All war is evil. Period. No exceptions. There are rare occasions when war becomes a necessary evil because a country is attacked, but no matter how necessary, the taking of a human life is still evil. The concept of a "just" war is, at best, a moral obscenity.
Unless you’re Barack Obama.
In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama stepped up to the podium in Stockholm and used the occasion to reinforce GWB’s Manichean worldview when he said:
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflicts in our lifetime. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
There you have it: our Eternal War of the Empty Policy will go on and on and on because the first rule of missionary zeal is that you must fight evil with evil.
To paraphrase the Chilean journalist Ximena Ortiz, Obama intends to fight evil using other people’s lives. But that’s the way it is with missionary crusades. It’s always easier to slaughter than to covert.
Of course, evil is evil as defined by the reigning power. This is one of the ways in which power corrupts. The more power a nation acquires, the more it becomes convinced that it is the moral center of the universe, and moral centers brook no opposition and are convinced that the carnage they leave in their wake is good for their victims since it introduces to the benefits of civilized behavior.
Cynics argue that morality has nothing to do with wars of aggression. Our wars have been all about acquiring land and resources or expanding markets. (No, the Civil War wasn’t fought to free the slaves. That was only an afterthought on Lincoln’s part to give a moral patina to the butchery the war produced.)
Since the Revolutionary War, we have sacrificed 1,314,400 military personnel in our attempts to reform the world. The civilian body count is even greater, especially since the introduction of industrial warfare.
Of course, Obama is correct when he says we will not eradicate violent conflicts in our lifetime because America keeps starting them.
But who ever thought Moral Purity was easy? It takes a lot of work and a lot of bloodshed to make the world a safe place for our Corporatists.
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3 comments:
The "Corporatsists" are all singing the pop song, "Take the Money and Run", while the general populace (mentioned yesterday and earlier)just keep singing, "I want my M[HD]TV"and watching re-runs of Hee-Haw.
This column/blog, and the writing of many others (Sirota, Taibbi, Grieder, Reich,Krugman, Nader, Kucinich, Chomsky, Moyers...I could go on and on) is a matter of preaching too often to the choir. Obama invoked MKL Jr. this week (shameful and and arrogant),and King preached to the choir, as well, but he brought the choir outside the Church building, as he did literally from the Sixteenth St. Baptist Church and broke the back of Bull O'Connor and the insipid stanglehold of un-civil non-rights against blacks in the south. Obama fancies himself in the role of preacher, but, in reality, only pontificates and lectures. The choir sleeps, the Church steps are empty and wars and rumors of wars drone on.
The admixture of the corporatists and the militarists is a lethal one, both figuratively and literally. Together they invented and are perfecying the industrial warfare you spoke of.
Today, Obama and this anti-human wrecking crew can not only sacrifice the lives of others directly, but can hide behind un-manned drones to slaughter the innocent and say, honestly, "But I wasn't even there!".
The paltriness of Obama's stand is blantantly obvious to anyone who stops to look and listen. Kucinich has just said that some wars are "just wars", as in JUST (and only)WAR and nothing else and Bill Moyers is pointing out that Obama will not even condemn the further use of land mines, a most insidious and malicious method of un-manned warfare that permamnetly maims and leaves lifetimes of pain and suffering.
It would seem that our crumbling empire ses the world upside down.Why else would our legislative body vote for continued war funding and against universal health care? I rest my case.
Ivan,
Very well put, and you are quite right about preaching to the choir. The only hope is that if we preach long enough and loud enough a few passer-bys might pick up the drift of our message.
I'm sorry, but we live in the age of advanced technology. This old "mill" is still steam powered, and it is time to switch to hydrogen and a few laser guided controls. We are running out of excuses.
A "smart bomb" (maybe a 'real' intelligent design?) in the form of 21rst century thinking, dropped on the Pentagon, might be a good place to start?
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