An Empire Can Be Terribly Expensive

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/31/2886/

An Empire Can Be Terribly Expensive
by John Smart

Forget the spin about WMD’s or “Iraqi Freedom” or the “War On Terror.” The White House is lying, Congress is lying, and the media stopped asking questions. What we are not told is that Iraq is about oil, war profiteering and a larger plan to control energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia. This scheme goes beyond our domestic energy needs and seeks to give multinational corporations dominance over global markets while feeding a hungry American war machine.

The recent surprise called “terrorism” is essentially blowback from past covert and official foreign policy targeting the black gold of the Middle East. Our failure to understand the enemy we have created will result in endless cycles of violence without resolving the root cause of “terrorism.” Rather than making the world a safer place, the present “war on terror” has become a smokescreen for 21st Century imperialism. This will generate perpetual conflict and an economic addiction to war that may bankrupt our nation in more ways than one. In order to find a solution we must first recognize the problem.

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Unfortunately, we are paying for this bloody corporate welfare in more ways than one. Iraq’s oil production has declined, raising prices at the pump along with record profits. Our floating dollar is beginning to sink due to deficit war spending propped up by international loans. Inflation becomes a hardship for anyone on a fixed income. Our grandchildren will be paying interest on the debt after profiteers have taken their capital and moved on. Escalation of the Vietnam conflict also began with a presidential lie, became a devastating stalemate, was financed with debt, followed by inflation, and left the nation divided. But fortunes were made then as now by prolonging the carnage although leaked Pentagon papers revealed they knew it was a lost cause. When leaders betray our trust, the integrity of our nation and quality of life is changed forever.

The epicenter of this global nightmare is the expanding military industrial complex Eisenhower prophesized would subvert our democracy through “the disastrous rise of misplaced power” by the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.” The original draft of this 1961 speech contained the term “military industrial congressional complex,” but he chose to not offend Congress with his farewell speech.

Today, the military establishment, arms industry, and Congress act in their mutual self-interest with little public accountability. Campaign donations and lobbyists have turned “lawmakers” into obedient defense industry lap-dogs while the White House promotes corporate wars and sells them to the public. Both military and “intelligence” operations have become increasingly “privatized” along with unprecedented executive secrecy and abuse of power by the incompetent. Public debt for private profit is the game played by an imperial White House and our complicit Congress of invertebrates. Checks and balances and the separation of powers have diminished while militarism is gaining ground. Our constitutional republic has been hijacked and not by Muslims.

As a decorated combat hero, General Smedley Butler said at the end of his career, “War is a racket. It always has been. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” He adds, “Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few, the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.” He concluded, “We must take the profit out of war.”