won my heart, not for what it is, but for what it’s gone through, and for its potential; I’ll write more about Poland in a later post. Arriving here, I thought I had seen it all already.
But I had never seen the jagged walls of a capital city that were blown apart seventy years ago, with bullet holes still visible in the mortar. I had never touched the walls of a Ghetto death camp, or walked the streets where women and children were starved, and if they survived, burned to death, in Warsaw. I had never seen prisons where people were held in spaces too small to sit. I had never walked through gas chambers disguised as showers, or looked into the ovens where people were “liquidated” en masse at the concentration camp site in Dachau. I’m having some issues dealing with these sensations, because I thought I knew what there was to know about war. I was wrong.
On the surface, my outlook on foreign policy has not changed. Deeper, however, something else is going on. Like most folks, my world-view and my outlook are built upon values, which are built upon assumptions, which have changed since my trip. As the very foundations of my psyche have shifted, I’ll be reassessing how to deal with current events as I go, as I am still trying to understand what I saw… as if there is any way to understand it.
With war, I’m now convinced, there is no understanding, only coping. War is more than lines shifting on a map; I knew that. War is men dying for causes sometimes not understood; that, I knew as well. I also knew that wars were won by defeating the will of your enemy, often by means outside of the regulations of the Geneva Conventions. I believed that; I’ve read Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. I knew how that all works. I’m not so sure anymore.
War is the bodies of women gunned down in fields while uprooting potatoes. War is when the women and children left alive from that episode continue to uproot potatoes, making the calculus that they, like their friends, may be shot uprooting potatoes, but if they leave the field, they will “surely starve.” So they continue with their work, around the dead bodies. We have a responsibility to remember.
War is children left starving inside of a ghetto wall erected with the express intent of starving children, simply because they were Jewish. Do not be confused by that. Facts do not lie, and history should not be manipulated regarding the facts.
What’s more, war is women and children burned to death in the civilian cities that we Americans destroyed, either by conventional (Dresden) or by nuclear means (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). War ended there, but not without a price. Again, and more painfully here, we have a responsibility to remember.
This is why we have the Geneva Conventions now, something in the past I’ve differed with. I’m not so sure anymore. This may have you wondering if I’m antiwar now: No. Not entirely, that is. I see things differently, though. I am reassessing everything now; I’ll find out as I go.
So What Now?
We have responsibility to look at our past if we expect to move forward in the future; otherwise, we will fall into the same pitfalls we are trying to escape. This is my greatest foreign policy fear.
The United States are/is now involved in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and once in Pakistan, which is where we should have been the last half of this decade. Justification for aiding the conflicts in Libya and Yemen are wobbly. If Libya, why not Syria? While I have become more hesitant about conflict since my trip, I have learned we cannot ignore human rights violations. This not so much redefines, but solidifies my outlook, which does not, and will likely never, conform with partisan platforms.
So let’s talk about human rights, a supposed priority of the American Left. President Obama was in Warsaw the day before I was. In remarks made with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, used the spread of democracy throughout Eastern Europe as a model for our ongoing Arab Spring. There is a fundamental difference between struggles for democracy in Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War and the ongoing Arab Spring, and that caveat is freedom.
The President’s remarks last month on the Middle East and North Africa show that democracy is more important than freedom. This is dangerous. It’s important to remember that democracy in the Arab World does not amount to freedom in the Arab World. While democracy may come to the Arab World, the spread of freedom throughout the region will likely not. If the region were democratic, the world would likely experience it’s Second Holocaust, at a more blinding speed than the first. As philosopher George Santayana famously stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Our values must therefore be unwavering; our application of them, however, must adapt to the circumstances of the day. The lesson is, existing models and theories on democracy and freedom cannot be applied in cookie-cutter fashion. This is further discussed in my post Frenemies ‘R’ Us from February, regarding the revolution in Egypt. Turns out, Egypt’s revolution has blown up in our face. The reasons for war must be directly related to clearly articulated values; if not, we have no justification for making war, as we have no perspective on what it means to the families below.
Personally, I will try to be less slanted towards people as collectives; regardless of observations about a certain religious group, I will try to not see all Muslims as of one mind. Likewise, I will try to not see all Democrats as Leftists. I will continue to make judgements as I see them, but I hope to encourage more diverse opinions by not jumping to conclusions.
I will also try not to complain so much about hunger, or aching feet, or long bus rides, or the temperature outside, after seeing what I’ve seen. I have no right to do so. By checking myself, I hope to remember.
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