One of the most concerning things in our world right now, particularly for Americans, is our lack of awareness of a war going on. Sure, sometimes attacks that result in US deaths shock the television audiences who actually watch news shows. But even these are simply tragic events that merely reiterate that we are at war. We do not feel that impact daily or even weekly. Yet, the military policies behind the wars are happening because we do not truly support or combat them. And these military policies impact thousands.
The question about what the future of these wars looks like is not discussed. Rarely do foreign policy debates and discussions grace the covers of magazines. Rarely do Americans (and even more rarely government officials) discuss drone attacks (a weapon which is increasingly becoming how we fight the "war on terrorism").
We're reminded of the impact of wars largely by films (Zero Dark Thirty and even Argo) and television shows (Homeland) this past year. Entertainment discusses a tumultuous foreign policy either by confronting questionable and ultimately barely-delineated policies or by harkening to previous CIA operations in the Middle East.
With Zero Dark Thirty, the moral component of the "war on terrorism" is brought up just as the human cost of war was brought up in director Bigelow's previous film, The Hurt Locker.
Shifting away from facts and numbers, these films address something news rarely chooses to cover: the "why?" Despite there being criticism of the wars from the most extreme sides of both major parties, those in Congress overwhelmingly support a military presence. The question I want to pose is not whether we should have a military presence in various countries, but rather, what it really means for us to have a military presence -- what happens while we are at war to Americans and those abroad. Only then can the conversation be had about the military.
It is not merely the numbers deployed and the casualties and injuries on our end that we must understand. These we can see on the news. Besides that, though, there is trauma, an unquantifiable value on the part of every solider. Bigelow's first film examined this impact of war on psyche, and hinted at the tumultuous return to civilian life many in our armed forces face.
Yet even beyond the American impact on the forces (during and after deployment), there are the civilian deaths we must consider that occur during pursuit of our wars. Zero Dark Thirty addresses the last decade's prominent tool for war and primary foreign policy moral issue: torture. The issue that the 2010s will be know for militarily (and morally) is drones. Drone strikes that fail can, and do, strike civilians (the UN has recently released estimates, but even before that official report, Americans caught onto this alarming trend).
Declared war and American presence show merely the surface, and this is the scariest part of all. We forget the drones and the last decades' prominent interrogation practices when we see the large forces on the news, yet these drones and interrogations were (and still are) vital in supporting our forces (at least for the way things were run).
Military service members receive the public support of practically all Americans. The war efforts receive this same support to only a slightly lesser extent (thought plummeting now after ten years in combat). But if we remind ourselves that our military presence in a foreign nation goes hand in hand with drone attacks, support, we'd assume, would plummet further.
Now, we must ask ourselves if we can support this new tactic. The question to do away with this policy will arise and will quickly fall away once it is broached. Minimal risk to those deployed coupled with high success rates operationally have ensured that the drone policy will continue. But what we can do is regulate it. As Americans continue to approach this topic, we may be entering an era where this policy will be acknowledged on the world stage.
The future of this policy rests in the hands of Americans who have largely remained detached from the wars officially being fought and other strikes at the hands of the American military (the US maintains that it has the right for strikes outside of "theaters of war"). Perhaps memos such as this one will make Americans truly aware of the human impact of these strikes.
The public must become more engaged in the policies governing our modern warfare because so many are put at risk because of them. Film and television have broached these policies by connecting warfare to its questionable policies and, even more impactfully, to people we connect with and events that shock us. Perhaps the visual and print medias, in addressing fictionalized AND real versions of these stories, will bring the public to a point of greater education and involvement in these policies as media has done in the past and should once again do.
