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Would the last person who knows why we’re fighting please…?
By Rrrandy Wurst | October 27, 2008
Bill Moyers on his Oct. 24, 2008, PBS Journal, said, “The last person who knew why we are fighting died a long time ago.” Moyers didn’t know the author of the statement and a quick Google by Steve, my right and left hand man, didn’t yield an answer, which doesn’t really matter, because the wisdom inherent in the statement seems to shout loudly enough on its own.
But imagine this. Throughout American history, if there had been no “standing army” (as Thomas Jefferson wanted) to be whipped up and driven to war by the generals and politicians and yellow journalism newspapers, how many wars would the good ol’ U. S. of A. have missed out on?
How many “good wars” have there actually been? Versus how many battles have American citizens been sent to bleed and die in to “protect American interests?” We all know what “protect American interests” means. It means to protect American corporate property and profits. To protect American business property plunked down in foreign lands for the benefit of stockholders. The Marines have been doing that for over 150 years from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. In China (remember that Steve McQueen movie?). In South and Central America to defend Dole (not Bob, the fruit company) and the corporate octopus called United Fruit which dominated Latin American economies and politics for more than forty years. (For a chilly read, look at a 1982 book called Bitter Fruit.)
American troops and arms, my friends, are bought with your tax-dollars and the blood of those troops, not to mention the blood of the people our troops bombard and invade. (And why don’t we mention that very much?)
Imagine, instead, American citizens getting to vote on whether our government should send Americans out to kill and die in foreign lands for American corporate profits. How many of those “little wars” or skirmishes or “police actions” would we have fought? How many of the big ones? Vietnam? Iraq- #1? Iraq-#2? What about that Korean War (officially a “police action”)? The Spanish-American War pushed by William Randolph Hearst? (Whose name is uncomfortably close to yours truly’s.)
To sell war to America following the Vietnam fiasco, our government has felt the need to decorate war with Hollywood-inspired monikers: “Desert Storm!” “Enduring Freedom!!” “Iraqi Freedom!!!” Gee, maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe Americans now need the full, wide-screen P.R. push in order to go along with war. Without, of course, our government letting us see the consequences. The caskets. (Again ignoring the caskets of the other side and the dead civilians whom we are there to “liberate.”) The lost limbs. Discounting the psychological damage, because, hey, it’s just in your mind, soldier.
Imagine how much more oil would be available if we hadn’t burned so much of it doing war, how much more we’d have for our cars, trucks, planes, and furnaces. Ol’ Faithful Steve tells me he was in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago during Fleet Week, a high-testosterone celebration of Naval might. On Thursday and Friday the Blue Angels precision flying jets—the ones who screech across the sky wing-tip to wing-tip— flew low over the city every fifteen minutes practicing for the one time they’d do it “for real” on the weekend. Think of the wasted fuel, not to mention the pollution raining down on The City’s citizens.
Yeah, let’s mention it. The pollution of warfare. The volumes of spent fuel. The exploding bombs. The burning buildings. Clouds of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, CO2, and other lovely poisons roiling into our atmosphere, vile and destructive. Modern war alone might account for a whole degree Fahrenheit of global warming, especially when you consider all the practice that must be conducted in order to accomplish wholesale efficient killing and demolition.
Whoo, boy! Ain’t we got fun!
So, Mr. Bill Moyers, it’s a cute thought, but it’s not really true that “the last person who knew why we were fighting died a long time ago.” We know why we fight. It’s because our government and generals and corporations tell us to fight, that it’s a good thing to fight and waste and pollute and die for whatever reason they come up with. That’s reason enough… Isn’t it? Besides, do these people, our leaders, give us a choice?
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Topics: Corporations, War, iraq war | No Comments »
