Class Warfare and American Imperialism

By: Charles Sullivan

Only the most naïve among us can doubt that our hypothetical representatives in government are no longer responsive to the needs of the people. That politicians are beholden to corporate wealth and hence subject to corporate control is well understood. That is why most Americans don't vote. Yet there are some notable exceptions to this rule. There are still a few good souls in Congress who actually serve the people. You can rest assured, however, that the corporate lobbyists (backed by tons of money) are targeting these people for defeat in future elections; they have plans to replace them with their own robotic pawns in business. Some good people in Congress have already lost their seat to conservative foes in the recent elections - Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, among them.

The links between corporate rule and foreign policy have produced disastrous results wherever their seeds have fallen. They have led to our involvement in one war after another. Let us understand that it is the United States government - not the people of the U.S. - that not only want war on Iraq, but on the rest of the world. After all, who wants to die for some colossal corporation whose sole motive for war is profit? Who would willingly send their sons and daughters to the front lines to kill or be killed on behalf of some soulless corporation? Who would willingly risk their own life for the sake of Exxon-Mobil? Who holds their life that cheaply? It must not be lost on the American people that what we have is what one soldier fighting in the American civil war aptly described as: "A rich man's war; a poor man's fight." How little has changed since then.

Under the American oligarchy, the poor serve as little more than canon fodder for the rich. It is disproportionately the poor who are sent to fight and die on foreign soils, not the rich. It is the poor who are exposed to biological agents, radioactive munitions, and chemical warfare, not the rich. The maniacal plans for the U.S. government's war on democracy, its wanton plunder of other sovereign nation's resources, its deliberate murder of millions of innocent civilians around the world, is solely for the benefit of multi-national corporations. The poor suffer and die; the rich reap the reward. It is mostly the poor who are filling our jails and prisons to capacity and beyond. The truth is clear: We are living under an oppressive form of government in the U.S. that promotes class warfare; a system that abuses the poor to benefit the rich. It is a form of slavery in which the multitudes serve the corporate elite without really knowing it. It is the story of Robin Hood gone wrong; wherein the rich rob the poor and continually bedevil them.

The more the corporate stooges who occupy the White House and most of Congress stir up jingoistic fervor - what most Americans mistake for patriotism - the more bleak the outlook for the poor pawns who are waving the flags. For they are the unwitting souls who will be sacrificed at the alter of corporate avarice. It is their blood that will be shed for the acquisition of land and oil - for the sole benefit of the rich. It is time that the American people realize that their emotions are being adroitly manipulated in a well choreographed public relations campaign. It is important for them to realize that the Chicken Hawks, who cry most vocally and persistently for war, are utterly devoid of conscience. Their purpose is to make the world safe for multi-national corporations to rape and plunder with impunity. Suffice it to say that these men are some of the vilest, poorest excuses for human beings to ever crawl out of the sea. They are ruthless in their insatiable pursuit of wealth and power. Truth is their enemy; secrecy their friend; democracy is their adversary. Their worst nightmare is an informed and mobilized citizenry.

It must also be understood that the Bush regime, like those before him, are peopled with accomplished liars. The planned war on Iraq has nothing to do with freeing the Iraqi people from an oppressive regime; it has nothing to do with helping the Iraqi people; it has nothing to do with U.S. security; or the stability of the middle east; it has nothing to do with democracy - it has everything to do with expanding American empire and the sphere of corporate dominance. The Bush regime is deftly using the corporate media machine - the Pentagon's right arm of misinformation - to perpetuate its lies to a gullible and intellectually lazy American public. If George Bush were Pinocchio his nose would by now stretch across continents.

Twelve years ago, the elder Bush, in order to create the myths that appeared to justify his demand for war on Iraq, grossly exaggerated Saddam Hussein's military capabilities. We were told that American military forces would face a formidable foe capable of world domination, if not quickly obliterated by U.S. forces. But when the bombs fell on Iraq the absurdity of Bush's lies were immediately apparent. Hussein's professed war machine could offer no more than token resistance. Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the U.S. during the Johnson administration, has concluded that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died horrible and unnecessary deaths, as the result not only of Bush's Persian Gulf War, but also from the subsequent sanctions imposed upon the people of Iraq. And now, George W. Bush and his ilk are once again foisting the same preposterous lies upon the world's people. In an equally bad sequel to his father's Persian Gulf War, Bush intends to rain still more misery and death upon the people of Iraq. When Iraq is made secure for the unbridled plunder of its resources, then it is on to the next conquest - perhaps Iran, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea.

Traditionally, Imperialist states claim to believe in the rule of law; but this assertion is nothing more than a public facade. In reality, like the principle of political expediency itself, they use international law when it is to their advantage; they ignore it when it works against them. Such is the case not only with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but also with its continuing sanctions against the long suffering Iraqi people. Under the ill gotten authority of the Bush regime, the U.S. intends to rule the world by the principle that "might makes right", as evidenced by the National Strategy for Homeland Security. This revealing draconian document is readily available for perusal online. Its chief architects include some of the Bush regimes' darkest souls. The Bush administration - with its cadre of cowardly Chicken Hawks - is behaving like lawless, uncivilized thugs, not like beckons for democracy or human decency. Even more telling, perhaps, they are behaving like spoiled children; but children who play with loaded guns, nuclear weapons, and the latest high tech weaponry. This makes them all the more dangerous.

