[Peace-discuss] The Thing We Don't Talk About By William Rivers Pitt

[Chuck Minne]

The Thing We Don't Talk About 
    By William Rivers Pitt 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective 
    Thursday 23 June 2005 

    With the revelation of the secret Downing Street Minutes, which exposed the fact 
that George Bush and Tony Blair had decided to invade Iraq in April of 2002, a 
heated debate has blown through media, congressional and activist circles. The decision 
to go to war in Iraq was made before any public debate was initiated, before the 
United Nations was brought into the conversation, confirming that Bush's blather about 
wanting peace and leaving war as the last resort was just that: blather. 

    So why did we go? 

    It had been suspected, and has now been confirmed by the Minutes, that Bush took 
us to war on false pretenses and by way of a whole constellation of lies and 
exaggerations. First it was the weapons of mass destruction that were not there. Then it 
was connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that did not exist. Finally, it 
became about bringing freedom and democracy to the region, which has emphatically not 
happened. 

    Threaded through the discussion was the belief that Bush and his 
petroleum-company allies lusted after Iraq's oil. There was also the idea that Bush wanted Saddam's 
head because of the "unfinished business" left by his father in 1991. Some whispered 
that Iraq had intended to change the monetary basis of its petroleum dealings from 
the dollar to the Euro, an action that would have spelled financial disaster for the 
boys in Houston. Finally, many believed Bush ramped up a war push in order to give 
Republicans a flag-waving platform to run on in the 2002 midterms. 

    All of these were on the table as reasons for an invasion, though most of them 
were not included in public debate. Yet the real reasons behind this war, the real 
reasons for many of our military actions over the years, were never discussed. As with 
almost everything we deal with today in the foreign policy realm, the real reasons 
we invaded Iraq harken back to World War II and the Cold War. 

    When the United States jumped into World War II, President Roosevelt ordered the 
American economy be put on a wartime footing. This was a sound decision: the country 
had to speed its industrial capabilities up to a sprint in order to manufacture a 
huge fighting army out of whole cloth. The action was successful beyond measure. The 
economy was invigorated, the war was won, and in the process the military/industrial 
complex, so named by President Eisenhower, was established as a power player in the 
American economy. 

    In 1947, President Harry Truman put forth the Truman Doctrine, a broad policy of 
foreign intervention to combat the feared spread of Communism around the world. The 
Doctrine was essentially created by a small band of men like Paul Nitze, who were 
the precursors of what we now call neo-conservatives. Nitze, it should be noted, was 
the mentor of Paul Wolfowitz, who went on to be the mentor of Donald Rumsfeld and 
Dick Cheney. 

    The establishment of the Truman Doctrine, the establishment of the "permanent 
crisis" that was the Cold War, required that the American economy remain on a wartime 
footing. There it has remained to this day, despite the fall of the Soviet Union and 
the collapse of the threat of a global communist takeover. Ten thousand books have 
been written on this subject, on the impact of our wartime economic footing upon 
domestic policy, the environment, global affairs and politics. In the end, however, the 
fact that our economy is set on a wartime footing means one simple thing. 

    We need wars. 

    Without wars, the economy flakes and falls apart. Without wars, the trillions of 
dollars spent on weapons systems, military preparedness and a planetary army would 
dry up, dealing a death blow to the economy as currently constituted. Without wars or 
the threat of wars, the populace is not so easily controlled and manipulated. 

    Let us be clear, however. When I say "we," I do not refer to your average 
working man and woman on the street. The man running the shoe store or the woman managing 
the bar does not need war to remain economically viable. The "we" I speak of is that 
overwhelmingly wealthy and powerful few who have wired their fortunes into the 
manufacture of weapons, the plumbing of oil, and the collection of spoils through 
political largesse. 

    These are the people who need war. They need it to pile up the contracts from 
the Pentagon, to enrich the banking institutions that protect them, to pay the lawyers 
who defend them, to pay the lobbyists who sustain them, to purchase the politicians 
who champion them, and to buy up the media that hides them from sight. 

    Yet though this group is small in number, they are "we," for they are our 
leaders and our myth-makers. They have convinced the majority of this population that war 
is a necessity. They create the premises for combat and invasion, they convince and 
cajole and, when necessary, frighten us into line. All too often, almost every time, 
we buy into the fictions they manufacture, thus sustaining the "permanent crisis" 
mentality and the need for war after war after war. 

    The economic need for war creates the required excuses for war. The "permanent 
crisis" of the Cold War motivated the United States to support the Shah in Iran, a 
decision that led to the Islamic Revolution and the establishment of Iran as a 
permanent enemy. The Cold War motivated us to support Saddam Hussein financially and 
militarily as a bulwark against Iran. The Cold War motivated us to establish the House of 
Saud in Saudi Arabia to ensure a steady supply of oil. The Cold War motivated us to 
support Osama bin Laden and the so-called "Jihadists" in Afghanistan in their fight 
against the Soviet invaders. 

    Now, we prepare to invade Iran. We have invaded Iraq for the second time in 15 
years. We will never invade Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that this nation's vast 
wealth and Wahabbist extremists make it the birthing bed of international terrorism. 
We lost two towers in New York City at the hands of a group that we created in the 
1980s to fight the Soviets. Put plainly, the "permanent crisis" of the Cold War 
created a cycle of military self-justification. We build enemies with arms and money, and 
then we destroy them with arms and money, thus keeping our wartime economy afloat. 

    The Cold War ended more than ten years ago, but we still need war, and we need 
that "permanent crisis" to continue the cycle of military self-justification. If a 
legitimate war is not available, we will create one because we have to. We have our 
new "permanent crisis," which we call the War on Terror, another turn of the cycle 
created by an attack that our foreign policy and war-justifications of the last 50 
years made almost inevitable. 

    We need wars. That's why we are in Iraq. This invasion and occupation of that 
nation has given our economy the war it needs, and has also created the justification 
for future wars by creating legions of enemies in the Mideast and around the world. 
Our wartime economy will tolerate no less. 

    Talking about Bush's lies regarding weapons of mass destruction, or about 
bringing democracy to the region, or about the dollar-to-Euro transfer, or about the 
midterm elections, is window-dressing. We invaded Iraq because we had to. This is the 
elephant in the room, the foreign policy reality nobody talks about. 

    If you want peace, work to change the underpinnings of our economy. Until that 
change is made, there will always be wars, invasions, and lies to brings such things 
about. It is what it is. 



http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062305X.shtml



“The Holocaust proved to be the perfect weapon for deflecting criticism of Israel

For Alexander, the uniqueness of The Holocaust is ‘moral capital’; Jews must ‘claim sovereignty’ over this ‘valuable property.’” -- The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein .. 

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with and endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken 

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