The Trappings and Glitter of War

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL / Free Speech Radio News 15may02

Transcribed by mindfully.org from the CD, Free Speech Radio News: Mumia Abu-Jamal on the War and crackdown on civil liberties, Special KPFA premium - Spring 2002 - Track 6 - 20 Commentaries recorded between Aug 2001 and May 2002 www.kpfa.org

And few things steer the national imagination as the trappings and glitter of war. This is true both virtually every nation. But this is especially so when it comes to those people who delight in calling themselves Americans. The term would seem to apply in to those who dwell vast continental regions of North and Latin America.

The name sticks like flypaper to those who live in the 50 states called the United States, and excludes either the Pacific peoples to the north -- the Canadians -- or the multicultural peoples of the South -- the Mexicans. Americans, for the most part, simply thrill at the prospect of war, or so it seems.

When is the last time a politician has called for a mass mobilization of national will without invoking the language and in the or the metaphor of war? When the late Lyndon Baines Johnson wanted to stimulate national will to the eradicate the conditions of the poor, and the called for a "war on poverty." When Richard Nixon wanted to galvanize right-leaning constituencies against the radicals -- the anti-war activists, the revolutionaries, and the teeming masses in the nation's ghettos -- the called for a "war on crime." When Ronald Reagan wanted to tap into the deep Puritan instincts of so-called middle America and, he sounded a similar theme, when he launched the "war on drugs." Remember Nancy's "just say no."

While these old wars seem rather silly to us now, in the opening years of a new century, the energy is unleashed by Americans, especially those of the middle-classes, was really remarkable, and impacted the lives and destinies of millions of peoples, both here and around the world. Millions of people are in America's vast incarceral islands of despair, and their lives have been irreparably been impacted by their contact with such networks. There are millions of victims of these quasi-wars. By the same token, however, there have been millions of people who had benefited from these internal wars, as security and repressive industries have employed hundreds of thousands of young males, and to a lesser extent, females, and by extension, supported households.

What is true for internal wars, is also true for external wars. If the former CIA station chief, John Stockwell is correct, over 6 million, men, women, and children have perished as a direct result of the U.S./CIA actions and activities in Africa and, Asia, and Latin America and the second half of the 20th century. You can see that in his book "The Praetorian Guard: the U.S. role in the New World order," published by South End Press in 1991.

However, he notes that if activist/scholar Noam Chomsky's analysis is used, that figure rises closer to 7 million people.

Wars work wonders for the economy. For every bomb that explodes must be replaced. But in another, more sinister sense, war IS big business. Not simply in a replacement of munitions, nor their manufacture. War is business in the sense of who really benefits from war.

Many years ago, a military man, who led the Marines into battle all around the globe, made a rather startling announcement of the purposes of his military action. It is interesting for the lack of the usual rhetoric about to protect our democracy, or to keep America free, and such blather.

Major General Smedley D. Butler wrote, "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman for big business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti, and Cuba, a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect things in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street," he wrote.[1] And that was back in 1935.

He replaced 1914 Mexico with 2002 Iraq, or 1990 Kuwait, it would make an America's current overseas ventures clearer than ever. Wars are waged today for the same reasons that most of them in were waged yesterday -- to protect the wealthy elite, and to make them richer. Democracy? Nope. For why is there less of that here every time a war is fought? To make the world safe? Honestly, do you feel any safer today than you did before 9/11?

We are looking at war, endless war, for the same reasons as Major General Butler strapped on a Colts 45 for big business.

From death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal.

[1]   Eugene Victor Debs (1885-1926) Walls & Bars: Prisons & Prison Life in the "Land of the Free", Chicago: C.H. Kerr Publ., 2000