Wars to Come
For many, the Obama candidacy represented a change so profound that they thought, or perhaps more accurately “hoped,” that an Obama presidency would not only mean a domestic social transformation, but an end to the American cycle of war. To them, the news of an upsurge in US troops means those hopes were dashed. They will not be the last ones.
For among these many are they who never regarded the US as an empire, and thus were woefully unprepared for the hunger of any president for more executive power and the necessities of any empire to expand, rather than cede, power.
Many of the most vociferous critics of the expansive powers of the Bush Administration, of his wire traps, his secret prisons, of his penchant for total surveillance over Americans at home or abroad are strikingly silent now when under Obama these same powers reside in the executive. Secret prisons? Yes, still there. Illegal renditions? Still there. Wire taps of Americans without court order? Yup.
Indeed, little has changed but the public tone of debate. There’s little bombast. A good deal less bluster. A whole lot less “fear” talk. But the same programs are on tap. And there’s still wars begun in deception and greed, and continued because of simple political necessity.
Yet there’s more. In the next five years or so, many of the men who fought in these wars will be back in the US working as prison guards, cops, security specialists, and the like. Many will be as bitter as vinegar, as angry as a hornet’s nest because they’ll know, as previous generations of veterans learned, that they fought not for the people, not even for the constitution, but for the wealthy rulers who can care less about their lives or their loss. What will this mean to US society? How will it impact the future?
Almost 90 years ago, at the end of World War I, soldiers, bitter at the loss of the war and humiliated by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, became a right-wing political force that would later emerge as the Nazis which tore through Europe with a vengeance. That is to say, wars don’t end when politicians or diplomats sign treaties or pacts. They fester and feed off unresolved issues and reemerge sometimes worse than before, and they sometimes return to the land that birthed them.
From death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal
December 6, 2009