questionwar.com

Question War
This one and the next and the ones before

War is the ugliest, most devastating and tragic of all human events. Warfare of the 20th century has been the most brutal. Three times more people have been killed in wars of the last 90 years than in all the previous 500 years. Throughout the ages wars have been forced upon naturally peace-seeking peoples with deceptive and coercive tactics by a small minority ruling class. The current "War on Terror" is really no different. The lies of today follow the same time-tested formula used by governments to gain support from the people to pay for and die for greed-driven agendas that run completely counter to public claims of security, freedom, democracy, humanitarian intervention etc. George Bush is only the latest in a string of presidents to cloak aggression in idealistic rhetoric. Killing in the name of democracy has a long, terrible, and consistant history...

It is critical that we see what the larger agenda is beyond the current conflict so that peace activism does not continue to protest one war after another without addressing the fundamental and systemic causes that have persisted unchallenged for a very long time.

While there are many factors and players involved in the complexities of starting and running a war such as militarism, racism, patriotism, nationalism, etc, the true fundamental cause and directing force is cold/calculated planning by a small group of people in positions of political and economic power. The nature of this power structure has evolved over centuries into its present form: Global Capitalism - pervasive global profiteering and control by transnational corporations. After World War II the United States took on the role of chief military enforcer of this system. US foreign policy is entirely in service to protecting and furthering its insatiable appetite. The same dominator forces that marked the world with conquest, colonialism, genocide of native peoples, and slavery are still at work in this latest evolution of Institutionalized Greed. Empire, Imperialism, Plutocracy, Global Capitalism. This is the system running the world today. The awful truth is ignored by the media and untouched in education and public discourse.

Both Democrats and Republicans are in service to this system and, as history has shown, it makes no real difference which party is in power at the national level; the agenda advances without pause. The wars continue and Congress always votes its approval. The only difference is style, rhetoric, and issues tailored to massage public opinion and contorversy without affecting any real substantive change, let alone transformation. The same is true of other Western countries.

Now we are in a time of great urgency of action and need for deep transformative change. We are facing serious looming crisis domestically and globally that must be addressed with the full might of our individual and collective desire for a just and sustainable world. The vast amounts of money and resources that are currently diverted towards militarism and warfare must be channeled into taking care of our global community and environment, rather than enforcing a corrupt, oppressive, exploitive and devastating system of domination and profit.

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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
– Henry David Thoreau