War Pigs

The cost of the so-called War on Terror is approaching one trillion dollars.

Who's getting that $? I wish more people asked that question.

Think of it this way:

If you sell guns to the government, you get rich. I mean, billionaire-type rich. Look at Haliburton, etc.

If you carry a gun for the government, you risk injury and/or death for less than minimum wage.

Partially because your equipment is frequently faulty, out of date, or you don't have it.

The equipment supplied by defense contractors.

You know, the people who MADE nearly a trillion dollars so far.

It's good work if you can get it...

Anyone who says war isn't about money better have a pretty good counter-argument.

E very war America has ever been in was about $ from the 'revolution' forward.

The world wars didn't spawn post-colonialism, they were just the biggest result; once you carve the world up like a pie, all that's left is to fight with each other over the pieces.

The Cold War was about containing communism so it would go broke; it worked. Korea? Can't let those filthy Reds get so close to Japan, who, only five years after WWII were such good pals that we fought a war for them in another country.

I remember my Uncle Joe, a WWII veteran who was the stereotypical 'quiet uncle' who lived in a room in his sister's house, emotionally traumatized by four years in the Pacific theater. I always wondered how he felt seeing Japanese cars in America. I'm not saying we shouldn't have them, just that he might rightfully ask what all the sacrifice was for.

South Korea might, too. If that peninsula wasn't so close to Japan, we'd have probably let it go. Unless S. Korea is home to some kind of natural resource I have no knowledge of.

I'm not bashing S. Korea at all, I'm just saying that we went there for Japan's sake, best I can tell.

Speaking of which, Koreans are the most hardcore, gangster MFers in Asia. PJ O'Rourke once called the the Irish of the East.

G Dumbya may be stupid, but even he wasn't moronic enough to go after North Korea.

And South Koreans? Some of them served in Vietnam, as a kind of armed 'thank you' to the US. They were so scary that they never even put up defenses when they slept at night. They didn't have to; Charlie knew better than to f@#$ with these people.

Why did America go to Vietnam? Rubber. Where do you think Michelin used to get the rubber for their tires? You don't think we went there to defend freedom, do you? Ngo Dinh Diem was Catholic. In a country that was 99% buddhist. He was the archetypal scumbag dictator whose anti-communism was a convenient excuse for his 'excesses' such that the US threw $ at him. Until we decided he had to go; they dragged him into an armored personnel carrier and chopped him up with machetes. But trust me, he earned it.

And since Angkor Wat is all Cambodia has to offer the world by way of resources, we have shamefully left it to fend for itself in the wake of the worst intentional human disaster in the last half of the 20th century.

To me, the Killing Fields are worse than the Holocaust if only because we knew it would happen and did nothing. It's shameful. To many of you 1975 may seem like ancient history, but it's not. We'd been to the moon, for God's sake. We had global media coverage.

Now Cambodia is the child-sex capital of the world...

We were so intent on running away in embarrassment from Vietnam (after propping up a series of regimes so corrupt they made the Colombian Cartels look like charity organizations) that we let a million (more) people die for no good reason.

Not to mention all the dope fiends in the US strung out on heroin that we allowed (or helped) the South Vietnamese to export.

A tradition that continues into the present; we allowed the anti-Taliban Afghans to continue growing opium since they were on our side.

The War on Drugs is about money, too. How do you think Ollie North (who deserved a rope necktie more than any other American in the last half century) paid for those wacky Contras?

I was lucky; my generation of Americans never had to fight any wars worse than Grenada or Panama, which were hardly wars.

Well, there was the War on Drugs. I was a member of the resistance, and while I didn't wear a beret, I drank wine and smoked...

But I've seen three generations of American men deeply affected by war, and yet no one ever seems to be able to give me a good reason for what they went through. They'll tell me it's too complex to be explained in terms I can understand.

I'm a Ph.D. I can keep up. Out with it already.

Even worse, the situations or causes (and/or justifications) never seem to last too long.

(not) Funny how American corporations seem to recover from war (having often profited continuously) faster than veterans and refugees do.

Nikes are made in a country where some of my friends left their limbs, and where some of my former  students' parents' were killed. Apparently Agent Orange is Nike's secret ingredient.

We used to drop napalm on people who now make the shoes we wear. Occasionally, someone in America gets shot over those shoes, which, karmically, makes sense.

I never blamed my grandfather's generation for staunchly refusing to buy any kind of car but American. Their lives were defined by fighting against Germany and Japan. It may have been a bit much to ask for them to 'get over it.'

If we're expected to get over these kinds of animosities quickly, why develop them in the first place?

When Saddam Hussein was gassing Iranians, we helped him and liked him. Then we changed our minds, invaded his country (twice) and hanged him.

We dropped atomic f@#$ing weapons (that's the scientifically correct term) on Japan; now we're friends. But I wouldn't blame them if they still didn't quite trust us.

When China was killing Japanese people, we thought it was great.

When that red flag went up, oh, the story changed.

We defended Taiwan (allowing KMT soldiers to run dope out of the Golden Triangle as long as they took a few shots at Commies every once in a while), and will do so until it is no longer politically expedient to do so.

When Nixon opened relations with China, as a goodwill measure he ceased CIA assistance to the Tibetan resistance overnight.

Because freedom from communism was no longer more important than negotiating with it.

As an American born and raised during the Cold War, I will be grievously ashamed when the US sells Taiwan down the river to China.

And we will.

We won't do it for any other reason than money.

Which, of course, is the same reason China wants Taiwan in the first place.

Money makes the world go round. It also makes us kill each other by the millions. It is not only the root of all evil; it is the root of all war.

Hong Kongers' religious materialism can be especially nauseating to me because very few of these people ever died to protect it.

That's meant to be a crass statement but also a true one: Americans are materialistic, but we feed our young men into the meat grinder every few years to 'defend' it. Capitalism inevitably leads to bloodshed, but at least some of that blood is our own.

Even so, that doesn't make it worth it.

When someone asks me why America is in Iraq, I tell them it's because someone is getting rich and wants to be richer.

It's the same reason the pollution in Hong Kong (and Beijing and Shanghai, etc.) is so bad.

The rich live for money and the poor fight and die for it.

That's the meaning of life on Earth as best I can tell.