为什么美国总是在某个地方打仗？
https://theindependent.ca/commentary/the-nonagenarians-notebook/why-is-the-united-states-always-fighting-a-war-somewhere/
作者：艾德·芬恩 ● 九十多岁的笔记本 ● 2018 年 6 月 1 日
安东尼·布科克中士，RLC/MOD，OGL，https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26917595
为什么美国总是在某个地方打仗？ 难道是因为战争有利可图吗？
《哈珀杂志》在其六月号中报道了在纽约西点军校召开的一个由前士兵组成的小组。 他们都是美国过去30年发动战争的老兵，主要是在伊拉克和阿富汗战争，或者驻扎在美国在全球70多个国家和地区拥有的近800个军事基地中的一些基地。
这些退伍军人被要求解释为什么他们的国家经历了如此多的武装冲突，以及为什么自二战以来没有一场冲突能够取得决定性的胜利。尽管美国拥有世界上训练有素、装备精良的武装部队，但情况仍然如此。
阿富汗战争在乔治·布什、比尔·克林顿、巴拉克·奥巴马以及现在的唐纳德·特朗普总统的领导下已经持续了17年。 奥巴马在竞选时主张结束伊拉克和阿富汗战争，但在当选后却食言了。 候选人特朗普对许多士兵在阿富汗“遭受毫无意义的屠杀”表示遗憾，他就任总统后立即向阿富汗增派了4000名士兵。
在《哈泼斯杂志》主办的题为“美国对战争的成瘾”的论坛中发表的节选中，所有六位与会者都指责要么首先是不合理的宣战，要么是有缺陷的行为以及战争爆发后的延续。
以下是该论坛的一些重要引述。
安德鲁·J·巴切维奇：对于政治家来说，留在阿富汗是更安全的做法。 只要他们能表现出支持部队的样子，就能逃避责任。
苏珊·克雷普斯：美国的经验（在战争期间）是不放弃的经验，所以你不想成为退出战争的总统。 只要这些领导人对不希望看到我们失败的公众做出回应，我们就会继续得过且过。
Danny Sjursen：拥有一支全志愿部队可以创造一场完美的风暴。 如果这是一支应征入伍的军队，如果有征兵的话，那么让这场永远的战争持续下去就会困难得多。 之所以17年过去了，还真没有反战运动（像越南战争时那样），就是因为战斗是由一小部分美国人干的。
Jason Dempsey：军队的支持率是天文数字——实际上，没有哪个机构值得 70% 的支持率，尤其是那些在 17 年后仍在努力解决冲突的机构。 我们如何解释这一点？ 其中一些只是无知。 今天的美国人不知道军队是如何运作的，也不知道国防预算是如何花费的。 他们只知道他们应该尊重军队。
格雷戈里·达迪斯：对军队的崇拜在持久的战争中发挥了作用。 我们让我们的士兵沉迷于战争。 上瘾的代价——损害他们的心灵、拆散家庭——直到后来才被隐藏起来。 但我们不应该低估全志愿部队的阶级成分。 年轻士兵有机会获得社会认可，这在美国社会的其他地方可能是他们无法企及的。 对于某个阶层的年轻男女来说，这是一个获得发自内心的机会。 他们在社会中很重要。 他们被认可了。 他们有价值。
Sjursen：军队也是一个福利国家。 这是我们拥有的最社会主义的机构。 它提供了经济稳定性。
Kreps：过去 30 年，美国经济的实际工资停滞不前，但在军队，每年加薪 2% 或 3%，还有体面的医疗保健。
巴切维奇：假设没有人介入来结束这些战争。 那么，美国在伊拉克和阿富汗实现其最初目标的可能性有多大——两个国家都成为与美国结盟的稳定国家？
Sjursen：我百分百悲观。 我刚从莱文沃斯堡来，那里有一个公式：目的等于方法加手段。 但我们设定的目标是无法实现的。 你想出多少方法和手段并不重要。 绝对不可能像布什政府甚至奥巴马的某些言论中所阐述的那样取得成功。
** **
尽管西点军校的这次讨论确实很有趣且具有启发性，但它未能找出美国不断卷入如此多的长期战争和军事入侵的主要原因。
找到这个问题答案的唯一方法是提出古罗马问题：Qui bono？ 持久战对谁有利？
答案是——尽管美国政治领导人从未承认，甚至美国媒体也很少承认—
该国的军事工业综合体。 大型武器制造商从战争和其他武装冲突中获得巨大利润。 事实上，如果没有需要部署枪支、炸弹、坦克、军舰和潜艇的持续和持久的战争，他们就会破产。
特朗普政府预计下一财年的美国军事预算为8860亿美元，高于2016年的7670亿美元。这一巨额金额是美国预算中仅次于社会保障的第二大项目。 这是中国2160亿美元军事预算的四倍，是俄罗斯845亿美元军事预算的10倍。 总的来说，美国在“国防”上的支出比接下来的九个国家的总和还多。
谁从战争装饰品的巨额支出中获利最多？ 显然是大型军火公司。 很难弄清楚他们各自获得了美国巨额军事预算的多少。 我能找到的最新数据（无疑不是最新的）是洛赫海德·马丁公司 360 亿美元，波音公司 276 亿美元，BAE 系统公司 269 亿美元，雷神公司 225 亿美元，通用动力公司 216 亿美元。 但还有数十家其他武器生产商也获得了合同。 他们总共可能从 8,860 亿美元的巨额战争财富中至少一半（更有可能是三分之二）获得并从中获利。
这些公司依赖于美国不断地与某个地方的某个国家交战 — — 现在又与世界各地的恐怖分子交战。 他们生产的战争武器是用来使用的，而不是用来储存的。 如果世界和平真的要实现，他们就会破产，除非他们能够转而制造并非旨在杀人的东西。
因此，这些公司不断敲响战鼓，不断向好战政客的竞选活动捐赠数百万美元也就不足为奇了——甚至是那些担心因国家军工厂关闭和随之而来的经济损失而导致经济崩溃的政客。 一百万个或更多的就业机会。
今天，很少有美国政治家记得或从德怀特·D·艾森豪威尔总统于 1963 年 4 月卸任前不久发表的“铁十字”演讲中获得任何启发。 以下是该演讲的重要摘录：
