The Health Of The Nation is War
A story that came out on Alternet today sums up what war is all about: profits.
Big ones.
As Howard Zinn said, the health of the nation is war. It’s so obvious, and I cannot, for the life of me, understand why more people can’t see this.
The United States military has somewhere between 700 and 850 bases in approximately 60 countries and territories, and on every continent except for Antarctica.
There are approximately 6000 bases in the United States with 1.4 million active personnel. Over 325,000 are deployed overseas.
And we are, by far, the biggest spenders, spending nearly $500 billion according to the 2007 budget, dwarfing the number two country, China. The US military budget was almost twenty-nine times as large as the so-called “rogue states,” (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion. (Center for Arms Control)
Global military spending worldwide, for all countries, is a staggering $950 billion.
Just think what the world could do with even half of that money if it wasn’t used for the manufacture of killing machines. Compare what we spend on this shit to what we spend on education, housing, alternative energy research, health, natural resources and environment. It’s simply unbelievable.
For the bill making appropriations for the military (HR 2863) passed last December, 106 Democrats voted for the bill which provides billions for the continued war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Seven were absent.
What’s more unbelievable is why people aren’t marching on War$hington and cleaning house.
This system exists for one primary purpose: to promote the economic and political objectives of U.S. capitalism. Oh sure, it’s also for peace keeping, but only in areas where the U.S. has economic interests. In countries like East Timor, the United States actively worked to promote genocide, not to stop it.
From Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s memoirs:
“The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” (A Dangerous Place, Little Brown, 1980, p. 247) Later, he admitted that he had defended a “shameless” Cold War policy toward East Timor.-WikpediaAs long as war is profitable and as long as our current capitalistic system supports it, there will always be war.
Let’s dismantle the capitalist machine that drives it.
Chairman of the Committee for Tarring and Feathering