Is War the Business of America?

Calvin Coolidge is incorrectly quoted as saying, “The business of America is business.” But even if he had actually meant that, I arrived at a different insight as the result of a recent experience.

I recently attended a military burial ceremony for my wife’s father. It was held at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St Louis, Missouri. My own parents happen to be interred in Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery. So, I have visited two such locations in as many different states for family member burials.

In both events, I was humbled and agape at the sheer size of these facilities. When our host at Jefferson Barracks shared a couple of physical statistics, this caused me to begin collecting some mental questions about the entire national burial site infrastructure. In the case of Jefferson Barracks, we were told it currently covered 310 acres, or nearly one half square mile.

I was prompted to do some research about this commonly overlooked part of America because I was curious about how extensive it might be. Here is what I learned:

There are 155 national cemeteries in the military burial system.

They are distributed among 42 states, and Puerto Rico.

These 155 sites encompass 21400 acres.

Given that 640 acres equal a square mile, this represents 32.5 square miles.

The current burial capacity can accomodate 5.3 million gravesites.

At this time, 57% of this allocated space is still available for more burials.

Acreage is regularly added to sites as needed among the 155 locations.

We are likely to see a rising rate of burial activity during the coming decade due to the passing of Vietnam veterans. There were millions of men and women passing through America’s military machine during that era, and they are aging out at an increasingly rapid rate at this time in our history.

Many thoughts were stirred while attending this memorial service. It came to me one could easily surmise the business of America is war. Does that sound radical or overstated? Looking at the seemingly endless array of crosses and tombstones as far as the eye can see will bring forward such ideas in the mind. It is one of those moments that takes one’s breath away and cannot be imagined without witnessing such a sight.

Using the classic query of “What would an alien conclude upon seeing what I have described”, here are a few postulations.

This people’s nation clearly must place a high priority upon committing vast numbers of human resources to the enterprise of preparing for and conducting military aggression on a large scale. The cost of human potential is monumental, but it is only one element of the total commitment involved. Collateral resources of all types, including physical property, manufacturing and production capacity, research and development, and logistic and deployment capability, all contained under the vast umbrella of a defense budget are consumed on a very large scale. It represents such a huge cost to this nation’s society that most citizens do not attempt to quantify or relate to it. This makes it possible to perpetuate because it is not resisted or questioned by that society. It is so deeply engrained in the national consciousness that it can be rightly said to define in elemental manner who and what we are.

While I just suggested that this could be the observations of an alien, it might just as likely be the conclusion of a human from another nation or culture if they were presented with the same input.

I will close with stating again, the business of America is war. It is easy to come to that insight when confronted with such massive physical evidence. Ike’s warning turned out to be too late because we had already committed in that direction before he stated it.