Fighting Real Wars, For Real Reasons

FORMER TEXAS GOV, failed presidential candidate, and possible future failed presidential candidate Rick Perry, yelling a speech, screamed: "we didn't start this war, but we sho do aim to finish 'er." Or, something to that effect. He was referring to the alleged 'war on terrorism", which arguably is not an actual war, since it is a war against a concept, not a nation or identifiable human entity. Rather remindful, in fact, of America's other great conceptual wars, the one against poverty, the one against crime, and the piece de resistance, the war on drugs. It turns out that wars against activities and concepts do not succeed as well as wars against other countries, particularly weak and disorganized nations with plenty of natural resources, and opportunities for potential foreign corporate investment. All it takes is a pretext, a provocation, a reason, and, if all else fails, an entirely fabricated excuse, such as those employed variously by the United States in 1846, 1898, 1964, and 1991, to name just a few. This current war of the month against terrorism began in earnest, not by coincidence, shortly after the United States attacked Iraq on February 15, 1991, which in turn began a few months after Saddam/Iraq conquered Kuwait, which in turn happened one week after the American ambassador to Saddam/Iraq told Saddam, face to face, that the United States did not care whether Iraq attacked Kuwait. That's when the war on terror, a war on a vague concept, began, with a conversation between American ambassador April Glaspie, and the now dead, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, Saddam Hussein. google: April Glaspie, scroll down, click on "transcript of conversation with Saddam, 7/25/90". So, In the great fun house that is American foreign and domestic public policy, where nothing is ever as it seems, we can convince ourselves that "they started it", while going about our merry, self righteous, and ever so prosperous corporate controlled way.