Daily Times

What happened in Paris was horrible and must be condemned. But what happened to Allenda, Lumumba, Guevara, Tania, Rosa, Eugene Levine and thousands of those who were brutally slaughtered by a not-so-hidden force, which in its condemnation stands at the forefront, was equally repulsive and reprehensible. From Bengal’s famine to the Algerian massacre, from My Lai to Aleppo, from Mosul to Benghazi, which hegemonic force(s) overturned stable states, drenched innocent citizens in their blood and then pushed them into the abyss of a primitive era? Who destined infants to die on the sea shores of the ‘civilised’ world? But are these queries qualified to be asked? Laing is more succinct in his reply. He states: “Pedants teach youth that such questions of value are unanswerable, or not really questions at all, or what we require are meta-questions. Meanwhile, Vietnam goes on.” Do we really need to change the Middle East with Vietnam? After all, that generation is still alive, which has seen the horrors of chemical weapons used in Vietnam albeit their ‘class’ varies. One belongs to the war veterans who are scarcely known, others akin to the two Johnnies, Kerry and McCain, live in pomp and show.

Capitalists are averse to the dialectic analysis of things. Facts can only be understood if the real existence (phenomenon) is distinguished from the inner core (the essence); either cannot coincide with the other. The bourgeoisie misses this point. That is why the imperialist world either begins to imagine its existence on an invincible cranny of this planet or tends to suffer from collective amnesia or national Alzheimer’s disease while simultaneously believing that its victims too have the same affliction. That certainly is a misconception. After the production of means of destruction how can the producer expect to live under the safe havens or after creating chaos without any blow back? A war imposed upon the meekest of people is never without consequences. “The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,” says Shakespeare. The US, beyond doubt, is the number one arms dealer in the world. Those who live by the sword die by the sword since all roads that lead from the house of an arms dealer end up in destruction. “Organisation for peace,” says Macuse, “is different from organisation for war; the institutions that served the struggle for existence cannot serve the pacification of existence. Life as an end is qualitatively different from life as a means.” The institution of war is only capable of unleashing horror, pure and simple. Hence, Kevin Philip’s warning about “the US becoming a garrison state” is a reference to the pathway this ‘land of opportunity’ (or opportunists) is heading towards, which culminates, if it has already not culminated, at fascism, a synonym of barbarism.

Violence cannot be supported; it is abhorrent and despicable but the violence of the weaker cannot be compared with the violence of the mightier. Both are hideous; the only difference lies in the mode of their presentation. Those who hold the media can highlight relative trivialities as cataclysms while their own My Lais, Hiroshimas and Abu Ghraibs are not considered even worth mentioning. “An order given by the executives of Fox network to Fox reporters, which appeared as an ad in The New York Times,” according to Howard Zinn, “required the latter not to play up Iraqi civilian casualties.” Why? Did the victims belong to some other species? Were they not human beings? If so, was Franz Fanon, while arguing that “human beings who are not considered as such shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the coloniser,” really promoting violence? Howard Zinn continues to state: “The many thousands of people… hired by private corporations to be the security people are repeatedly called by the press as contractors. The more accurate term would be mercenaries… they are just not wearing the uniforms. This is the privatisation of an ugly war.” The leaders of this ‘free’ world are incapable of doing wrong. If they do, history brings forth their crimes only when the capital needs scapegoats to shield its crimes. By that time these mighty figures of today have already immersed into oblivion, replaced by some other players taking their roles on the stage of the world.

“The war,” says Orwell, “is not meant to be won; it is meant to be continuous.” “It is a sad commentary on the capitalist system,” Howard Zinn adds, “that the capitalist system could solve the problem of unemployment only through war. It is a sort of basic fact about this system that it is driven to give people jobs only when those jobs contribute to war and militarism. And there is such a thing called military Keynesianism. Military Keynesianism is even more effective than ordinary Keynesianism because there is the profit motive for the corporations operating to give people jobs in war industries. It is a commentary on the capitalist system that seems to be the only way it can maintain economic stability.”

Every war requires an enemy or a heap of them. The quantity and quality of war depends on the quantity and quality of an enemy/enemies. The Cold War provided the sustained necessity of keeping hostilities alive though the Soviet Union was never eager to fight. Only a warfare state can fulfill the needs of a welfare state since it continues to produce goods including waste and indoctrinated buyers who buy without needs. Its enemy is vague, eternal and omnipresent. It has to be there or else it needs to be created. It is always lurking both in peace as well as in war. Akin to the executive, judiciary and legislators, the enemy is very much an integral part of the system. It can have one or several names. It can be as concrete as the USSR or as abstract as al Qaeda, as distant and alienated as once the ‘axis of evil’ or as close and brutal as Islamic State (IS). It does not impede productivity nor inhibits the level of growth but helps to maintain the status quo. The motive is to contain any real possibility of liberation.

(To be continued)

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com