A matter of national security

We witnessed the outpouring of sentiments in the return of SPC Derence Jack and Sgt. Wilgene Lieto, the fallen soldiers in a controversial war.

What do we make of a national security policy that justifies preemptive military action not as an emergency surgical procedure but as a sustained campaign in the service of defending a needed natural resource we are afraid would otherwise fall in the hands of unfriendly forces? Offense is the best defense might work to rah-rah the boys of the Green Bay Packers any given Sunday. “Let us not wait for them to bring it to our shores but let us take it to their own backyard,” makes good spirited jousting at the local VFW watering hole, but as a pillar of foreign policy, we are threading on mighty dangerous mine fields. We point to a critical concern that requires more than just sentimental patriotism, or gung-ho nationalism, but some level-headed thinking.

Willens and Siemer’s excellent study of President Kennedy’s U.S. Policy in Micronesia beginning in1961 is titled National Security and Self-Determination. In the aftermath of World War II when certain sectors extended mileage to the “remember Pearl Harbor” mindset to justify a policy of containment of the dreaded tentacles of global communism, we weathered through the ill-fated domino theory applied to Indochina that got us the ill-informed Gulf of Tonkin resolution, a nation rent in half, and a national psyche profoundly scarred. All in the name of national security.

A decade before the Willens/Siemer book, iconoclast Jeremy Rifkin published Biosphere Politics which began with a section on “Securing the World.” It had nothing to do with guarding geographical boundaries. In the mushroom shadows of Bikini and Eniwetok, radioactive fallout defies national boundaries. Chernobyl painfully attested to that. Mikhail Gorbachev later conceded that having the arsenal to blow-up the planet seven times over just did not make any sense any more, if it ever did!

Willens and Siemer are not known for cheekiness, nor do I suspect is their choice of title tongue-in-cheek. The period they described did take ‘national security’ to mean inter alia keeping certain strategic territories in the Pacific away from being used again by hostile forces against the military interest of the United States. “Self-determination,” as contrasted to “self-government,” also meant, choosing one’s own course of action, even if it meant for a former colony aligning itself to be incorporated into the body politic of their former colonizers. I grew up in a former colony, and ‘self-determination’ meant veering away from the continuing corrosive and corrupt influence of former colonizers.

Post-WWII US policy supported the practice of former colonies retaining their geo-political boundaries, regardless of whether the configuration was artificially put together from an economic efficiency perspective rather than people’s sense of selfhood and self-determination. Often, inclusion of alienated tribal minorities within the boundaries of the nation is more for the convenience of the neo-colonial realignment rather than being faithful to the true aspirations of the local population.

The rationale of protecting U.S. national security, and empowering local self-determination in both Afghanistan and Iraq, highly trumpeted by the White House, ring hollow. The truth is, there are no boundaries from which to protect any twin towers of any US metropolis! And local autonomy can never be imposed from above; it may only be claimed bottoms up!

Recruitment to the armed services in Micronesia is running 250 percent higher than the rest of the country, according to recent AP report. Francis X. Hezel, S.J., explores in the October Micronesian Seminar the subject of “The Call to Arms: Micronesians in the Military.” He quotes from environmentalist Willy Kostka’s impassioned reflection last February on “Fighting Somebody Else’s War!” A year ago, the Pacific Magazine noted the increasing number of casualties in the war, as well as the increasing number of recruits from Micronesia. The article also notes that it is difficult to locate someone in the CNMI who is opposed to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I number among the few. And though in my life I was only briefly a soldier of war, I am a longtime warrior of peace!

Two of my nephews went Semper Fi. The romantic allure of the U.S. Marine Corps and the tradition that those in my family who had signed up for military service chose this branch, plus the added benefit of making it to college through the GI bill, enabled the choice. In similar fashion, the attraction of the armed forces as the gateway to upward social mobility among Micronesian youth is undeniable. The economic benefits and opportunity windows are the recruiters main tools.

The completion of a life never comes easy. More so when the young lives like those of soldiers Eddie Chang, Derence Jack, and Wilgene Lieto are snuffed at the prime. But if we honor the dead by caring for the living, as the VFW motto clearly declares, care for the living must include telling the truth. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are neither in defense of national security, nor in the promotion of self-government. The lies we’ve told ourselves to justify our going there, and continue to tell ourselves to vindicate our continuing presence, are unconscionable.

The sooner we spin down the intensifying spins, the sooner, with dignity, will we be able to bring our troops back home, alive.