The Real Reason for the Wars

I have just seen the results of a CNN poll which asked if Democrats or Republicans could best protect us from ‘terrorism’ (my emphasis). The Dems got 33%, the Reps, 47%.

As many of you know already, framing a question or idea can lead to specific and planned-for results. In this case, the continuing use of the word “terrorism” is something I’d like to discuss. Or opine upon, since there is only one of me.

Terrorism is a highly charged word that is the last refuge of fighting people who have no military. The specific tools used in acts of terrorism can run from throwing rocks to IEDs, Improvised Explosive Devices, in other words, home-made bombs (oh my, the American culture does love its acronyms), something along the lines of a Molatov cocktail with flak on a timer or remote detonator; something to explode the thing, which holds heavy metal bits that can maim and kill. These things are certainly terrible, but to focus our attention on terrorism as an enemy of our country and now faced in the Middle East as well as at home, is confusing to most people. Terrorism sounds really, well, terrible. To produce terror? Well, these things certainly do that, but we should not be focusing our thinking (which is a powerful thing and something that can turn the tide and part the sea in the way a war is prosecuted) on the technique of the unfunded fighting people around the world. We should be focusing on the real reason for the war.

Back in the day (as they say), countries in the Middle East were pretty much off-limits to American capitalist enterprise. Those Muslim countries, which had some very strict laws, did not encourage the eat-everything-in-one-sitting ideas promoted by American and other Western businesses. But the real Elites (as The Right likes to call people whom they dislike and fear) in The West had other plans. Not only did the Middle East hold most of the remaining sources of oil, but there were a shit-load of consumers over there, if we could only get those women out from under Burqas and educate the men about tits and ass!! What an enormous pool of ignorant consumers that would prove to be! Why these folks barely have houses, what might they do if exposed to a big-screen TV, for instance? Or cosmetics? And fashion?!!!! Woweee-------What a gold mine that area could be for the thinking man’s capitalist.

Slowly, but surely, our country began to insert itself into the Middle East commercially (you know, those American Interests you keep hearing about in the media?) The Bush Administration, in particular, was pushing for this, offering American companies tax breaks for taking their operations to the Middle East and other countries with large pools of potential consumers.

The business machine in The West has effectively created a nice, fat bunch of users, eaters and consumers over here. Although I have had friends of mine disagree, advertisements are very effective in manipulating our minds. Why else would a product pay millions for placement in films and on TV? It’s a powerful message to an open, viewing public hungry for The Next Big Thing. No sooner has your iPod’s battery run down for the first time, than the next Device-of-the-Moment is offered to the hungry Western public. They just HAVE to have one in every color!

So getting American culture inserted in the Middle East was paramount in the plans to tap that potential consumer. Look what American companies have been able to do in India! We turned those people into wonderful consumers of the products of our American-owned companies. Now they all carry these multi-colored tech devices and literally eat up our fast food.

The day I learned in a hidden story in the media several years ago that Hooters had opened a restaurant in Amman, Jordon was the day I felt like giving up. But I’m not going to. Marsha has a mouth and she intends to keep using this one strong remaining ability I have as an aging human being. I have a mouth AND a mind. Stay tuned.