BLOG #7: Anitwar

The United States of America was founded through war. In order to gain independence, we had to fight in the Revolutionary War against British rule, and that set the tone for our government and views on war since. Since then, the United States has engaged in numerous wars and military operations and these often take place without actually being in our country. Additionally, despite the many voices that oppose these ongoing military actions we get involved in, we rarely hear from them in the news. This raises the important question of, “why are antiwar perspectives so often ignored or left out of the national conversation/big media sources”?

Some strong antiwar perspectives can be found on alternative news sources like ANTIWAR.COM and The American Conservative, but these sites don’t get even close to views other news sources get. These platforms shed light on military operations and government spending that often go unnoticed in mainstream media. For example, The American Conservative revealed that the U.S. has spent nearly $1 billion on bombings in Yemen, which is a fact that has been rarely reported by major news outlets. Additionally, Antiwar.com published an article examining how America's public opinion is used in order to gauge support for Israel, which highlights how important it is to explore alternative sources to understand the full picture because again, this is not something you would see on your everyday news.

This raises another important question being: “Why aren’t these topics discussed in mainstream news?” One reason I found on this is that when the government takes controversial actions, such as bombing foreign countries, they tend to try and avoid drawing public attention to it. If us regular citizens constantly saw these military actions decided by the government on the news, public support would most likely experience some sort of collapse. Political parties also want to maintain a positive image, so they may hide or downplay uncomfortable truths because it would most likely be very unsettling to constantly receive news on these topics.

For example, our history has shown what happens when the truth eventually comes out. Scandals like Watergate and the Teapot Dome affair completely shook public trust in government. Therefore nowadays, the government tries to act in secrecy and keep military actions out of the public eye to avoid a loss of trust between the people and leaders. As citizens, we should start asking ourselves how many scandals have been hidden from us or how much information has been filtered before reaching us. We must try to stay informed and look beyond mainstream media to see what may truly be going on beyond what the regular news is showing us.