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Once upon a time about 150 years ago, I wrote a book called The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation on the long, slow collapse of the American sense of triumphalism that I had grown up with my father was in the Air Force in World War II in the midst of and then the wake of the disastrous, seemingly never-ending war in Vietnam. Oh, wait, my mistake, it was actually published in 1995. In 2007, all too sadly, I updated it as the further disasters of the Afghan and Iraq wars were underway and wrote then, thinking of the way I had played war with toy soldiers on the floor of my childhood room, I wouldnt bet that five or ten years from now, kids anywhere in America will be playing G.I.s and Iraqis or Delta Force and Afghans in their backyards or on the floors or even on whatever has by then replaced the video screen.
And on that I think I proved all too on target. But I never would have guessed that someone like Donald Trump would someday be elected (not once, but twice!) as the president of the United States. Today, victory culture as I knew it is long gone and, in a sense, the era of Donald Trump might be thought of as a culture of despair certainly some sense of growing despair got him elected even as, in a distinctly American tradition, he continues to make war in, among other places, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, and now possibly Venezuela. And then, of course, theres the growing war on the streets of American cities, where hes sending in the troops to create a true culture of despair. So perhaps Donald Trump and crew couldnt have been more accurate when they recently renamed the Department of Defense (it was never, of course, particularly defensive) the Department of War (although, in truth, the Department of Offense, or perhaps Offensiveness, might have been far more appropriate). As he put it all too aptly, Chicago was about to find out why its called the Department of WAR.
In any case, let me just suggest that anyone thinking of writing a future victory-cultureless book on this country's growing culture of despair, first check out retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, historian, and TomDispatch regular William Astores latest work both below and at his invaluable Bracing Views newsletter. Now, let me turn you over to him and to this countrys culture of still never-ending war and despair. Tom
The Department of War Is Back!
But Victoryless Culture Remains
My fellow Americans, my critical voice has finally been heard inside the Oval Office. No, not my voice against the $1.7 trillion this country is planning to spend on new nuclear weapons. No, not my call to cut the Pentagon budget in half. No, not my imprecations against militarism in America. It was a quip of mine that the Department of Defense (DoD) should return to its roots as the War Department, since the U.S. hasn't known a moments peace since before the 9/11 attacks, locked as its been into a permanent state of global war, whether against terror or for its imperial agendas (or both).
A rebranded Department of War, President Trump recently suggested, simply sounds tougher (and more Trumpian) than defense. As is his wont, he blurted out a hard truth as he stated that America must have an offensive military. There was, however, no mention of war bonds or war taxes to pay for such a military. And no mention of a wartime draft or any other meaningful sacrifice by most Americans.
Rebranding the DoD as the Department of War is, Trump suggested, a critical step in returning to a time when America was always winning. I suspect he was referring to World War II. Give him credit, though. He was certainly on target about one thing: since World War II, the United States has had a distinctly victoryless military. Quick: Name one clear triumph in a meaningful war for the United States since 1945. Korea? At best, a stalemate. Vietnam? An utter disaster, a total defeat. Iraq and Afghanistan? Quagmires, debacles that were waged dishonestly and lost for that very reason.
Even the Cold War that this country ostensibly won in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't lead to the victory Americans thought was coming their way. After much hype about a new world order where the U.S. would cash in its peace dividends, the military-industrial-congressional complex found new wars to wage, new threats to meet, even as the events of 9/11 enabled a surge actually, a gusher of spending that fed militarism within American culture. The upshot of all that warmongering was a soaring national debt driven by profligate spending. After all, the Iraq and Afghan Wars alone are estimated to have cost us some $8 trillion.
Those disasters (and many more) happened, of course, under the Department of Defense. Imagine that! America was defending itself in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere, even as those wars killed and wounded significant numbers of our troops while doing far more damage to those on the receiving end of massive American firepower. All this will, I assume, go away with a new Department of War. Time to win again! Except, as one Vietnam veteran reminded me, you cant do a wrong thing the right way. You cant win wars by fighting for unjust causes, especially in situations where military force simply cant offer a decisive solution.
Its going to take more than a rebranded Department of War to fix wanton immorality and strategic stupidity.
We Need a Return of the Vietnam Syndrome
Hey, I'm okay with the Pentagons rebranding. War, after all, is what America does. This is a country made by war, a country of macho men hitching up their big boy pants on the world stage, led by the latest (greatest?) secretary of war, Pomade Pete Hegseth, whose signature move has been to do pushups with the troops while extolling a warrior ethos. Such an ethos, of course, is more consistent with a War Department than a Defense Department, so kudos to him. Too bad its inconsistent with a citizen-soldier military that's supposed to be obedient to and protective of the Constitution. But that's just a minor detail, right?
Here's the rub. As Trump and Hegseth have now tacitly admitted, the national security state has never been about security for Americans. Rather, its existed and continues to exist as a war state in a state of constant war (or preparations for the same), now stuffed to the popping point with more than a trillion dollars yearly in taxpayer funds. And the leaders of that war state an enormous blood-sucking parasite on society are never going to admit that its in any way too large or overfed, let alone so incompetent as to have been victoryless for the last 80 years of regular war-making.
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