When the War Comes Home

AT LENGTH-On Sept.11, 2001, America reacted to the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. with swift action and arguably justified vengeance for the loss of life on our home turf––the first such attack since Pearl Harbor.   

Then-President Bush called for a "War on Terrorism" and the country righteously sent our troops off to fight in Afghanista n, the nation harboring the terrorist group, Al Qaeda, responsible for the attacks.  

Shortly afterward, based on flawed intelligence, the Bush administration also invaded Iraq. Ever since, our government has been dispatching our troops, special forces and drones to a string of countries, nearly too many, to list in a kind of global whack-a-mole war that has lead us to a far less righteous conclusion. 

Now, 13 years and some four to five trillion dollars later, President Obama is now declaring the first chapter of this war "over" -- a picture far different than the “mission accomplished” President George W. Bush tried to claim. The conclusion of this war is a precarious stalemate — not even an uneasy truce or peace. 

The Eisenhower Research Institute at Boston’s Brown University estimated the human cost of this war at year ten to be  31,000 deaths of  persons in uniform and military contractors, 137,000 civilians and 7.8 million refugees. 

Because the majority of the budget for this war was borrowed, nearly $185 billion is attributed to interest with a projected $1 trillion to accrue by 2020, the report says. The cost of medical care for our veterans could be as high as $950 billion in the years to come.   

Although all of these statistics are stunning in their extremes, they do not compare to the personal suffering experienced by our veterans who have returned home wounded, maimed, broken from PTSD or otherwise disabled for life.   

We have no way of even accessing the rising suicide rate of current or former military personnel and the residual effects on our nation as a whole. What we have inherited from all of this is far less noble. There is still no justice for the victims of 9/11 and there still is no lasting peace either here or abroad. 

The War on Terrorism has left its own lasting imprint on American streets with heightened security checks at every airport, government offices and police departments. The militarization of our domestic police forces is its own kind of conclusion to this misadventure that brings this war home in predictable, if not, shocking contrasts.   

The rise in the incidents of police shootings of minority citizens from Ferguson, MO to New York to Los Angeles to nearly everywhere, and the rise of mass murders by crazed individuals at schools and theaters, only makes me wonder about the psychology of war and violence as it comes home.  Something to the effect of "violence begets violence" comes to mind and justice in the end becomes the victim of it all. 

The U.S. Senate report on torture that was released by Sen. Dianne Feinstein just before Congress went to recess for the holidays revealed some of the worst parts of this war and about ourselves as a nation. 

This report itself  stands as an indictment of the Bush years and the people who executed this misguided plan to circumvent internal law on torture. The threat to our republic is that the use of torture, rendition, secret prisons and the continued holding of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without legal charge is a corruption of our very system of justice. 

And to the extent that these violations of our legal system can be proved, those at the top who made the decisions to violate these laws should be indicted and prosecuted. The names of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush all come to mind as well as that lawyer, John Woo, who wrote the opinion on torture. All should be brought up on war crimes charges. 

To my ears, it rings very hollow when President Obama asks citizens to obey the laws of Missouri or New York while his attorney general can't even enforce the laws on the high and mighty in Washington D.C. 

Without some legal consequences at the very top, those at the very bottom of our society will never have any hope for justice. In the end, justice and the rule of law is the very basis of our form of governance. Without these, the very trust that is needed between the police, the courts and the people they serve will erode. Trust is more valuable than all the treasure and lives that have been lost to date. 

As we have seen in recent months with the "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations spreading at police stations across the nation, and even at the Los Angeles Police commission meeting this week, this trust is broken.   

Sadly, this and much more awaits us as the War on Terror comes home and the consequences have yet to be fully realized.

 

(James Preston Allen is the Publisher of Random Lengths News, the Los Angeles Harbor Area's only independent newspaper. He is also a guest columnist for the California Courts Monitor and is the author of "Silence Is Not Democracy- Don't listen to that man with the white cap on he might say something that you agree with!" He was elected to the presidency of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council in 2014 and been engaged in the civic affairs of CD 15 for more than 35 years. More of Allen … and other views and news at: randomlengthsnews.com where this column was first posted.)

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CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 3

Pub: Jan 6, 2015