I’m struggling to understand how this writer could be so wrong. Unfortunately her view is that of a misguided ideologue. She is trying to use twisted logic and facts to predict and justify her twisted viewpoint.
She writes, “The age of worship of the military and empire building is an era when a general of the army is “above criticism.””
The army above criticism? Where has she been the past 40 years? Clearly since the Viet Nam War, if not before, the military has been scrutinized and criticized. In fact, the military has been reviled by many of own her contemporary’s. The military has not been above criticism. Criticism has come very regularly, almost daily from some.
She also writes, “The culture of the worship of the military has crept upon us”
Worship?
I must have missed the worshiping. Didn’t it take until the 90’s to even welcome those Viet Nam “heroes” home? Didn’t we just elect a neophyte Chicago machine politician with virtually no leadership experience over a genuine war hero in the last presidential election? I must be missing the worshiping.
The fact is the military is far from worshiped. For decades a huge segment of the population hardly even tolerates the military. Some don’t even see a military as a necessary evil. They look upon the military as costly killers of innocents more than protectors of freedom. We do not worship the military.
An even larger problem with this OpEd is that the author doesn’t even understand what the terms she is using.
Does she know what an empire is?
As far as I can tell we are not and have never been an empire so how can we be an empire in decline?
Empires have a single supreme authority. Empires are expansionist and acquirers of other lands.
Our government may be flawed but we are not run by a single supreme authority and it has been over a century since we were expansionist acquirers of land (Manifesting Destiny). In fact, we can’t wait to get out of most of the places we send our troops.
The author doesn’t even mention that we have regularly given up land taken in conflict unlike the other attempted empires. We couldn’t be less like Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini.
So besides being wrong on the facts and wrong in her logic, she is wrong in her conclusions. Basically, she wastes any thoughtful person’s time with the reading of this OpEd.