The fanciful images of Iraqi detonated mushroom clouds rising over Ohio, as recently described by Bush, are the fabrications of sick, twisted minds. These falsehoods are circulated in order to affect a climate of fear; they are used as justification for permanent war against the world's poor. The ghouls behind the lies are homicidal maniacs who should be under heavy sedation, and locked away in maximum security wards in asylums for the criminally insane. They belong in straight jackets; but instead they are running the country and taking us - if not the world - to the brink of disaster, as never before witnessed in the annals of humankind. If that isn't cause for alarm, if that doesn't qualify as the harshest brand of terrorism, I don't know what does.

In actuality - and it pains me to say it - no nation on earth poses a greater threat to world peace and stability than U.S. imperialism. No other nation deploys more weapons of mass destruction than the U.S.; none sells more arms; none has demonstrated a greater willingness to use them than we have, as evidenced by our extensive history of invasions of foreign lands; our unrivaled record of covert actions and assassinations of democratically elected leaders; and our backing and training of right wing coups and terrorist organizations around the world. These include, not coincidentally, Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden's Al Quaeda terrorist network. Lest we forget: it was the U.S. that unleashed atom bombs on the people of Japan, even after allied victory had virtually been assured.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, nearly two hundred military incursions have been catalogued since 1945 in which the U.S. has been the aggressor. The terrors caused by these actions are responsible for the intense hatred of the U.S. that is felt around the world. It is hard to imagine that countries like Panama and Haiti actually pose a threat to our national security. Cries of "the Panamanians are coming!" somehow ring hollow. The ecological cost to our planet's life support systems are truly mind boggling. If this hostile behavior isn't the worst imaginable form of psychosis, I don't know what is. It must not only be exposed for what it is - the lunatics responsible must be held accountable. They should be tried for war crimes by an international court and locked away where they can do harm only to themselves. We need to get these madmen out of the gene pool.

What is the real reason for these unwarranted attacks? The concise answer is access to cheap oil, the expansion of American empire, and the strategic positioning of U.S. military forces to dominate and exploit the Middle East for corporate profits; as well as to encircle and contain China and Russia. It appears that the end of the Cold War has been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain's famous line.

The American people must come to realize that nothing exists in a vacuum. Bad things don't just happen. Newton's law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Put more simply: there are consequences to every thing we do. We cannot interfere in the affairs of other people without feeling the effects somewhere along the line. We reap what we sow; when we bomb and subject other people to lives of misery, squalor, and unimaginable terror and death, we will eventually feel the effects in our own lives. Life is a great circle. What goes around comes around. And that brings us full circle to the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath.

Again, it must be reiterated that these actions are those of the American government, not the people. I have already demonstrated how the government no longer represents the will or interest of the American people. Why should the innocent people who were killed in the fiery destruction of the World Trade Center bear the brunt of our government's brutal foreign policy? Why should the people of Columbia and Guatemala suffer as a result of multi-national corporate greed? Why should so many of our own people - many of them war veterans - wander the streets in misery without even the luxury of a roof over their head? Why does each successive administration lead our soldiers into danger, where they suffer the affects of war, only to abandon them in their hour of need? Does anyone believe this is the will of the people? Why should millions of innocent Palestinian people bear the consequences for the actions of corporate thugs and punks that bear the names of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon? Why the perpetrators of these crimes against Earth and humanity aren't held accountable to the people, is a question that needs to be asked and answered with complete candor.

I am fully aware that horrible atrocities are daily committed by evil regimes around the planet. The U.S., horrendous as its record is, is not in any way unique in that regard. There is plenty of blame to go around. I have confined my theme to the U.S. because this is my home. I am most familiar with the schemes that are hatched close to home, but whose consequences are felt globally, mostly by good and innocent people whose only wish is to live like the decent human beings they are.

If the citizens of the U.S. were more politically astute and active, I cannot imagine that our foreign policy - indeed our domestic policy - would stand for one more day. I cannot possibly fathom that the goal of the average American citizen is world domination, subjugation of the poor, and the unparalled ecological destruction that places the lives of everyone in constant jeopardy, for the benefit of a few rich men, whose gluttony and capacity for evil is apparently as bottomless as the night sky. Being one of the common folk of America, I believe that if the citizenry of this country understood and interpreted the government's motives correctly, if they objectively reexamined our own history, that most of those in power would be tried and locked away forever. This would be just and humane treatment - and so much better than they deserve. It would in fact be a beautiful thing; something to give people everywhere hope for a better and more equitable future; a tomorrow in which an idea called democracy might actually take root; where tolerance for cultural and religious diversity might finally come to full flower. Perhaps then cooperation between the world's people might become a possibility; and at long last peace would rein.