President Trump is hawking weapons in the Middle East. After concluding a deal with the Saudis for $110 billion in weaponry, he sought out the Emir of Qatar and said their discussions would focus on “the purchase of lots of beautiful military equipment.”
Trump’s reference to American weapons as “beautiful” echoed the recent words of Brian Williams at MSNBC, who characterized images from the Tomahawk missile attack on Syria as “beautiful,” not once but three times.
We can vilify Trump and Williams for seeing beauty in weapons that kill, but we must also recognize Americans love their technology of death. It’s one big reason why we have more than 300 million guns in America, enough to arm virtually every American, from cradle to grave.
Why do we place so much faith in weapons? Why do we love them so?
In military affairs, America is especially prone to putting its faith in weapons. The problem is that often weaponry is either less important than one thinks, or seductive in its promise. Think of U.S. aerial drones, for example. They’ve killed a lot of people without showing any decisiveness.
Technology is a rational and orderly endeavor, but war is irrational and chaotic. Countries develop technology for war, thinking they are adding order and predictability, when they are usually adding just another element of unpredictability while expanding death.
US air power is a great example — death everywhere, but no decisiveness. Look at Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia). The US obliterated vast areas with high explosive and napalm and Agent Orange, killing millions without winning the war. The technological image of America today is not stunning cars or clever consumer inventions but rather Predator and Reaper drones and giant bombs like MOAB.
Profligate expenditures on weapons and their export obviously feed America’s military-industrial complex. Such weapons are sold by our politicians as job-creators, but they’re really widow-makers and life-takers. Americans used to describe armament makers as “merchants of death,” until, that is, we became the number one producer and exporter of these armaments. Now they’re “beautiful” to our president and to our media mouthpieces.
We have a strange love affair with weapons that borders on a fetish. I’ve been to a few military re-enactments, in which well-intended re-enactors play at war. The guys I’ve talked to are often experts on the nuts and bolts of the military weaponry they carry, but of course the guns aren’t loaded. It’s all bloodless fun, a “war game,” if you will.
Nowadays real war is often much like a video game, at least to US“pilots” sitting in trailers in Nevada. It’s not a game to an Afghan or Yemeni getting blown to bits by a Hellfire missile fired by a drone. For some reason, foreigners on the receiving end of US weaponry don’t think of it as “beautiful.” Nor do we, when our weapons are turned against us.
Enough with the “beautiful” weapons, America. Let’s stick to the beauty of spacious skies and amber waves of grain.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views. He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu. Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.