The Modern Political Ideology; Foreign Policy, the Idea of War, and the Subsequent Sacrifices.

If you've had the opportunity to watch Boardwalk Empire, you would see an analogy of our overall dissent about war in 2012.  There is someone you know personally whom has served in the armed forces, and now that the majority of them are back from their tours permanently, we now as the civilized colony that elected for them to go now see the consequences.

Jimmy and Richard Harrow discussing their time serving during World War I:


The idea of a soldier is heroic regardless of personel interpretation or political ideology.  The majority of Americans disagreed with the last decade military interventions (now), but that never really questioned anyone's loyalty or respect for our military.

So where does that leave me, the civilian?  How do I frame a reasonable ideology to structure my judgements of foreign policy?

There is my Patriotic side, which is something I believe in on a grandiose level.  That's another discussion altogether, but to say for now I embrace my country in a more biblical way, a trust of its intentions, despite its inherencies.  But for me, Patriotism rarely involves the use of force as a show of dominance.  Yes there should be a strive for the best.  My family for three generations has a moderate history of military enlistment, so there is a belief in the military that encourages a lot of respect.

And to be fair, I think this is a fantastic standard.  There is a large trust in this country's military because military in inherently engrained into the fibers of our society.

Where I see majority in opinion is this here.  We see the consequences of war in real time, and both sides now authentically believe that there's rarely a necessity for aggressive conflict.  the dissent of this country, and has been for its entirety.  It has however shifted to recognize one thing: the world is getting smaller.

If you look at the transition our government has made from the Imperialist/Colonial interpretations a century ago, it becomes easier to understand how shaky it was to go into Libya with Western forces.  Obama attempted to utilize this chance to state his foreign policy doctrine; that he would intervene for any nation seeking democracy, which almost worked.  Almost, by which I mean did, but also recognized that interventionism at that level is less welcome.

I've always thought through college that Iraq was perhaps the last action of Post-Colonialsim.  To state what the real or unreal intentions of invading Iraq were is absolutely pointless.  When Iraq was happening, people were ready, and enthused.  I mean that, and I remember seeing shit go down (the first bombings in Baghdad) made me nervous but very interested.  People were also scared shitless (including myself) in 2002 and were ready to go with it by the next year.

Now by Imperialism, I don't mean to say that Iraq was colonialism, but I'm saying that also we've tried to reinstate structure, and counterinsurgency wasn't a flawed concept because it seems so clear now that we clearly didn't, and still mostly don't, understand their culture.

Watching the documentary footage that I've been lucky enough to see, it's clear that during which time, American patriotism and Afghan society didn't understand each other.  In the film Restrepo, I see constant reminders of how disenfranchised different cultures can interact.  I watch American soldiers attempting to speak to village elders and so clearly see that both parties are truly honest in what they believe, yet struggle so poorly to come to understanding.

Something I think that has all aggravated us is the lack of treatment for those who have come back from these wars.  This has not only been a passion of the Tea Party and most Republicans, but also of the Occupy movement.  Something that gave the movement legitimacy was when an Iraqi soldier was hit by a tear gas canister and had to be treated medically during the height of the Occupy protests.

To demonstrate a flag waiving for either side is, again, entirely pointless.  What I'm saying is there is a consensus building that this the most flawed of our consequences, the lack of assistance for those who have served in armed combat.

And so we sit here in this time, with little American military activity in which to see, and it in fact is shrinking.  Yet, no one seems to really be upset by this. Our collective society is not shouting that our military is getting smaller, for once.

This is what's striking my curiosity believing we have come to a rationale understanding of war, which may or may not be repeated, but for the time being a Populist mentality is prevailing with an acknowledgement that was isn't really a thing to be doing with so many parties becoming interconnected.

In real time, what subsidizes this rationality is through our ability to gain information immediately.  I swear I must hear at least 4-5 hourly 5-minute news briefs on a podcast, and it's so easy to gather instant information that it's being filtered more purely.  There's a mutual understanding that information you can instantaneously seek is now better than condensed media details.

With the advances we've seen, where grandparents have Facebooks and brutal realism has come back from our family and friends.  I rarely, or would ever like to to, interpret what veterans feel on their returns back.  When the first soldier from my hometown was killed in Afghanistan, people were in the streets that Saturday.  One of my closest associates to this day I struggle to understand how or what he experienced, and so when I head home for holidays we drink incessantly until 4 a.m. and say little about the subject, because it's none of my fucking business and he's more of a man than I could ever be.

That appears the to be the common denominator, that compassion for how military and civil society are always connected.  Because we've had our wars fought by our closest friends, it's hard to disconnect, and so when the one end of the rubber band whiplashes, so does the other to help, and subsequently shows us what war results to in the post-Western world.  This fuels how we think in 2012 about intervention or interest in foreign policy, a need to mind our business, but as always keep the big stick swinging.