制造的每一把枪、下水的每艘军舰、发射的每一枚火箭，从最终意义上来说，都意味着对那些饥饿而没有食物、寒冷而没有衣服穿的人的盗窃。
武装世界不只是花钱。 它花费了劳动者的汗水、科学家的天才、孩子们的希望。
一架重型轰炸机的费用可以在30个或更多社区建造现代化学校，或两所设备齐全的优良医院。 我们用建造可容纳8,000人的新房屋的钱来支付一艘驱逐舰的费用。
从任何真正意义上来说，这都不是一种好的生活方式。 在战争威胁的阴云下，人类被悬挂在铁十字架上。
艾森豪威尔是第二次世界大战中的一名将军，他亲眼目睹了战争给受害者造成的可怕屠杀和破坏。这是他作为美国总统无力为和平争取政治支持的可悲反映，他不得不等到即将退休，甚至才表达他对战争的憎恶。
Why is the United States always fighting a war somewhere?
BY ED FINN ● THE NONAGENARIAN'S NOTEBOOK ● JUNE 1, 2018
Sgt Anthony Boocock, RLC/MOD, OGL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26917595
Why is the United States always fighting a war somewhere? Could it be because war is profitable?
Harper's magazine, in its June issue, reports on a panel of former soldiers that it convened at the U.S. Military Academy at Westpoint, New York. They were all veterans of wars waged by the U.S. over the past 30 years, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, or stationed in some of the nearly 800 military bases the U.S. maintains in more than 70 countries and territories around the world.
These veterans were asked to explain why their country has been engaged in so many armed conflicts, and why, in none of them since World War II, has the outcome resulted in a decisive victory. And this despite the U.S. having the world’s best-trained and best-equipped armed forces.
The war in Afghanistan has now dragged on for 17 years, under Presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump. Obama campaigned on ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then reneged after his election; and candidate Trump, who deplored the many soldiers being “led to senseless slaughter” in Afghanistan, promptly sent an additional 4,000 troops there after he became president.
In the published excerpts from the forum hosted by Harper’s, subtitled “America’s addiction to war,” all of the six participants blamed either unjustified declarations of war in the first place, or flawed conduct and extension of the war after it was launched.
Following are a few salient quotes from that forum.
Andrew J. Bacevich: For politicians, staying (in Afghanistan) is the safer course. As long as they can make a show of supporting the troops, they are able to evade accountability.
Susan Kreps: The American experience (while fighting wars) is one of not giving up, so you don’t want to be the president who withdrew from the war. As long as these leaders are responsive to a public that doesn’t want to see us losing, we’ll just continue muddling on.
