"The Forever War is not just in the Middle East. It is in Korea, where US troops still stand to post along the DMZ. It is in Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of children have been born with spina bifida, neural tube problems, missing limbs, missing vertebrae, autoimmune disorders and more, four decades after the US finished hosing that nation down with Agent Orange. And yes, the Forever War is also in Iraq, which practically glows at night from all the depleted uranium the US has detonated there since 1991.This is why we find ourselves today talking about torture the way other people talk about their sandwich order, and why powerful voices see fit to accuse torture survivors of treason. We have been thoroughly debased by all this war, all this violence, all this death for so many years. The most popular video games come with body counts. Neighbors with massive arsenals are the norm, and massacres flicker by like dandelion seeds.
We are a crumbling nation not just in a moral sense, but in a literal one. The trillions of dollars spent on the Forever War have turned our economy into a shaky shell game, and deprived us of the opportunity to make education, infrastructure, genuine health care and artistic achievement the cornerstones of our culture. When capitalism sits at the table with democracy, sooner or later all the plates are empty save for a golden few. The United States did not invent the concept of using war to plunder the treasury. It simply perfected the practice."
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