War as Weather

It's just always there. Safely and patriotically packaged, of course. It plays, in the background, on the news. It entertains us in movies and video games. It takes a big bite of our taxes. But we never seem to complain about the weaponry or the waste.

Now a new book is forcing us to see. The "shock and awe" that burns and maims and kills real people. The mayhem carried out every day in our name.

War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine should be read by every American citizen. Author Norman Solomon forces us to confront what our bombs and missiles and bullets do to fellow men, women and children.

As President Kennedy put it 60 years ago, in an incredible gesture of empathy with the "enemy," "We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we're all mortal."

At one point in the book, Solomon visits Daniel Ellsberg -- who we've been memorializing this week. On his deck overlooking the San Francisco Bay, the long-time peace activist had this sobering thing to say:

"It's fair to say that the public doesn't show any effective concern for the number of people we kill in these wars. At most, they are concerned about American casualties, especially if they're too many."

What is concealed from Americans Ellsberg went on, "is that they are citizens of an empire, they are in the core of an empire that feels itself as having the right to determine who governs other countries, and if we don't approve of them because of their effect on corporate interests, or their refusal to give us bases, or (oil) pipelines we need, we feel absolutely right and capable of removing them, of regime change."

Ellsberg added, "Virtually every president tells us, or reassures us, that we are a very peace-loving people, very slow to go to war... That of course does go against the fact that we've been at war almost continuously."

Norman Solomon