A Nation of One, Pt. 2: We Wage War Because We Can't Not

Think about this please . . . do you know how deeply embedded you, your family, your friends, and your workplace are in the in the miasma of the American war machine? Most Americans are thoroughly enmeshed, but pretty ignorant about it. It's not something that we talk or think about very much; it's pretty depressing.

Certainly, most of us are aware of the percentage of our taxes which support the ubiquitous war machine - the Pentagon buying and selling arms is just one obvious example. But look up what percentage of the national debt, trade deficit, and even the gross national product are related. There are so many corporations devoted to war that it makes your mind spin: Lockheed, URS, Bechtel, SAIC, Halliburton, KBR, Martin-Marietta . . .I shouldn't even start the list.

I've written endlessly in the pages that the peace process must be first a personal commitment based in personal behavior. You can't be a peacenik if you contribute to the war machine. Sorry, you just can't, anymore than you can call yourself an environmentalist and drive an SUV. For a few friends of mine who've done the process of examining their lives, jobs, and investments, the revelation was devastating.

I won't be real detailed, but here are just a few questions: What stocks do you own? Unfortunately, some of the highest performers are part of the octopus of inter-related companies that profit from war (Senator Diane Feinstein's husband, for example, bought heavily into URS Corp., one of the largest military contractors in the world, not long after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The stock went nuts and he's rolling in blood money. Think his wife is going to vote against war? Fuggedaboudit! (She just resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations Committee due to conflict of interest - big deal. Nice of her. She didn't tell her husband to divest, however. (I was going to use an expletive adjective here, but I'm trying clean up my language. It rhymes with "itch".)

Other questions: Where are your mutual funds invested? Where is the food that you eat grown? How much are you paying for gas, motor oil, heating oil, and electricity every day? Where does the wood come from that built your house and furniture? Here's the ultimate question: how much are you paying for our military and military contractors to "protect American (read "multinational corporation) interests abroad? It's a butt-load. You might not want to go there if you're the queasy type - have someone who already knows the stuff break it to you over a nice pint of domestic mini-brewery ale. Then lie down with a cold-compress and a couple of Valium. OK, here we go with some more history . . .

Part 1 of this series of essays described the evolution of the American military from pre-Revolutionary times through the end of the 19^th century. Before the Revolution (how come we're so afraid of that word these days?), New World settlers all lived under the reign of a European crown (not just Americans, but Spanish and French and others), paying tribute and taxes and a big chunk of their product back to their colonial rulers to finance the whims and wars of the monarch. They chafed under colonial law, taxation, and repression. It was their blood, sweat, and tears, but little came back (except Red Coats and governors who answered to the King. Feudalism crossed the ocean along with those who ached for freedom to make their own destinies.
Although they had some autonomy, religious freedom, for example, that autonomy and self-determination was limited.

Revolution and growth was inevitable. All that land! All those resources! So we battled West and South. Washington's farewell address included a warning against "foreign entanglements", but those were inevitable, too. Within a few years, we were at war again with Britain. We challenged France and Spain. We sent ships to the Mediterranean and invaded Tripoli to protect guess what . . . American commercial interests. We decimated the indigenous population in our own country's ravenous expansion. As Kagan points out, Americans could not understand why Indians could live on the land, but not own or develop it. They tried to teach them ownership, but in soon just cleared them off relocation and wars.

In short, we were a "Dangerous Nation" from the beginning, as Robert Kagan's book catalogues. Robert Kinzer has recently published "Overthrow", which picks up where Kagan leaves off.

In the one first hundred years after the Revolution, we engaged Europeans and Indians in several wars and supported the quest for democracy there, but we had yet to begin "regime change" in other lands. That changed in 1893.

In Hawaii, as already in many other countries, American corporations began to look for business opportunities and raw materials beyond our boundaries. In Hawaii, we even installed several American businessmen within the government. When resistance rose, Hawaiians involved in those businesses and American troops overthrew the government and effectively took control of the islands, ensuring that corporations were left to colonize the country. This was the first action in a two hundred year history of overt and covert interference, often violently, in the affairs of foreign countries which wouldn't cooperate with our economic expansion. It has not been a matter of political policies such as trying to "export democracy." It has been every time a matter of installing governments sympathetic to corporations which exploited the resources and populations of foreign lands.

Kinzer documents thirteen covert military interventions and describes many other such actions conducted overtly by funding dictatorships or "revolutionary groups" which supported our aims. We have been ruthless . . . Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, Chile, Iran, Iraq . . . the list is nearly endless and several times involved assassinations; Salvador Allende in Chile, Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam.

We have rarely failed, but there have been unsuccessful attempts. John Kennedy's Bay of Pigs screw up in Cuba in an attempt to remove Fidel Castro is a famous example. In many cases, we were able to place rulers, usually dictators, in power who suppressed any popular resistance; they were, of course, puppet governments, supporting "American interests". These "interests" were corporate, now driven by multinational financial alliances.

Beyond the thirteen well known direct interventions, covert actions in what seem like countless acts of interference have been ubiquitous. Our current war against Iraq is the current example.

Overt actions are justified by our government with lies to the American people. Many other interventions by the CIA and other agencies have been secret. In short, we've been pretty nasty.

My point in the title of this piece is that US growth and expansion has been and will continue to be so entwined with our history and current economic well-being, that we are unable to reject war. For example, we are dependent on oil. We cannot survive without it. Most of that oil is produced and exported here. Our entire lifestyle and economy would simply collapse. If the United States is to remain the most powerful country in the world, if we cannot change our culture, we will be forced to continue our greedy ways. Surely, however, we will fail. Blowback is certain.

It is devastating that, in truth, regardless of public political posturing, both the Democratic and Republican parties will not change or end our need to control the resources of the planet. We are on a collision course with other nations which are expanding and "modernizing", China, India, South and Central American countries, and, of course the Middle East and Africa.

We wage war, because we can't not.

Categories: war+machine, personal+involvement, US+military+history, war+profiteering, investment+in+war, coup, regime+change, corporate+wars, overthrow, dangerous+nation, waging+war


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