Shadows of Accountability in Militarized America

Exploring the dissonance between the United States' professed ideals and its actions within a militarized framework through a fictional narrative that is all too real.

Modern Americana: A Literary Portrait

Here we have Scott and Linda as they sit down for breakfast in their quaint-and-comfortable home in their community oriented middle-class suburban neighborhood. Scott and Linda pride themselves on being interested and informed - they even have an American flag on display in their front yard. The exuberant flag waves in anticipation for the day when a uniformed officer steps out of a soccer-mom Ford to inform the wholesome couple of their son’s promotion from Freedom Fighter™ to full-blown American Hero™. Thus we find our patriotic pair sipping their morning coffees in front of the TV, the blue light serving the usual Approved™ narratives with a flavorful side of cooperate interests. Our couple is correspondingly informed of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the arrest of Vladimir Putin, the Evil Dictator™ for alleged violations of the Rome Statute - a treaty which their own ©Democracy has never ratified. In fact, Scott and Linda’s beloved ©Democracy was one of only seven countries that initially voted against the Rome Statute, though this ought not be cause for concern. No, no - Scott and Linda can rest well knowing that the six other like-votes came from true bastions of ©Democracy: China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen. Pour another coffee; this is just the beginning.

Another eight years goes by, Scott and Linda’s eldest son joins the Armed Forces as a healthy, good-natured, and intelligent young man. The Cold War has turned Hot and violence rages from the Afghani mountains to the Russian steppes. The pride and joy of his family, young Johnny sets off over the oceans where he finds himself in command of military technology more advanced than he ever knew existed. Surely, he thinks to himself, this is the greatest fighting force the world has ever known.

In defense of almighty ©Democracy he and his new brothers grow accustomed to deployment. They themselves see little combat due to the endless advancements in drone technology. Occasionally a mission will send the squad to a nearby village to encourage ‘cultural support.’ These missions leave Johnny confused and frustrated. Why are some of these people so disrespectful to his team? Don’t these villagers understand that they’re only here to help? Johnny doesn't speak the local language and as a result he is unable to make sense of the muffled complaints the impoverished elderly women mutter as the men walk by. A small group of children rush to the group in ecstasy with pirated dvd’s and hand-drawn pictures to sell the young servicemen. Johnny sees this and feels assured. The old hags on the street are simply set in their illiterate ways. He shakes his head in mild disgust and walks on.

Johnny doesn't know the village men are in the back room of a shack they call a house cursing him and the land that bore him. He doesn't understand these men have spent their lives in abject poverty and, correct or not, blame him and his nation for it. No one has explained that three months before Johnny’s squad even got there that a US drone strike killed these men's mothers, daughters, and friends as they left a wedding reception. No one considers that such an act would be a direct violation of the same treaty used to justify this conflict in the first place.

Johnny doesn’t know, as he strides valiantly at the front of his group, that in three seconds he will step on an IED and send a flag home to his family in place of a man. He doesn't know that Brandon, an 18 year old from Louisiana, will return home in six months and propose to his high school sweetheart just one week before she finds her fiancé headless in their garage, pistol in hand.

Scott and Linda are heartbroken over the loss of their eldest son. Their youngest child, a smart teenage girl who’d thought her older brother walked on water, becomes addicted to the same heroin protected by the army that sent her brother to his death. Her family spends their life savings on rehab and treatment programs, desperate not to lose their last living child. Every year on Johnny’s birthday, the aging couple visit his grave and place a flag over a slab of marble. Below Johnny’s name in an an inscription, "And they who for their country die shall fill an honored grave, for glory lights the soldier's tomb, and beauty weeps the brave." Scott and Linda miss their son terribly, but they are so proud.

Residue

The American narrative is a somber and twisted tale, one that often contradicts the very ideals it professes to uphold: ©Democracy, ©HumanRights, and the ©Rule-of-law. Within its narrative, the most honorable aspects of humanity are contorted into instruments of violence and destruction. While such complex mechanisms are obviously multifaceted, a particular glitch in the system stands out as a fountainhead. The global systems currently in place - the UN and the Security Council, the ICC and the Red Cross - they are all just shams without balance and accountability. Without just enforcement these institutions, in spite of their prestige, are simply perverted and disingenuous instruments of global tyranny with a core built of pure fascist stone.

-The Shultz Report by M. Shultz