Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if the Bush administration told the truth about why the U.S. was dispatching hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq?
"On behalf of Exxon, Texaco, Mobil, Haliburton, Bechtel, Citibank and Chase Manhattan, we intend to re-conquer Iraq and all of the Middle East. We intend to regain our undiluted control over this oil-rich area and super-exploit the labor of the peoples of this region, from which we derived over 50 percent of all U.S. corporate overseas profits before the anti-colonial Arab revolution swept out our puppet monarchies in the 1950s. When Iraq, Iran, Libya and the others nationalized 'our' oil companies, this was an act of theft of our property. We intend to use war, embargoes, CIA destabilization campaigns and all other available methods to recover our position."
No, this message would not be well received. What family member would allow a husband, wife, partner, son or daughter to be sent to kill or be killed for that kind of war? But it is and was that kind of war. The government has an obvious problem in telling the truth about the war: they cannot reveal its class content - that it was a rich man's war - because no one would fight and no one would support the use of hundreds of billions of tax dollars to carry out a war of aggression that only benefits Corporate America.
So the Bush administration, like past governments, concocted lies and engaged in a high-powered campaign of deceit using the corporate-owned mass media as a vehicle to sell the war. Weapons of mass destruction, ties to Al Queda and all the other allegations have now been completely disproven.
The Bush administration doesn't tell the truth but neither did any other presidents in the past half-century as they sent generation after generation to fight in wars of aggression. They were all wars for empire:
Korea (1950), Lebanon (1958), Cuba (1961), Vietnam (1962), Dominican Republic (1965), Cambodia (1970), Laos (1970), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), Somalia (1992), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Liberia (2003), Iraq (2003), Haiti (2004).
The corporate rulers and the military-industrial complex cannot tell the truth about war. They cannot explain openly and honestly why the United States now has 750 military bases in 120 countries.
One percent of the U.S. population owns 40 percent of the wealth of the country. And the richest one percent of that one percent are the dominant powers in the economic and political establishment. When they talk about U.S. foreign policy or U.S. interests, they really mean their interests. They have global investments. They seek global markets. They run the corporations in the United States that are responsible for the destruction of three million jobs in the past three years as corporations seek to globalize their super-profits by outsourcing decent paying jobs in order to lower wages and break unions.
What is the answer? Instead of being duped into supporting one reactionary war after another - be it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti or the Philippines, or covert wars against the people of Venezuela, Cuba and Zimbabwe - working people in the United States must globalize our solidarity with all of those who are resisting empire.
The global anti-war movement must be a movement of international solidarity against the U.S. empire.
Do you like this post?