{"id":1942,"date":"2012-03-13T16:52:45","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T20:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1942"},"modified":"2012-03-13T16:52:45","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T20:52:45","slug":"war-the-health-of-the-state-not-so-healthy-for-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1942","title":{"rendered":"War: The Health of the State, not so Healthy for Human Beings"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Thomas L. Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society<\/a>:<\/p>\n

At more than ten years into the US government\u2019s never-ending \u201cwar on terror,\u201d that government\u2019s excuses for atrocity after atrocity keep getting less and less convincing.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few bad apples.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAn isolated incident.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe video doesn\u2019t tell the whole story, and when we find out who leaked it he\u2019s going to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that you had a lone gunman who acted on his own in just a tragic, tragic way.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last direct from the lips of US President Barack Obama, now serving out George W. Bush\u2019s third term in office, concerning the March 9, 2012 murders of 16 Afghans, including nine children, by a US Army staff sergeant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The idea that these are \u201cisolated incidents\u201d which do not reflect on the overall character of war is, frankly, absurd.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake about it: War is killing on a mass scale, in service to and for the benefit of the state, and that\u2019s all<\/em> it is. It\u2019s not a natural human activity. The desire for it has to be inculcated in soldiers. They must be thoroughly indoctrinated, and \u201cthe enemy\u201d \u2014 soldier and civilian alike \u2014 must be thoroughly dehumanized in order to move them to their \u201cduty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Political warmongers have become quite adept at that dehumanization: I know better now, of course, but I recall the effect of the (false and manufactured) tales of Iraqi soldiers ransacking hospitals and dumping Kuwaiti babies out of incubators told to myself and my fellow US Marines as we prepared for Operation Desert Storm in 1991. We were out for blood against an inhuman enemy. We were brainwashed, because brainwashing is what it takes to get men to kill other men (and, yes, women and children) en masse<\/em> without compunction.<\/p>\n

Sooner or later, though \u2014 unfortunately it seems to be later in most cases \u2014 the brainwashing just isn\u2019t enough. The human conscience will out, or it will shatter.<\/p>\n

In the first case, the result is something like this (I quote William Tecumseh Sherman, because I simply have not the words for it):<\/p>\n

\u201cI confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting \u2014 its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers \u2026 it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated \u2026 that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the second case, it\u2019s Abu Ghraib, Collateral Murder, and what happened outside Kandahar last weekend.<\/p>\n

From this end of a decade of unremitting violence, it\u2019s not these atrocities which I find surprising \u2014 it\u2019s that we don\u2019t hear about more<\/em> of them. And I must say that I suspect that there would be more of them to hear about if not for substantial de facto<\/em> censorship of the news coming out of combat zones around the world.<\/p>\n

The atrocities, shocking as they are, pale next to the \u201cbig picture.\u201d Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, have died at American hands since 2001. The soldier lying dead beneath a cairn topped with rifle and helmet is no more dead, and no more or less personally outraged by it, than the baby murdered in his crib or the dead Taliban fighter urinated upon by troops not quite as at the end of their tethers as the killer staff sergeant.<\/p>\n

And what is it for? Not to \u201cend terrorism,\u201d surely \u2014 for terrorism is what it is<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nor to \u201cprotect America,\u201d which has descended so quickly and thoroughly into banana republicanism that it\u2019s scarcely identifiable as the same country we lived in as recently as, say, 1990. Al Qaeda didn\u2019t have to destroy America. Uncle Sam did it for them.<\/p>\n

In truth, the true and fundamental purpose of war is to aggrandize the egos and power-hunger of America\u2019s Joe Liebermans and John McCains, and to keep wealth flowing from you (with those politicians as conduits) to the politically connected corporate players. To wit, the stockholders of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, KBR, Halliburton, et. al<\/em>. As former Marine general Smedley put it, \u201cwar is a racket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is that purpose \u2014 cannibalism on behalf of the corporati \u2014 worthy of so much as a drop of Afghan or Iraqi or Libyan or Syrian or British or Australian or American blood?<\/p>\n

If so, hang your gold stars in your windows, turn on your TVs, and lose yourselves in the latest sitcom.<\/p>\n

If not, understand: So long as you tolerate the state, this is the price Moloch will demand of you and yours.<\/p>\n

Thomas L. Knapp is Senior News Analyst and Media Coordinator at the Center for a Stateless Society<\/a> (c4ss.org).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Thomas L. Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society: At more than ten years into the US government\u2019s never-ending \u201cwar on terror,\u201d that government\u2019s excuses for atrocity after atrocity keep getting less and less convincing. \u201cA few bad apples.\u201d \u201cAn isolated incident.\u201d \u201cThe video doesn\u2019t tell the whole story, and when we find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1943,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions\/1943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}