Do Americans Love War?

Do Americans Love War?

While attempting to get passersby to take 20 seconds out of their busy rush down Market St. to call Senator Feinstein and urge her to vote “NO WAR SUPPLEMENTAL”, a nicely dressed, self-identified “foreigner” approached to speak about our U.S. empire.

He claimed, with that superior distancing attitude justly donned by those born and raised outside our soil, that Americans LOVE war.

Well, do we love war? Despite our early education, we all know by now that since the end of WWII, we have been the aggressors bombing, occupying, attacking over 25 countries of brown and black people – only ONE country was full of white people and lots of them were Muslim.

We all know by now that of the almost 200 countries in the world, we have military troops and bases (that we know about) in at least 160 of those countries.

We all know by now that we are the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians, and stricken ill many more times that.

We all know by now that we spend more on our military than ALL other countries in the world combined.

We all know by now that even, though those selling us the horrific package of war wrapped up with the tune that our military is protecting our freedoms, our military is occupying Iraq, Afghanistan, and demolishing Pakistan for the freedoms of our corporations to exploit.

We all know by now that although we have only 4-5% of the world’s people, we consume 25-60% of the world’s resources.

We all know by now that we provide at least half the weapons to the world, and that close to 70% of the weapons now used against our troops were actually made for their use at some point in life.

So do we Americans love war?

We certainly do not love the work and effort we would have to expend as a people to prevent war in our name, and later, when we’ve failed to make preventing war a real priority in our lives, the even greater energy to end war in our name.

We certainly do not love the need to direct and hold accountable our president, the first African American ever elected, the Democrat elected to end the terror of the Bush regime, the leader of our empire that we have dumped our hopes and dreams onto.

We certainly do not love making the time and energy to do our civic and democratic duties in addition to the major one that usually less than half our people do, voting.

We certainly do not love taking time away from making the money needed to maintain our lifestyles in order to do our civic duties and ensure our government is representing us.

So do we Americans love war?

I looked at this young man in his soft, shiney leather jacket, his designer eye glasses, his $150 hair cut, creased pants, and shoes even I know cost a zillion bucks and told him:

I’m not so sure Americans love war but it seems all people sure do love the lifestyle enabled by wars – or rather the ‘winning’ of wars, genocide and colonizations.