Eisenhower warned us this would happen.
A victorious post-World War II America, armed with the most powerful military in human history, would eventually normalize militarism into everyday life. War would become less exceptional, less shocking, and more woven into the background noise of American existence.
In his 1961 farewell address, president and five-star general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
He added:
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
And perhaps most importantly:
“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals.”
That was another America. More considered. More introspective.
Today, while most of us were driving to work, checking baseball scores, streaming movies, arguing politics online, or standing in line at Costco, the United States directly attacked at least seven countries in roughly the last year and a half:
Yemen. Somalia. Iraq. Syria. Iran. Nigeria. Venezuela.
Most Americans could not place several of them on a map.
Yet missiles flew there anyway.
In roughly a year, the United States conducted military strikes across seven countries plus maritime operations resulting in hundreds and possibly thousands of civilian deaths — yet most Americans struggle to name the countries involved.
That sentence should trouble us more than it does.
War used to feel personal. Americans saw black-and-white footage from battlefields. Families feared the draft. Casualty counts appeared nightly on television. Folded flags arrived at front doors. We protested war and hated its consequences.
Today war often feels distant and abstract. A strike is launched somewhere beyond the horizon. A target is eliminated. A celebratory briefing is given. The story disappears by tomorrow morning.
Even the language has changed.
Compare Eisenhower’s considered communication to the language coming from presidential leadership today:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Or: “There will be obliteration like you’ve never seen before.”
Or: “Fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Or: “I would bomb the s— out of them.”
These statements pass through the American bloodstream almost casually now. They arrive, dominate a few hours of cable news and social media outrage, and vanish beneath the next cycle of distraction.
How did we become so accustomed to this?
Part of the answer may be that modern warfare is largely invisible to the American public. We experience it through sanitized phrases like “operations,” “targets” and “deterrence.” We don’t understand the reasons behind sensationalized mission names and resulting devastation. The destruction happens far away from us, beyond our neighborhoods, beyond our cameras, beyond our emotional reach.
But underneath the maps and rhetoric are still ordinary human beings.
Let me bring this a little closer to home.
Our family friends, the Naumenkos, live in Ukraine, near Kyiv. They have lived through more than four years of continuous war. Their mother’s home was burned down early in the conflict. They fled advancing Russian forces. Their lives have existed in a state of permanent uncertainty and loss ever since.
Recently I received a message from Juliya. A friend of hers had just learned that her husband was killed at the front after a drone strike burned his vehicle with several soldiers inside.
Juliya wrote: “I’ve been spending two days with my friend, trying to support her and not leave her alone. Yesterday, she received a summons stating that her husband had died at the front, burned to death in his car after a drone strike, along with a dozen other soldiers.
“This terrible news has devastated us all. He was a wonderful guy … But first of all, my friend’s pain breaks my heart. She was left with a 1-year-old baby in her arms and now she is helpless and alone in her grief.
“Yesterday we had to take her and the child to the police station to have the baby’s DNA tested. After all, there are now several bodies mixed up in that burned-out car and it’s impossible to identify them. It was pure torture for my friend.
“Now I am completely broken and still can’t get over it.”
It is easy to discuss “targets” and “strategy” from thousands of miles away. It is harder to imagine a young widow carrying a 1-year-old child into a police station to identify fragments of a burned husband through DNA samples.
We Americans speak often about the value of human life. Yet our conversation about war has become strangely detached from actual human consequences. We track operations, victories, retaliations and deterrence. We rarely pause long enough to absorb the shattered lives beneath the headlines.
Perhaps before we fire, we should ponder longer. Practice “Eisenhower thinking.”
And remember, somewhere beneath every “operation” are regular people who loved somebody, built something, hoped for tomorrow, and expected another ordinary morning just like us.
Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
