Opinion/Editorial
THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT
by James Strauss
The lion of war never sleeps, and tonight is no exception.
The almost totally fabricated war on terror rages on with thousands dying every month, new enemies appearing in a nearly unceasing evolvement from one jihadist organization to another. First there was Al Qaeda, then there was the Taliban. Then Iraq. Then Afghanistan. Followed by the Taliban again and now ISIS. Terrorist attacks are up all over the world and no amount of drone strikes, bomber attacks or surgical insertions are doing anything but increasing the number and intensity of the assaults. What is an effective response to all this carnage? To increase the defense budget, hit harder on bombing and drone strikes, and spend unending sums developing newer and better ways to make more terrorists? The war on terror is proving something intrinsic about tribal humanity all over again. Killing people creates hatred and loathing in the survivors of those killed. The survivors then go on to kill, hate and loath even more until they get killed and their families and relatives continue the cycle.
This war on terror was not brought to America’s shores by any attack on twin towers in New York. This ‘forever war’ first imagined by George Orwell in his prescient book 1984, was created out of terror, but not the kind of terror the media discusses and American forces go after these days. No, this forever war was created by terrified members of the military industrial complex following the completely unexpected, and devastating, end of the Cold War. WWII allowed the military industrial complex to expand and become such a pervasive part of the American economy that Dwight Eisenhower, a staunchly republican president, stood up as he was leaving office to warn the nation that this complex was attempting to take over America and the world if the public did not do something to stop it. America did nothing. The frightened leaders of the military equipment and personnel companies, so quietly prevalent across the nation today, were terrified that the U.S. national defense budget would be slashed because there was no tangible enemy to prepare to fight anymore. No enemy has reappeared, but defense budgets have skyrocketed, beginning only two years after the Berlin Wall fell. Today, the U.S. has more military might than all other countries put together and still is building more. Even weapons like the new nuclear powered and nuclear weapon equipped submarines, new bombers, fighters and aircraft carriers, are being turned out at record rates of production and concurrent expense. All these weapons, however, are useless against the implacable, undefeatable and never-ending warriors of terroristic jihads. But that does not matter. The fears of attack have been so heatedly fanned by the mass media that no real enemy is necessary anymore. Only the hint of an enemy.
Years ago in a sales class I was taught to sell the sizzle, not the steak. I was selling life insurance. There was no steak. The sizzle was about saving money, earning money from saved fund, and protecting the family. There is no real war. There is no real enemy. The media and America’s defense moguls are selling the sizzle, and the sizzle is protection. Protection from nothing. But that fact is so submerged that you can only read about it on the Internet and in some very small newspapers like the Geneva Shore Report. With the power exhibited by these military industrial complex corporations and their secretive wispy leaders, one wonders whether that will be true on into the future.
Today’s public has been so fooled about the reality of the world and life on this planet, that real facts often come across as astounding displays of utter unbelievability. When the Wizard of Oz was made into a movie one of the last scenes involved Dorothy and her friends being introduced to the Wizard. The man behind the curtain controlling the puppet Wizard was revealed, and that man said, using the voice of the Wizard, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Today’s media is doing exactly the same thing as this once humorously portrayed exhibition of outright falsehood was portrayed in the movie. The “terrorists” of today are those forces angry at the United States and its allies. No act committed by the United States or its allies is considered an act of terrorism, and no act of these undeclared angry social groups is considered anything but terrorism if there is any resistance or violence attached to it. At the same time, the violence being administered against these groups (almost all based in the Middle East) creates even more anger and acts of terrorism, for which new and old weapons must be continuously produced to continue the fighting.
The only peace that will ever be universally accepted has everything to do with economic distribution. Until those who have most of the power, control, assets and ready cash come to a point where they will accommodate and stop viciously killing the competition for those things, there will never ever be a place or time where true peace can be considered or arrived at.
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I wonder if there ever can be sane economic distribution.
With the “lowering” of moral standards it has allowed so many to become larcenous and greedy.
It is OK to succeed financially, but that opportunity can be tempered with well defined sharing.