Renewable Revolution

Tom Dispatch / By William Astore
   
The Business of America Is War 
 
No wonder our leaders tell us not to worry our little heads about our wars --just support those troops, go shopping, and keep waving that flag.


Snippet 1:

The War of 1812 is sometimes portrayed as a minor dust-up with Britain, involving the temporary occupation and burning of our capital, but it really was about crushing Indians on the frontier and grabbing their land.

  

The Mexican-American War was another land grab, this time for the benefit of slaveholders. 




The Spanish-American War was a land grab for those seeking an American empire overseas, while World War I was for making the world “safe for democracy” -- and for American business interests globally.

 
 

Even World War II, a war necessary to stop Hitler and Imperial Japan, witnessed the emergence of the U.S. as the arsenal of democracy, the world’s dominant power, and the new imperial stand-in for a bankrupt British Empire.

 

Korea?  Vietnam?  Lots of profit for the military-industrial complex and plenty of power for the Pentagon establishment.

 
 

Iraq, the Middle East, current adventures in Africa?  Oil,
markets, natural resources, global dominance.

 


Snippet 2:

War as Disaster Capitalism

Consider one more definition of war: not as politics or even as commerce, but as societal catastrophe.  Thinking this way, we can apply Naomi Klein's concepts of the " shock doctrine" and "disaster capitalism" to it.  When such disasters occur, there are always those who seek to turn a profit.

Most Americans are, however, discouraged from thinking about war this way thanks to the power of what we call “patriotism” or, at an extreme, “superpatriotism”  when it applies to us, and the significantly more negative “nationalism”  or “ultra-nationalism” when it appears in other countries. 

Snippet 3:

We’re discouraged from reflecting on the uncomfortable fact that, as “our” troops sacrifice and suffer, others in society are profiting big time . Such thoughts are considered unseemly and unpatriotic. 



Snippet 4:

-- President Calvin Coolidge, that is.  “The business of America is business,” he declared in the Roaring Twenties.  Almost a century later, the business of America is war, even if today’s presidents are too polite to mention that the business is booming.


Snippet 5:

As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pithily observed, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”   If war is combat and commerce, calamity and commodity, it cannot be left to our political leaders alone -- and certainly not to our generals. 

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/business-america-war