I’m sorry if this is going too far, but I heard an interesting comment
just now while watching a “Canada NOW” report about the pending war with
Iraq.
The correspondent, Adrienne Arsenault, said,
“Military contributions like the ones being made by Australia won’t
change the landscape much. [speaking of how the US will do most of the
fighting] But the United States needs broad support to help pay for a
conflict like this, to deal with the cost of both occupying and
rebuilding Iraq.”
The reason this struck me is in relation to some of the talk we had last
quarter about the military-industrial complex. I haven’t heard many
people talking about this war being a product, of the US
military-industrial complex, that we’re trying to sell to the world. The
idea really struck me that we’re packaging this product of occupation
and rebuilding and attempting to sell it to the world. Essentially, we
go in and do the fighting, as a service to the UN, and then the rest of
the world, through the UN, helps rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq so
that the world carries some of the cost of providing oil to the profit
making multinational and US oil refining companies.
So, the war is being packaged as a world subsidy to the
military-industrial complex, and that doesn’t seem to be something that
many people are saying. Anyhow, thought I’d share that.