Militarized mind.

Editor,

The president's speeches yesterday at the War College and today at the Naval Academy do not sound to me like calls for demilitarization.

In fact, the thought seems never to have occurred to Mr. Obama that projection of a military presence into every corner of the globe incites violent impulses or invites push-back.

I have a friend who is always in conflict with someone, and from his point of view it is always the other person's fault. I am not making this up. And never in million years will it ever dawn on him that his attitude is rubbing people the wrong way --- that he is the problem he is having with other people.

Who will the U.S. arm? Who will the U.S. kill?

I find it interesting that President Eisenhower, deeply horrified by the unintended consequences of modern warfare, opted for clandestine operations --- coups, assassinations --- to project American power, just as Mr. Obama has explicitly chosen drone warfare as an alternative to boots-on-the-ground because in his view it is more humane, more controllable, and more precise than invasion or even clandestine military action.

The militarized mind is not capable of understanding that it is not a question of either or. Peace cannot be defined in terms of vanquished enemies. Conflict is never the fault of only one of the parties to it.

Mr. Obama's two speeches leave me feeling no hope that the militarization of American culture will ever end, let alone that it will end in the foreseeable future.

Re: "For Obama’s Global Vision, Daunting Problems" (5/25/2013)