I spoke with many sailors and one officer from the Abraham Lincoln when it returned from Indonesia . They anchored offshore at Santa Barbara a weekend when we set up Arlington West. The sailors sought us out. They wanted to tell us about the lives they had saved, about the real service to humanity they had rendered. This on the largest weapon that the US military owns! They had been to war but only spoke about the lives they saved, the real service they rendered.
Could this be a recipe for ending war as we know it?
When the world is experiencing an uninterrupted series of disasters as a result of having consumed too much, will we have time for the “normal” conflicts between nation states and non nation interests? Admittedly the maritime services cooperative strategy for the 21st century hits the usual “keeping sea lanes open for commerce” etc. points but standing out to me was the term cooperative and the section on the US military role in international disaster relief. If we really want to see the end of war as we have known it in the past, can we not envision a role for the military industrial complex? They are not going away without a profit!
What I have enjoyed about Paul K Chappell’s work (www.paulkchappell.com) is the candid affirmation of good disciplines learned in the military and the potential for good there. I think that we may find more of that in the million returned veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . They joined voluntarily, many with the hope of a career in the military but maybe while they were attracted to the military they disliked the mission. I talk to these young vets at Arlington West. A change of mission to make the Department of Defense more defensive and less offensive is popular among them. We need to recruit future members from this group of a million veterans of war. How can we understand them better?
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