WARS WITHOUT END, AMEN

[Col. Writ. 10/3/01]

Copyright Mumia Abu-Jamal

"Everyone knows that politicians routinely exaggerate, distort, and make promises that they know full well they can never fulfill .... Woodrow Wilson campaigned in 1912 promising to keep the United States out of World War I.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned in 1940, very careful not to appear as if he wanted to take the nation into World War II on the side of the British.  Lyndon Johnson promised in 1964 that American boys would not die in Vietnam.  Once elected, each of these presidents did lead the nation into wars in which hundreds of thousands of young American soldiers died."   -- John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard, p. 26

With Bush Administration officials announcing that the so-called "War on Terrorism" will be "open-ended," we, in the United States, are entering a long, repressive, war cycle.  This opinion suggests that U.S. history may be seen as cyclical; periods of uneasy peace, followed by periods of raging war.

All wars, like other areas of human endeavor, have economic imperatives, reflected by interests of some segments of society, which profits from war.  While soldiers and some citizens lose their lives, some businesses boom.  For such businesses, especially in times of a war economy, war is simply, well, good business.  Arms merchants love the winds of war.  Rations (food) merchants love war.  Many corporations view wars as harbingers of the 'good old days.'

At the risk of coining a phrase, "Money is the root of all war."

When Japan invaded Manchuria, it wasn't because they were 'bad,' it was because they were seeking raw materials that their homelands couldn't provide.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, it wasn't because they were 'bad,' but because Kuwait would've automatically doubled their oil deposits.

War often has economic underpinnings, but they are hidden. War is a tool of foreign, and economic, policy.

What is America's foreign policy?  Researcher Jerry Fresia, in Towards an American Revolution (South End Pr.; 1988), tells us:

In 1950, George Kennan, head of the State Department planning staff, gave a briefing to Latin American ambassadors in which he said that a major concern of foreign policy must be "The protection of our raw materials" - in fact, more broadly, the material and human resources that are "ours" by right, require that we combat a dangerous heresy which has been spreading through Latin America, namely "the idea that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people." (p. 81)

When someone tells you that America's foreign policy is "spreading democracy," or "saving freedom," or some such, think of Kennan's revelations. That's the real deal.

And war is but the ultimate instrument of foreign policy.

War is indeed hell, for some.  For others, it is big, and burgeoning, business.

 

Text © copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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