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Col. Andrew Bacevich: “Perpetuating [war] is not enhancing American freedom, abundance and security...it is having the opposite effect."

I know a great deal of the horrors and tragedies of war...The cost of war in human lives...I am deeply moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war...” Gen. George C. Marshall

We often think of military veterans as aggressive warriors and super-patriots who believe war is necessary to protect our country. But throughout history, there have been many soldiers who  advocated for peaceful solutions to conflicts. Having experienced war, they understood that war was not worth the costs. 

Sun Tzu (544-496 BC), the Chinese general and author of The Art of War, wrote, “There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.” 

In modern times Gen. Dwight Eisenhower once said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” 
One military leader who became a strong advocate for peace was General George C. Marshall. He was

Army Chief of Staff under Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. He served as secretary of state and secretary of defense during the Truman administration. He was an advocate for the “Marshall Plan” to rebuild Europe after WWII. 

As Secretary of State, Gen Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Marshall plan. In his acceptance speech in 1953, he discussed his vision for avoiding future wars. He had many words of wisdom that we should heed today. 

Gen. Marshall believed military strength was important. But he knew it was not enough to achieve real peace. He said, “A very strong military posture is vitally necessary today...but I am sure that it is too narrow a basis on which to build a dependable, long-enduring peace. The guarantee for a long continued peace will depend on other factors in addition to a moderated military strength...the most important single factor will be a spiritual regeneration to develop goodwill, faith and understanding among nations...the maintenance of large armies for an indefinite period is not a practical or a promising basis for policy...but we must, I repeat, we must find another solution.”

Gen. Marshal said the essential factors for fostering peace are education, our attitudes, international cooperation and alleviating poverty. He said, “democratic principles do not flourish on empty stomachs.” 

He continued, “By our actions” we should promote democracy, “a better way of life” and “a better understanding among nations” to oppose intolerance, distrust and the “fatal insecurity that leads to war.”

On education, Gen. Marshall believed we should learn from the past “innumerable instructive lessons” on the “breakdown of peace” that “led to...the horrors of war.” 

He believed these lessons must be included in school curricula. Young people must “understand the conditions... without national prejudices, which have led to past tragedies.” 

And he believed these lessons must be presented objectively. “All too frequently,” he said, “their presentation is highly colored or distorted in the effort to present a favorable national point of view...”
But today our national leadership is actively suppressing the accurate teaching of history. For decades political leaders from both parties have lied about the costs and reasons for our frequent military actions. 

Patriotic holidays have always been used to sanitize the past, justify wars and maintain military spending in the guise of “thanking the troops” for protecting our freedom. The public has systematically been deceived and manipulated to maintain recruiting and the profits of the military industrial complex. 

President Dwight Eisenhower warned us against excessive militarism and spending on war when he said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

President John Kennedy, a WWII veteran, advocated for peace through negotiations in his “A Strategy of Peace” speech on June 10, 1963. In describing U.S./Russian relations he said, “We are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons.” 

Kennedy’s solution was a, “practical, more attainable peace – based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions – on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned...” He said, “Peace...does not require that each man love his neighbor. It requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement....For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.”

But Kennedy had the typical American blindness to our nation’s history of militarism. He said, “... we will never start a war. We do not want a war...But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just.” 

This statement is historically inaccurate and pure patriotic propaganda. The truth is our country has started and enabled many wars, military actions and interventions is other countries. We have blocked, or ignored, many international agreements and treaties. Militarism has dominated our thinking, foreign policy, domestic policing and national spending priorities for most of our history. 

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to general and Secretary of State Colin Powell, says,”“America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are.” 

Today we are enabling the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. Our support for Israel’s bombing and starving of children is blatantly immoral and shameful. 

There is no justification for supporting the extermination of the Palestinian people. In the words of Gen. Marshall, we are “blindly, ignoring the lessons of the past with tragic consequences.”

Col. Andrew Bacevich, a combat veteran and foreign policy expert, warns, “Perpetuating [war] is not enhancing American freedom, abundance and security...it is having the opposite effect. One day the American people may awaken to this reality. Then and only then will the wars end...for now, sadly Americans remain deep in slumber.”