What Is It Good for Me Lately?

"Death seed, blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs"

 

King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man

 

 

I'd always meant to comment more on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but consistently found I could add nothing. The Russians themselves were expecting the two-week war I had originally predicted, demonstrated by their failure to arrange functional supply lines at the outset. Subsequent years' shift from traditional warfare toward automation and teleoperation is a historic landmark (and just one more apocalyptic nail in our species' coffin) but many, many others have commented more cogently on drone warfare.

 

But whatever its strategic, humanitarian and technological details, Russian expansionism is on a conceptual level so... boring. It lacks the ideological spice of faith and progress and subversion and societal goals colouring our discussion of, say, Middle-Eastern or African conflicts, or the old Cold War debate on economics. A sadistic, strutting strongman whipping a horde of frothing thugs and unwilling conscripts into throwing themselves into the meatgrinder for a naked land-grab is too redundantly medieval. Even Putin's sycophants claiming "de-nazification" or somesuch gave up on their transparent excuses several years ago and appear to have simply embraced the dictator's troglodytic aggression for its own sake. Same old routine.

 

Israel's expansionism on the other hand does offer ideological facets in spades, tribal/territorial, religious, humanitarian, utopian, you name it. But there's every reason to believe that Israel before October '23 took a page from the U.S. preceding 9/11 and deliberately ignored the oncoming raid, willfully let a couple thousand of its citizens be butchered to provide a pretext for invasion and solidifying domestic power for its current aspiring junta.

 

So is it ensuring safety, is it humanitarianism, is it religious fanaticism or is it a land grab? Did anyone bother keeping up the facade of being motivated by repatriating hostages, any more than Putin's "de-nazification", or is the point to secure some profitable real estate for Netanyahu's cronies to sell at a cozy profit margin to the very families of those of their own constituents whom they so cheerfully sacrificed to Judaic manifest destiny? Self-defense is one thing, social progress would be another if you did it honestly, but if you've been putting a hundred thousand now thoroughly de-fanged brainwashed primitives up against the wall 'cause it's a good gesheft? Whole other conversation.

 

Then there's the Israeli/U.S. bombing campaign against Iran, where issues of ideology, public good, terrorism, warmongering, what-have-you, all seem to fade before the sheer Stoogely, tragicomic farce of the whole affair. At least one of the supposed motivations goes beyond mere ideology to existential threat. If religious fanatics get nukes (or any other weapons of mass destruction) they will use them, some sooner than others and jihadists soonest of all. It's also true that a massive proportion of Iran's population is not only living under miserable theocratic oppression but in this case desperately wants out from under such rule, and has for decades.

 

But you can't honestly believe these pretexts are truly being followed by our leadership, that the sputtering clown car of drunks, ditzes and gutter swindlers that is the current U.S. government has either the intent or IQ to pursue any goal beyond extorting bribes for themselves as they've been doing for the past year and a half. From the start the war was greeted with utter confusion, by the public, by the press, by even the military ordered to prosecute a constantly shifting and nonsensical list of demands while their commander-in-chimp screeches random scatological street urchin threats across social media. If you'd like the key to the whole snafu though, pay attention to one particular sound bite constantly repeated from the start: the fear that the U.S. may be running out of bombs or interceptor missiles or drones or ships or planes or... something. Something requiring a heavily tax-subsidized, unscrutinized investment. Something explained ninety years ago:

"The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter - twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent - the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear.
[...]
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way.
[...]
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits.
[...]
Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.
[...]
Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance —- something the employer pays for in an enlightened state — and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left. Then, the most crowning insolence of all — he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days. We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back - when they came back from the war and couldn't find work — at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!"

 

That's from General Smedley Butler's War Is a Racket, published as an insider's retrospective on WWI and U.S. incursions into Central America in the early 20th century, over a decade before the phrase "military-industrial complex" rattled the airwaves. Those few commentators not driven by nationalist/religious fanaticism, capable of objective analysis, are always tempted to say that motivation does not matter so long as an objective goal is achieved. So what if a few profiteers wet their beaks, so long as a threat to the rest of us gets removed? But the point is exactly that motive shifts goals. Once Daddy Warbucks becomes your hero instead of a criminal to be eliminated from polite society, every war is a war against one's own populace, a pretext for enriching the rich at the sacrifice of the wage slaves and cannon fodder. Or does anyone imagine Russians in general are benefiting from the destruction of Ukraine? Or that the wasteful confusion of the Iranian war is not so by design, meant to destroy American property that the richest investors may justify further tax-subsidized replacement of military assets, with any destruction abroad merely an afterthought?

 

And has anyone noticed that even Trump's detractors in the media are mouthing the same ad copy about bomb shortages (no matter how the bombs are wasted, and no matter Trumpists refused expending those same bombs in defense of Ukraine) terrified of angering investors in military contractors?