War on Wars

JNM photo

By

Ahmed Tharwat

President Trump will finally get his wish, a military parade on Veterans Day. But not as the Washington Post explained: “It won’t resemble the Bastille Day celebration in France that Trump had leaned on for inspiration.“ The showman got his live military show that will reportedly cost around $30M. America’s love of guns started a long time ago, and not just the NRA gun toting nuts, there are as many guns in America as people. The average gun owner has eight guns. Americans’ love of guns expands not from the way police here treat people of color at home but how our government and world police treat people of color abroad.

America, when it comes to violence, is a schizophrenic country, it talks so much about peace and is always in wars; war on poverty, war on drugs, war on crimes, and lately the notorious war on terrorism. None of these is an actual war, it is a losing war that is nothing but a PR campaign, justifying failed political and public policies. America has been involved in wars since the beginning; Indian war, Spanish, American revolution, Barbary wars, Revolution wars, Spanish war, Civil Wars, WWWI, WWII, Vietnamese, Korean, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syrian and Yemen! Our fleets spread over the globe; expanding our reach to bomb and invade any country we wish. However, Congress declared only eleven wars, the rest undeclared.

Wars in general, in the beginning, are supported by the majority of Americans, as long as most of the dead are the others. American foreign policy has always rested on two pillars, our hard power; Military bombing and invasions, and our soft power; manipulation of international institutions, like the World Bank, UN, through aid, and our economic and cultural products. The role of politicians in America is to come up with the right narrative to justify what the system needs and wants. Communism, Terrorism, Nazism, and the arms race with the Soviet Union and Russia produced Reagan, Bush and Trump, and if they needed a different face and a more direct confrontation, Carter, Clinton and Obama.

Obama, the ‘Guess Who Is Coming To Dinner’ star for liberals, pulled our military hardware from the Middle East and sent his drones, waging more wars and more drones than Bush Jr. Obama is a clever man, he was more sophisticated and smart about waging wars. However as the liberal Clinton ended the welfare system as we know it, and so called progressive black Obama sided with Wall Street bailing out big banks and corporations, this right wing policy needed a progressive politician to do it. Right-wing politicians would be hard pressed to do it.

The capitalist system produced the right politicians to deliver what it was needed. Conservative Nixon opened the door to communist China; however Johnson expanded the bombing of Vietnam. While conservatives are in your face and clear about what America is as an empire, liberals blame the Russians for their losses; try to find an excuse for our debacles, and look at it as if an aberration and individual mistakes. The Vietnam war was Johnson’s war, the Iraq disaster Bush’s war, good intentions always being the rationale, most causalities as collateral damage.

America’s exceptionalism blinded liberals from seeing our government’s crimes committed abroad. The conservative would rather use hard power to keep America great and dominant, and the liberal would want to use soft power, but only to achieve the same dominance. Now, the system needed a clown to divert our attention from the real crimes committed at home and abroad, ending the rise of black awakening against police killings and brutality, women’s rights and minorities’ rights and covering the massive inequality of skewed wealth distribution that surpassed the gelded age. Less than 1% owns more than 80% of our wealth.

So Trump can talk building walls, the Muslim ban, Stormy Daniel, arming teachers, and the Comey investigation, all these are nothing but staged TV reality shows to keep the system unchecked and the people uninformed. Opposition is divided and marching alone; from the Women’s march, Black Lives Matter march, Students march, Muslims march, Mexican march… all these movements are ineffectual and incomplete until we connect the dots and realize that the only war we need is the War on Wars.

Ahmed Tharwat

Ahmed Tharwat is the Producer and Host of the Arab-American TV showBelAhdan. His articles are published in national and international publications. He blogs at Notes from America,www.ahmediatv.comand his articles appear in national and international publications. Follow him on Twitter@AhmediaTV.