In San Diego

Last week we visited san diego. At my son’s urging, we took a tour of the aircraft carrier Midway, that has been turned into a museum since being decommissioned. As we toured the ship, several things went through my mind as we viewed the ship and listened to stories from some of the men who served aboard her.

The ship itself is an impressive piece of engineering and design, if outdated for modern use. Included is a 1/48 scale transparent model of the ship used for presenting the concept and design prior to construction that was about twelve feet long. The ship itself was designed as an open platform, intended to be updated as new technologies came along; the effectiveness of this design is borne out be the fact that the ship served through the first Gulf War; it only became more or less unusable since new fighter planes started to require longer flight decks for takeoff and landing.

There were also several planes and helicopters displayed on the flight deck and the hangar deck, including a Sikorsky that picked up several Apollo capsules. Demonstrating the applicability of all this technology for uses beyond fighting. The ship itself collected several flights of refugees from Saigon during the evacuation.

The audio tour included recorded stories from the men who served aboard her. It seems to me that with very few exceptions, the people who have served in the armed forces have endured privation, hardship, and risked life and limb (cliché as it sounds) with humor and bravery far beyond their years. Many of the men who served aboard were 18, most in their twenties.

And of course, many never got the opportunity to get any older.

The first thing that struck me as we walked through is that we probably represented a small percentage of liberals among the visitors. It seems to me (I’d love to be wrong) that the left side has a tendency to not patronize the artifacts and leftovers of mankind’s sordid and cantankerous history.

Oops. let a bit of bias slip, did I?

Well, to cut a long story short, it’s a mistake.

It’s a mistake that more from the progressive end of the spectrum don’t learn about the details of these many ‘conflicts’, ‘police actions’, ‘liberations’, what have you.

Because It’s a mistake to send kids to fight. It’s a mistake to fight. It would even be a mistake if the old men who arrange the wars would be the ones fighting them.

The amount of ingenuity and resources involved in creating something as impressive as an aircraft carrier or a fighter jet- it’s a mistake.

The human resources expended in a military conflict- the humans killed- all a mistake.

And I am aware that sometimes it may be necessary. But that’s where the mistake comes in. That’s where that ‘slippery slope’ that the rightwingers like to invoke really comes in. What is clear self defense one day becomes not so clear self defense...eventually wars are being fought on whims and for ill-defined and unjustified reasons. Everyone’s gotten used to it.

As I walked through the Midway, I started to feel angry.

Angry about the men who died serving on this ship. No. Angry about the kids who died aboard that ship.

Angry about the people that were killed as part of the ships missions. Dammit, either life is sacred, or it isn’t, but we don’t get to make the distinction based upon skin color, lines on a map, or the type of god one believes in.

Angry about the lost opportunity cost represented by the construction, the very existence of this marvel of engineering. Angry about the multitude of challenges that we face on a daily basis that could have been solved, could be ameliorated, if a fraction of that money was spent on something, nearly anything, else.

angry about the political system that makes wars inevitable and the result of political maneuvering rather than a resort of last means. Isaac Asimov once said “War is the last refuge of the incompetent.”


Pentagon spending accounts for over 50% of the tax revenues of the United States. Is there a way to re orient our values so some of this money can be spent on human, or humane, values? Fuck if I know.

But I do know that until we do, as a society, as a country, as a people or even as a species, we can hardly claim to have created a civilization.