IWNSPTB V: War Machine

The U.S. is active in at least 7 wars, with 800+ military bases worldwide. There is no genuine cause for war, certainly not at the scale we see. It is neither to combat terrorism nor promote democracy. For a civilized age, violence is ubiquitous. For example, nineteen years after the War on Terror began, American forces remain a devastating presence in countries like Iraq and Syria.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Pentagon’s official budget is over 700 billion dollars per annum – approved, without a second thought, by both Democrats and Republicans. Bear in mind that the United States is a country without universal healthcare, where an ambulance can cost you 2000 dollars for a 15-minute trip.

What we must recognize is that war is good business. It guarantees a return on investment.

Phillips writes that Giants “invest in war making as a method of using surplus capital for guaranteed return, with an increasing use of private military/security companies for protection of Global Power Elites and their wealth.”

Defence companies lobby officials in Washington to splurge on their military budgets. Company executives and complicit politicians make bank constantly buying and selling missiles and tanks with taxpayer money.

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes”
Smedley D. Butler

The United States also goes to war to secure the interests of Corporate America. Through their global military presence, they claim access to other country’s markets, labour and natural resources. Instead of the wealth of a country being used for the good of the local population, it is now funnelled to the pockets of rich westerners. Congo, and much of Africa, are prime examples (1, 2, 3).

Orwell said, “War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

Transnational corporations violate the sovereignty and dignity of nations worldwide. The military-industrial complex constantly runs campaigns to destabilize countries. Without a chance for genuine self-determination, these countries are at the mercy of American businesses.

When a country can’t be bullied by military aggression, America turns to inhumane sanctions – literally starving a population into obedience. If any nation elects leaders who present an obstacle to America’s interests, they turn to coups to install puppet regimes. These regimes bend the knee to Washington but wreak terror on the indigenous.

American foreign policy is based on the ideology of neoconservatism, which is defined as “[the] promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, including peace through strength (by means of military force)…” The effect of this approach appears to amount to imperialism, a practice considered “morally reprehensible.”

Through intimidation, sieges, violence and theft, the United States absorbs independent nations into its Empire to service the greed of western elites. Countries are coerced to align under American supremacy; this US-aligned power structure – with complicity from other western profit-driven nations such as the U.K. and France – represents the greatest threat to the human race.

“Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.”
Michael Parenti, Against Empire

It would be unfair to blame the American public for this state of affairs. Americans are the most indoctrinated people in the world; subjected to nonstop propaganda and marketing, conditioned to do nothing more than work hard and consume, high on America’s #1 drug: false hope (in meritocracy, the American Dream, the pursuit of happiness and rugged individualism). They suffer, along with the rest of the world.

The domestic situation in the States is characterized by mass incarceration, stagnant minimum wage, little to no health care, food stamps, paying for foreign wars, dying in foreign wars, police brutality, systemic racism, debt, mass trauma and poverty. American domestic policy – much like its hostile, profit-oriented foreign policy – regards the poor and middle classes with contempt. It is not much different (1, 2) for the lower classes in the United Kingdom, the fifth-largest economy in the world.

“They act like us. We’re bombing countries all the time.”
Mays Gilliam, in response to a school shooting (Head of State, 2003)

The point is global violence and deceit exists, in large part, to sustain wealthy America’s bottom line. It is not the White House running the country, it is an oligarchy.