War is Still a Racket

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_charles__060626_war_is_still_a_racke.htm

 

 

 

June 26, 2006

 

War is Still a Racket

by Charles Sullivan

 

http://www.opednews.com

 

" Our whole history shows we have never fought a defensive war. "

--USMC General Smedley Butler, 1933

 

It is well documented that all governments lie. It is also well known

that they lie more when it comes to war. A government that proposes to

carry out war that will not end in our lifetimes lies incessantly and

we must stop giving it our allegiance. We must refuse to give it our

children. Let us evict the military recruiters from our schools and

the nation's shopping malls. Without fodder the cannons of militarism

and empire cannot function.

 

Our soldiers have nothing to gain by going to war and everything to

lose. War is a rich man's device that, if the truth were known,

ignores the will of the people who have no say in it. Modern wars have

no heroes but they inevitably produce atrocities and countless

innocent victims. There can be no moral justification for civilized

people of any nationality taking up arms against one another, unless

one nation is directly assaulted by another. War is the tool of

barbarians and tyrants and they are provoked by cowards hiding in safe

places.

 

The underlying reasons for war are always cloaked in darkness and

secrecy; otherwise, no sane person would fight them and we would be

forced to live in relative accord. Our Plutocratic rulers, however,

believe that war is more profitable than peace. Defense contractors

cannot make billions by waging peace. Besides, what U.S. president

would boast of being the " peace time " president? There is no bravado

in peace. Armed to the teeth, the American hero, as exemplified by and

glorified in Hollywood, are invariably men of extreme violence.

 

While those who initiate war invariably cloak their intentions in the

language of patriotism, wars always have economic and ideological

causes. In America the causes of war have their origins in corporate

Plutocracy. Here, war is initiated at the behest of a corporation or a

group of corporations doing business in a foreign country. The usual

cause is that a foreign government has imposed some kind of

restriction upon one these corporations. In the most virulent cases

these countries will not allow their natural capital to be plundered

by corporate marauders or privatized and exported. Some countries even

insist upon public ownership of their raw materials which makes them

the greatest menace to peace.

 

Nations that have not adopted capitalism as their religion

traditionally refuse to allow their resources or their people to be

exploited for profit. These nations nationalize their assets and

rather than invading and occupying other nations, they provide free

health care, unlimited education and other programs of social and

spiritual uplift to their citizens. These are the dangers of socialism

and communism that we were indoctrinated against since birth; the

greatest scourge of evil the world has ever known. This is what they

teach us in school and it is ingrained in our psyche to the grave.

 

Using the tax base for the public good, to create a prosperous peace

time economy for all, of course, is positively un-American and

anti-capitalist. It is a dangerous ideology that must not be allowed

to spread, lest it result in eruptions of democracy, prolonged

outbursts of peace and the equitable distribution of goods and wealth.

If allowed to flourish, socialism would mean the abolition of

Plutocracy and the end of socioeconomic class divisions. It would mean

the emancipation of the working class from their Plutocratic rulers.

 

The Plutocrats know in their hearts of stone that the people lack the

intelligence and wisdom to self govern. They know that we require

leaders who are our moral and intellectual superiors who can teach us

the value of free markets, fair trade, conquest, private ownership and

insatiable greed. Thank God, we have them to look after us and to

grind us into hamburger for consumption by the global elite.

 

In a nutshell, that is what war is about as it pertains to the

American experiment. There are no noble causes to fight and die for.

War is about private ownership of everything and everyone; the

commodification of nature and people, subjugated to rule by a corrupt

global economic elite. War is the result of humankind's oldest and

worst nemesis-greed and lust for power over the lives of others.

 

War is comprised of roughly equal parts racism, fervent nationalism,

propaganda and lies, herd mentality, religion, and the private

ownership of materials and labor. War is the sum of humankind's worst

attributes, bought and paid for in blood.

 

As terrible as war is, perhaps it exacts its greatest toll on the

combatants themselves-the soldiers. Acting in the belief that they are

spreading light into the darkness of the world they are, in fact,

doing exactly the opposite. They are stamping out the light of

understanding, rationality, and hope. The soldier thus becomes the

horrible thing they are vainly trying to destroy. All of this is

possible because they have blindly followed men without hearts and

conscience, men devoid of souls, who have misled them into the burning

depths of hell from which there is no way out.

 

This is the sad reality we are witnessing in Iraq and the 135 nations

where our armed forces are stationed, carrying out the sociopathic

agenda of global domination and empire. Those whose minds are not

truly their own are susceptible to control by the psychopaths who

would use them for evil, just as soldiers have traditionally been the

pawns of kings and emperors through the ages.

 

The lies espoused by our so called leaders do not matter on the

battlefield. They do not matter when the bodies come home in oversized

cardboard boxes, hauled by fork lifts to airport curbs and deposited

at the feet of grief-stricken families like a commodity. In a sense,

that is what they are. This is war's assembly line, where the bodies

are packaged and sent home like a parcel, with the flag as a corporate

logo printed on a box with the stamp " Made in America " ; where lives

are converted into cash for the global elite, a gift from the Plutocracy.

 

General Smedley Butler was right when he said in 1933 that war is a

racket. It still is and always will be. War is the ultimate contempt

for life; the ultimate betrayal of human potential.

 

 

 

Charles Sullivan is a photographer, social activist and free lance

writer residing in the hinterland of West Virgina. He welcomes your

comments at earthdog

 

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