How will the militarism/nationalism of the last 10 yrs. be viewed in the future?
When people look back at the USA's last 10 years between 9/11/2001 and now, how will they judge what happened?
Remember all the plastic $1.00 flags that sprouted after 9/11. They were sticking out of almost every window of every car. There was a brief feeling that "We're all in this together" but then war descended.
Many who did not go on to support the Iraq War were supporters of the Afghanistan War. When Bush then pushed for the Iraq War, the split widened however and democrats seemed to grow more and more strongly against the war.
Still, the labeling of Saddam Hussein as the boogeyman was a fairly effective strategy in order to point attention at a common enemy and this strategy was employed effectively later against other individuals that could be struck down with a general agreement that they were bad guys --an easier thing to achieve consensus on then fighting an entire country.
In 2008, Democrats elected a man who professed to be FOR the Afghanistan War but against the Iraq War. Still, the stated reasons were essentially identical to the previous Administration -namely to secure the safety of America from Muslim terrorists. President Obama slowly drew down the Iraq War while increasing US forces in Afghanistan and accelerating attacks against so-called terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen as well as other places.
Soon, there will be another election where again, this time, the Democrats will be voting in a president who has made a strong record of the use of military force unilaterally in sovereign nations to protect against perceived threats in a sort of low-level "prophylactic" bombing campaign in addition to the hotter Afghanistan War.
At the same time, the citizens of the US generally are in agreement that there returning soldiers are heroes despite the fact that there may be and have been some less than honorable acts undertaken overseas, such as torture, murder, rape and all the usual suspects. After all, that is war and the cause is right and we must not paint our good soldiers with a broad brush, It is not their fault and they are merely following order of the CIC.
CUT TO 50 or 100 years in the future..... Will the positions of the Democrats and Republicans be seen at all different or will it be seen that there was essentially a very strong militaristic/nationalistic movement that went on for 15 years or so, costing trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of casualties due to a sort of mass madness suffered by the trauma of 9/11?
Will the current US citizens be viewed as participants in a paranoid slaughter characterized by a chorus of flag-waving. A sort of fascistic flavor that, looking back, was rather easy to identify and predict?
I don't know, but I do think that trying to view your country from a larger perspective is a good thing. And in doing so, we should throw into the mix the actions taken in Libya and the potential actions we may soon take in syria or Iran.
= new reply since forum marked as read