Danny Sjursen: Having an all-volunteer force creates a perfect storm. If this were a draftee army, if there were conscriptions, it would be much harder to keep the forever war going. The reason why it has been 17 years and there is still really no anti-war movement (as there was during the Vietnam war) is because the fighting is done by a small portion of Americans.
Jason Dempsey: The approval rating of the military is astronomical – really, no institution merits a 70 per cent approval rating, especially not one that’s still struggling to wrap up conflicts after 17 years. How do we explain this? Some of it is just ignorance. Americans today have no idea how the military operates, how the defense budget is spent. They just know they should respect the military.
Gregory Daddis: Adulation of the military plays a part in the enduring war. We’ve addicted our soldiers to war. The costs of being addicted – damaging their psyches, tearing families apart – are hidden until later. But there is also a class component to the all-volunteer force that we shouldn’t underrate. Young soldiers have an opportunity for social recognition that might be out of their reach elsewhere in American society. For a young man or woman of a certain class, this is an opportunity for something that is visceral. They matter in society. They are recognized. They have worth.
Sjursen: The military is also a welfare state. It is the most socialist institution we have. It provides economic stability.
Kreps: Over the past 30 years real wages in the U.S. economy have stagnated, but in the military you get a raise of 2 or 3 percent a year, and decent health care as well.
Bacevich: Let’s say no one steps in to end these wars. How likely is it, then, that the United States will be able to achieve its original aims in Iraq and Afghanistan – that both will become stable countries aligned with the United States?
Sjursen: I’m 100 per cent pessimistic. I just came from Fort Leavenworth, where they have a formula: ends equal ways plus means. But the ends we laid out are unachievable. It doesn’t matter how many ways and means you come up with. There is absolutely no chance of success as it was laid out by the Bush administration, or even in some of Obama’s rhetoric.
* * *
As interesting and revealing as this discussion at West Point certainly is, it fails to identify the main reason why the United States keeps getting embroiled in so many prolonged wars and military incursions.
The only way to find the answer to this question is to pose the ancient Roman question: Qui bono? Who benefits from perpetual warfare?
The answer — although never acknowledged by U.S. political leaders, and seldom by even the U.S. media – is the country’s military industrial complex. The big arms manufacturers profit enormously from wars and other armed conflicts. In fact, without continuous and prolonged warfare that requires the deployment of their guns, bombs, tanks, warships and submarines, they would go out of business.
The American military budget for the next fiscal year that is projected by the Trump administration is $886 billion, up from $767 billion in 2016. This massive amount is the second largest item in the country’s budget after social security. It is four times more than China’s military budget of $216 billion, and 10 times bigger than Russia’s budget of just $84.5 billion. In total, the United States spends more on “defense” than the next nine countries combined.
Who profits most from this vast expenditure on the trappings of warfare? Obviously it’s the big arms companies. It’s difficult to find out how much of the colossal U.S. military budget each of them receives. The latest figures I could find (undoubtedly not up to date) were $36 billion for Lochhead Martin, $27.6 billion for Boeing, 26.9 billion for BAE Systems, $22.5 billion for Raytheon, and $21.6 billion for General Dynamics. But there are dozens of other arms producers that are also awarded contracts. Together, they probably receive and profit from at least half, more likely two-thirds, of that huge $886 billion war bonanza.
These corporations depend on the United States being continually at war against some country somewhere – and now against terrorists everywhere. The weapons of war they produce are made to be used, not stockpiled. If world peace were ever actually to be achieved, they would be bankrupted, unless they could switch to manufacturing things that aren’t designed to kill people.
So it’s not surprising that these corporations keep beating the war drums, keep donating millions of dollars to the election campaigns of warmongering politicians – or even politicians who fear the economic collapse that could result from the closure of the country’s war plants and the consequent loss of a million or more jobs.
Few U.S. politicians today remember or take any inspiration from the “Cross of Iron” speech that President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered in April 1963, shortly before his retirement from office. Here is a crucial excerpt from that speech:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed.
The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one heavy bomber could build modern schools in 30 or more communities, or two fine, fully equipped hospitals. We pay for a single destroyer with the money for new homes that could have housed 8,000 people.
This is not a good way of life in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Eisenhower was a general in the Second World War who had a close view of the terrible carnage and destruction that war inflicts on its victims. It’s a sad reflection of his inability as U.S president to muster political support for peace that he had to wait for his impending retirement even to give voice to his abhorrence of war.
