Why is our country always at war? We spend over half of our tax money on financing wars and the military industrial complex, aka the Pentagon and corporations that profit from war. We invade other countries, often destroying them, and kill thousands of innocent people while sacrificing many of our own.
After 14 years in Afghanistan we have spent $686 billion and more than 2,300 American soldiers have died, not to mention those who have been maimed mentally and physically. The U.S. defense budget for 2016 is $598 billion, the sum total in military spending for 14 other countries that are next to us in spending is $664 billion. Yet, unlike most Western countries, we cannot afford healthcare for our citizens nor tuition-free college education. Though needed, our “representatives” in Congress, to whom we pay handsome wages, cannot afford to spend tax money on our domestic infrastructure.
When you get on an airplane in this country you are reverently asked to thank our soldiers and sailors for their service to this country. But who, or what, are they serving?
Former Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, wrote a book in 1935 titled “War is a Racket” in which he identified those who profit from war. The military industrial complex ballooned in WWII and has been institutionalized into our mentality and our corporate-run government ever since. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood up to his joint chiefs of staff and the war machine who were clamoring to nuke Cuba and the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy circumvented them and made a deal with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to prevent a nuclear holocaust that would have killed millions of people. In 1963, when Kennedy was planning to end the Vietnam war by bringing home American troops, he again defied the military establishment and, coincidentally, was assassinated in November of that year. He was only three years into his first term.
It seems like most of our wars and foreign interventions have really been about capitalism versus socialism.
Capitalism means capital (money), and socialism means society. The Soviet Union gave socialism a bad name by calling their dictatorship a socialist government. In most European countries, socialism is an economic system that allows for private enterprise while still insuring that the average citizen has a decent lifestyle.
During the Cold War, most of the USA’s interventions were justified by our capitalist system as being a battle to protect countries from Russian domination. These interventions or invasions were deceptively wrapped in the flag of American ideals, often ignored or distorted by the media, to sell a militaristic foreign policy to the public while imposing American corporate control over the Third World. Communism was Capitalism’s bogeyman and was used as a fear tactic to justify intervention even when the countries we interfered with were democratic and not communist. Iran, Guatemala and Nicaragua were good examples. They were countries trying to free themselves from foreign exploitation and brutal, dictatorial rule. However, if these countries were able to rule themselves, then Western capitalism might lose access to cheap labor and cheap resources. The CIA helped overthrow democratically elected governments and installed cooperative dictators to maintain economic “stability” favoring foreign interests.
The foreign aid we gave them was usually weaponry to maintain a dictatorship or a plutocracy’s oppression of their citizens. We all paid for this oppression with our taxes and sometimes our lives and we continue to do so. Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Brazil, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Iraq are a partial list of Capitalist Imperialism at work using your tax money for cannons, and your family members for fodder. If you don’t believe me, turn off the TV and read “The War State” by Michael Swanson, General Butler’s book, or “What Uncle Sam Really Wants” by Noam Chomsky.
If we actually tapped into the goodness of humanity and spent most of that Pentagon money on helping people rather than killing people, the world would be a much better place. Christ said “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Part of the problem may be that many people don’t love themselves much because they measure their worth in dollars and cents. Right now the Golden Rule seems to be “those with the gold rule” rather than Christ’s wisdom. Life would be so much better if we listened to our hearts rather than to materialism. It would be far more patriotic to serve our country by improving life here and in the world by helping people, not bombing them.
To improve our country’s foreign and domestic policies we must get the private money out of politics which makes bribing politicians legal, and rein in the war machine rather than be exploited by it.
As Smedley Butler said: “To hell with war!”
• Lisle Hebert is an old Juneau filmmaker, social worker and is retired.
