War is the Health of the State

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Bruce Dixon, BAR Managing Editor

"The so-called ‘war on terror'' is the best insurance, the best defense America's ruling elite can ever have." BarBruceslaughter-iraq

War is the health of the state, said radical writer Randolph Bourne back in the middle of the first World War. Ninety years later, it's truer than it's ever been. America's corporate, media and political leadership are as addicted to war as surely as junkies are to heroin.

If you don't believe it, try this thought experiment. Imagine that Osama Bin Laden emerges from hiding next week, repents his crimes, and surrenders to authorities for trial. Imagine that he encourages all his followers, sympathizers, cells and Islamist movements allied and not worldwide to do the same, and they comply, choosing peaceful and nonviolent paths from now on. Imagine at the same time that armed insurgencies from South Asia to South America lay down their weapons while Iran gives up its quest for nuclear armaments. Suppose at the same time that Israel reaches such a just, lasting and neighborly accommodation with the Palestinians and the rest of the region that it scraps its nuclear arsenal, prompting Pakistan and India to do likewise.

How might America's leaders react to this outbreak of peace? For a clue we can revisit the brief time after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. Hopeful souls then talked about something called the "peace dividend." The peace dividend was to be the redirection of some of the hundreds of billions spent annually on weapons and the military to fund affordable housing, infrastructure, education and mass transit, to lowering carbon dioxide emissions, perhaps to shorten the work week and maybe even delivering universal health care. Pressure began to mount on America's leaders to address these priorities.

Their answer was for George Bush senior to flip on his old ally Saddam Hussein. Instead of a peace dividend, we got the first Gulf War and an even higher military budget.

Many Clinton supporters in 1992 imagined they had elected an administration which would implement the peace dividend. They were disappointed, as Bill Clinton and a Congress led by Democrats made their first priority passing NAFTA, instead of universal medical care. In 1994, Republicans swept the Congress and all talk of the "peace dividend" vanished down the memory hole.

"If ALL the terrorists surrendered tomorrow morning, by late afternoon our leaders would have to rediscover the grave and imminent threat posed by those awful North Koreans, those uppity Cubans or those sneaky Venezuelans."

If the so-called "war on terror" ended tomorrow, America's ruling elite would be confronted by popular demands they have NO intention of EVER meeting, like the demand for universal health care, which every other industrialized country on the planet provides for its people. If ALL the terrorists surrendered tomorrow morning, by late afternoon our leaders would have to rediscover the grave and imminent threat posed by those awful North Koreans, those uppity Cubans or those sneaky Venezuelans. Or Russia. Or China.

No, for their purposes, a so-called war against terror beats a war against any nation, because it's undefined and never has to end. It's an excuse to bomb some helpless country one week, to round up crackpots who sell wolf tickets about beheading the Canadian prime minister the next. It can be cluster bombs over Lebanon, nukes over Iran, or color coded terror alerts over unspecified domestic threats. The war on terror can be a religious war, or a so-called clash of civilizations. It's an excuse for politicians to sell fear wholesale to the American people, and for us to elect the ones who scare us the most.

The so-called war on terror divides Americans from each other. It diverts the nation's wealth to corporate military contractors, and it deflects attention from solvable problems like energy and universal health care. That is why America's rulers need war, like

vampires need blood. For them, war will always be the health of the state.

For Black Agenda radio, I'm Bruce Dixon.

BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon can be reached at Bruce.Dixon(at)BlackAgendaReport.com. When sending email, you must replace the (at) with the character @.

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