Kez
19th May 2002, 16:17
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Few things stir the national imagination as the trappings
and glitter of war.
This is true of virtually every nation, but this is
especially so when it comes to those people who delight in
calling themselves "Americans." While the term would seem to
apply to those who dwell on the two vast continental regions
of North and Latin America, the name sticks like flypaper to
those who live in the 50 states called the United States,
and excludes either the Pacific people to the north (the
Canadians), or the multicultural peoples of the south (the
Mexicans).
Americans, for the most part, simply thrill at the prospect
of war.
Or so it seems.
When is the last time that a politician has called for a
mass mobilization of national will, without invoking the
language, or the metaphor, of war?
When the late Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to stimulate national
will to eradicate the conditions of the poor, he called for
a War on Poverty.
When Richard M. Nixon wanted to galvanize right-leaning
constituencies against the radicals, the anti-war activists,
the revolutionaries, and the teeming masses in the nation's
ghettoes, he called for a War on Crime.
When Ronald W. Reagan wanted to tap into the deep puritan
instincts of so-called middle America, he sounded a similar
theme when he launched the War on Drugs (remember Nancy's
plaintive "Just Say No"?).
While these old wars seem rather silly to us now, in the
opening years of a new century, the energies unleashed by
Americans, especially those of the middle classes, was
really remarkable, and impacted the lives, fortunes, and
destinies of millions of people, both here and around the
world.
Millions of people are in America's vast incarceral islands
of despair, or their lives have irreparably been impacted by
their contact with such networks. There are millions of
victims of these quasi-wars.
By the same token, however, there have been millions of
people who have benefited from these internal wars, as the
security and repressive industries have employed hundreds of
thousands of young males, and, to a lesser extent, females,
and by extension, supported households.
What was true for internal wars is also true for external
wars.
If the former CIA station chief John Stockwell is correct,
over 6,000,000 men and women and children perished as a
direct result of U.S./C.I.A. actions and activities, in
Africa, Asia and Latin America in the second half of the
20th century. ("The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the
New World Order," Boston: South End Press, 1991, p. 81)
However, he notes that if activist/scholar Noam Chomsky's
analysis is used, that figure rises closer to 7 million
people!
Wars work wonders for the economy, for every bomb that
explodes must be replaced!
But, in another, more sinister sense, war is big business,
not simply in the replacement of munitions, nor their
manufacture. War is business in the sense of, Who really
benefits from war?
Many years ago, a military man who led the Marines into
battle all around the globe made a rather startling
announcement of the purposes of his military action. It is
interesting for the lack of the usual rhetoric about "to
protect our democracy" or "to keep America free" or some
such blather.
Major-General Smedley D. Butler wrote:
"I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for
Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short,
I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism ... I helped
make Mexico ... safe for American oil interests in 1914. I
helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National
City Bank Boys to collect things in. I helped in the raping
of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit
of Wall Street." (ca. 1935, quoted in Dave Dellinger's
Preface to Eugene V. Debs' "Walls & Bars: Prisons & Prison
Life" in "The Land of the Free," Chicago: C.H. Kerr Publ.,
2000)
If you replace 1914 Mexico with 2002 Iraq or 1990 Kuwait, it
would make America's current overseas ventures clearer than
ever.
Wars are waged today for the same reason that most of them
were waged yesterday: to protect the wealthy elite, and to
make them richer.
Democracy? Nope. For why is there less of that here every
time a war is fought?
To make the world safe? (Honestly -- do you feel any safer
today than you did before 9/11/01?)
We are looking at war--endless war--for the same reasons as
Maj. Gen. Butler strapped on a Colt .45--"... for Big
Business."
Comrade Kamo
Few things stir the national imagination as the trappings
and glitter of war.
This is true of virtually every nation, but this is
especially so when it comes to those people who delight in
calling themselves "Americans." While the term would seem to
apply to those who dwell on the two vast continental regions
of North and Latin America, the name sticks like flypaper to
those who live in the 50 states called the United States,
and excludes either the Pacific people to the north (the
Canadians), or the multicultural peoples of the south (the
Mexicans).
Americans, for the most part, simply thrill at the prospect
of war.
Or so it seems.
When is the last time that a politician has called for a
mass mobilization of national will, without invoking the
language, or the metaphor, of war?
When the late Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to stimulate national
will to eradicate the conditions of the poor, he called for
a War on Poverty.
When Richard M. Nixon wanted to galvanize right-leaning
constituencies against the radicals, the anti-war activists,
the revolutionaries, and the teeming masses in the nation's
ghettoes, he called for a War on Crime.
When Ronald W. Reagan wanted to tap into the deep puritan
instincts of so-called middle America, he sounded a similar
theme when he launched the War on Drugs (remember Nancy's
plaintive "Just Say No"?).
While these old wars seem rather silly to us now, in the
opening years of a new century, the energies unleashed by
Americans, especially those of the middle classes, was
really remarkable, and impacted the lives, fortunes, and
destinies of millions of people, both here and around the
world.
Millions of people are in America's vast incarceral islands
of despair, or their lives have irreparably been impacted by
their contact with such networks. There are millions of
victims of these quasi-wars.
By the same token, however, there have been millions of
people who have benefited from these internal wars, as the
security and repressive industries have employed hundreds of
thousands of young males, and, to a lesser extent, females,
and by extension, supported households.
What was true for internal wars is also true for external
wars.
If the former CIA station chief John Stockwell is correct,
over 6,000,000 men and women and children perished as a
direct result of U.S./C.I.A. actions and activities, in
Africa, Asia and Latin America in the second half of the
20th century. ("The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the
New World Order," Boston: South End Press, 1991, p. 81)
However, he notes that if activist/scholar Noam Chomsky's
analysis is used, that figure rises closer to 7 million
people!
Wars work wonders for the economy, for every bomb that
explodes must be replaced!
But, in another, more sinister sense, war is big business,
not simply in the replacement of munitions, nor their
manufacture. War is business in the sense of, Who really
benefits from war?
Many years ago, a military man who led the Marines into
battle all around the globe made a rather startling
announcement of the purposes of his military action. It is
interesting for the lack of the usual rhetoric about "to
protect our democracy" or "to keep America free" or some
such blather.
Major-General Smedley D. Butler wrote:
"I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for
Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short,
I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism ... I helped
make Mexico ... safe for American oil interests in 1914. I
helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National
City Bank Boys to collect things in. I helped in the raping
of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit
of Wall Street." (ca. 1935, quoted in Dave Dellinger's
Preface to Eugene V. Debs' "Walls & Bars: Prisons & Prison
Life" in "The Land of the Free," Chicago: C.H. Kerr Publ.,
2000)
If you replace 1914 Mexico with 2002 Iraq or 1990 Kuwait, it
would make America's current overseas ventures clearer than
ever.
Wars are waged today for the same reason that most of them
were waged yesterday: to protect the wealthy elite, and to
make them richer.
Democracy? Nope. For why is there less of that here every
time a war is fought?
To make the world safe? (Honestly -- do you feel any safer
today than you did before 9/11/01?)
We are looking at war--endless war--for the same reasons as
Maj. Gen. Butler strapped on a Colt .45--"... for Big
Business."
Comrade Kamo