Military Imperialism As A Means To National Suicide

February 9, 2008
by Evans Munyemesha

1. Military imperialism, while drawing its life support from the public treasury, does not yet fully repay its costs nor compensate for that consumption to society. As such, this as a national policy burdens the general population by overtaxing it and draining the public treasury.

2. The sacrifice of the young and able-bodied to the military to be consumed or traumatized in wars in foreign lands does not only rob industries and businesses of the most promising and productive human resources but saddles society with the sick, the weak, and the aging, thus diminishing national productivity. By consuming the young and able-bodied in its military adventures, the nation is at the same time losing its vitality.

3. By this policy of military imperialism, the public is slowly habituated to the fanciful but powerful belief that voluntary subordination to political authority that seems to grow ever more despotic under the pretext of national security and obedience to arbitrary laws is a means to a higher good. This habituation, cold, systematic, and relentless, consequently ensures that the seeds needful for the growth of liberty shrivel and die.

4. Military imperialism impresses upon the public mind the odd but dangerous suggestion that dissent and resistance are tools of the enemies of legitimate political authority ---and almost never the tools of the friends of liberty. It is here then that we find that opposition to political authority is bound to be regarded by public opinion as criminal and treasonous.

5. This policy, still, encourages the hypocrisy of vocabulary and abuse of language ('friendly fire', 'collateral damage', etc.), the distortion of logic, and the suppression of evidence. A population living under such conditions made necessary by this military policy could not be said to be well-instructed---but to be heavily enveloped in a cloud of public ignorance. Are we to surely expect national growth and social progress from a predominantly ignorant population?

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6. While military imperialism may be profitable to some public officials and to other particular private interests, it is never profitable to the nation as a whole. The nation, in the heat patriotic fervor, supplies the means for the enrichment of a favored few.

7. This policy sees economic progress in other nations as a gathering threat to be checked, if not squashed. But to check (or squash) economic progress in other nations by military force could be nothing but an investment of resources in a wasteful and unproductive enterprise.

8. The larger population of a nation holding fast to the policy of military imperialism comes to believe that its rights are more important than the rights of the populations in foreign lands; believing this to be incontestably true and sacred as a matter of patriotic duty and national honor, this larger population directly and indirectly gives sanction to the raping and pillaging of other nations. Yet, in doing so, this unthinking larger population demolishes the security of its own rights, opening itself up to brutal and savage retaliations.

9. Military imperialism depraves national morality while nurturing national perversity. These evil twins, depraved morality and national perversity, manifest themselves in shameless politics, unethical business practices, a vengeful and highly expensive legal system, deceptive advertising and marketing, rampant fraud in trade, and widespread predation, vanity, and rot in social intercourse.

10. This policy exalts the military over the institutions of medicine, education, agriculture, and business. But can a nation be healthy and productive if its physicians, educators, farmers, and businesspeople are burdened with the demands of such a misguided policy?

11. Military imperialism has the undying support of the cowardly and cunning fools who are themselves not directly in harm's way. By shielding themselves from the inevitable problems and terrors (including death) that this impolitic policy is bound to provoke, they are assured of continuing in their frightful, socially unproductive, and grossly wasteful imperial exploits. Were these ambitious dotards to personally experience the terrors of their military entanglements, their mad desires would be quickly and effectively restrained---or their recklessness would quickly bring ruin upon themselves.

12. This policy, lastly, emboldens political authority and stuns the citizen, laying grounds for an evermore incautious and daring government. Under these conditions, the nation is set on a course of probable national suicide.

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