Only People Can End War
By James Rothenberg
21 March, 2009
Countercurrents.org
When sports fans are asked to come out and “root for the home team”, there is an unspoken benefit for those who have an economic stake in the team’s existence. We recognize this benefit but regard it as their “fair share”, our share being the vicarious enjoyment of “our” team. Our enthusiastic participation in this rooting example is a local form of jingoism.
At the national level, when we are asked to “support our troops” in war, there is an unspoken benefit for those sectors of society that stand to profit from the state’s material “gains”. Unlike the case with a sports team, this benefit is all too often not recognized, or under-recognized, and for good reason. Great care is taken to conceal or underplay material benefit because it would not be regarded by the public as “fair share”.
It’s a simple premise. The more entrenched you are in the establishment, the more your individual fate is linked to the fate of the nation. What is good for the nation (the so-called “national interest”) is necessarily good for the ruling elite, but incidental for the working stiff.
The Department of Defense performs a greater service for America’s billionaires than it does for its paupers, who have nothing to lose and only their lives to defend. It figures that the sectors of society that have the most to lose will have the greatest interest in being “defended”. This may be a good time to recall that the War Department was the precursor (DOD’s own word) to the euphemistically named Department of Defense.
Going to war is an economic decision, unless in legitimate self-defense. It would be foolish (from the state’s point of view) to start a war without conceivable material gain, and states do not act foolishly. Neither do they act morally.
States are inherently amoral yet can only obtain needed, popular war support by appealing to their people with a moral argument for war. No contradiction here. It’s the smart play, the only one a government has when rousing its population to lay down in blood and fear. It certainly wouldn’t do to talk in the cold terms of oil and gas, raw materials, minerals, markets, and such. That’s not the poetry of death.
The awarded medal, as a form of “decoration”, is proof that the government knows how to play this game. Reward those that participate, punish those that oppose. A truckload of adornments cannot hide the taking of a single, innocent life. If the government truly “regretted” the unintended taking of innocent lives (as it claims), it would cease doing it.
Pretty, invented stories to a trusting public lead the way into war. Stories are interactions. A teller, a listener. And for the story to be effective, a believer. It is this extra belief (I call it extra) and extra trust (I call it extra) that the leadership relies on when making its case for war. So far, so good, again from the state’s point of view.
Left to question is whether a war-bound government can ever marshal support without resorting to exploitation of its people, and whether people will ever become sufficiently enlightened to protect themselves from such exploitation. A step toward the latter would be a mental emancipation from authority so people did not depend on it for proof of their own existence.
