"Oh, war is an enemy to all mankind
The thought of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest within the younger generation
Induction, then destruction
Who wants to die?"
"War," Edwin Starr;
War and Peace, 1970.
"There never was a good war or a bad peace;" wrote Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, on July 27, 1783, just after the conclusion of peace. Wars may sometimes be necessary, forced upon us by madmen whose desire for power knows no bounds, e.g., a Napoleon Bonaparte or Adolf Hitler. That makes the war necessary, not good.
As a democracy, we should rely much more on "the power of ideas," as President Clinton said, "rather than the idea of [our] power." And as Thom Hartmann reports Dick Gregory once said to him, "If it's a good idea, people will steal it."
When we rely on the "idea of our power," as the centerpiece of our diplomacy, this is strong evidence of our democratic republic's decay into an Empire. Wars of choice--and that is what the war in Vietnam was and Iraq is--are what Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler said they were seventy-five years ago: a racket. Too often in the first half of the Twentieth Century the United States fought "brush wars" in Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, etc., and General Butler was there to see them. These wars were invariably fought to establish or protect American business monopolies, just as our invasion of Iraq was to establish our dominance over Middle Eastern oil.
In your neighborhood, this would be called a "protection racket" or extortion. On the World's stage, it is business as usual. The problem is that in a world with thermonuclear weapons, business as usual is suicide.
Much of this arises out of the worst aspect of American exceptionalism, the feeling of paternalistic responsibility for other nations, or as it was called one hundred years ago, "the white man's burden."
In a world of near instantaneous communications through the Internet, such feelings are not only dangerous, but ridiculous and contradictory to the best interests of a free society. This is the reason that the largest Internet corporations wish to put a price on "net neutrality." If the plutocrats can control the flow of information through the Internet, until it becomes a hierarchy where access to information not controlled by the large corporations is also the most costly, then the oligarchs will have defanged the viper that most dangerously threatens their control over information.
The oligarchs would like a return to the days of William Randolph Hearst who, in the lead up to the Spanish-American War, said "Give me the pictures, and I'll give you your war." And Mr. Hearst delivered on his promise.
"Father, father,
We don't need to escalate;
You see, war is not the answer--
For only love can conquer hate,
You know we've got to find a way,
To bring some lovin ' here today."
"What's Going On," Marvin Gaye;
What's Going On , 1971
We must also work for a reduction in our military expenditures. The elimination of approximately one-half of our overseas military bases would be a good place to start. At last count, we had between 750 and 800 of these bases, each with logistic and other matà ©riel requirements, for which we pay some form of rent. Most of these bases are not needed by a democracy, only by an empire. We no longer have the manufacturing or economic base that is able to financially support an empire. The cold truth of financial reality dictates that we must close at least 3-400 of these bases, saving us tens of billions of dollars annually.
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