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Myths of Our Time
Paul Craig Roberts
Prisonplanet.com
Friday, Nov 13th, 2009
It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft
that ended the Vietnam war. According to this explanation, cowardly
college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic
families, forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx’s
explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said
to have brought the war to an end.
That fact that in those days the US still had an independent
media of sorts that sometimes framed the war in moral terms
is ignored. Are we sure, for example, that the film of the naked
little girl running in terror down the road burning with napalm
was ineffectual in arousing moral opposition to the war? Are
we certain that it wasn’t an aroused moral conscience
that brought about the end of the war but was college students’
fears for their lives and limbs?
If we ascribe ending the war to material interests, it makes
ending the war look as unworthy as the war itself.
Yet, virtually every conservative columnist, commentator, newsperson
and politician, as well as today’s antiwar protesters
and apparently the Pentagon, believes that a military draft
would reduce Americans’ toleration for wars because of
body bags coming home to middle and upper class parents. Apparently,
the lower class doesn’t mind its kids coming back in body
bags.
Those in thrall to this explanation, which derives from Marx’s
materialist explanation of history, do not notice that Vietnam
was our longest war. It apparently took almost forever for the
material interest of students and their parents to realize itself
and stop the war.
Why are we afraid to say that the war stopped because American
troops and the American population got tired, offended even,
from killing women, children and noncombatants? Vietnam had
not attacked the US. The US had interjected itself into a civil
war in a far off place, as it has done in Afghanistan.
By invading Iraq the US started a civil war between Sunni and
Shi’ite. In Pakistan the US has started a civil war between
the religious tribal population and the secular US puppet state.
In Palestine the US started a civil war between Fatah and Hamas.
One continuously reads from those Americans opposed to America’s
wars of aggression that the wars are possible because they don’t
affect Americans, just those few who sign up for the voluntary
military. Thus, there are insufficient material interests at
stake to stop the war. This is a common explanation for the
weakness of the antiwar movement.
One could argue instead that it is the triumph of Karl Marx’s
materialist thinking that has made moral protests impotent.
What is morality? You can’t weigh it, define it, measure
it. It can be dismissed as the whining of material interests.
In contrast, material interests, such as lives, limbs, and bank
accounts are real.
For whatever the reason, morality has shown itself to be an
impotent force in 21st century America. Americans show no remorse
at over one million dead Iraqis and four million displaced Iraqis
due entirely to an American invasion based on lies and deception.
The lies and deception are now well proven. Yet, there has been
no apology for the horrors that Americans inflicted on Iraq.
Afghanistan is another example. Intentional lies conflated
the Taliban with al Qaeda and "terrorists." The diverse
peoples in Afghanistan who were first ravaged by Soviet bombs
are now ravaged by American bombs. Weddings, funerals, children’s
soccer games, people waiting for fuel or food, people asleep
in their homes, people attending Mosques have all been murdered
and are murdered routinely by US and its NATO puppets.
Each time civilians are murdered, the US denies it, only to
be contradicted every time by the evidence.
Why is the president of the United States contemplating sending
yet tens of thousands more US troops to kill people in Afghanistan?
The answer is that the United States is an immoral country,
with an immoral people and an immoral government. Americans
no longer have a moral conscience. They have gone over to the
Dark Side.
Humanity has endeavored for millennia to control evil with
morality. In the American "superpower," this effort
has collapsed and failed.
The United States needs to be censured for its immoral behavior,
not have that behavior rationalized as being in its material
interests.
"When the people find they can vote themselves
money, that will herald the end of the republic."
- Fall Of The Republic - Buy
the DVD here
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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