The Roots of War - By Barbara Ehrenreich

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday April 14, 2003 16:58 by Barbara Ehrenreich

I'd like to be the good marxist and say it is all about the economy (or oil) but some how I doubt it. boys love their toys, and will most certainly use them if they have the chance. is the civilisation destroying force the same the built civilisation?

The Roots of War
By Barbara Ehrenreich
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15604

//Marx was wrong, then: It is not only the "means of production" that shape societies, but the means of destruction. In our own time, the costs of war, or war-readiness, are probably larger than at any time in history, in relation to other human needs, due to the pressure on nations not only to maintain a mass standing army – the United States supports about a million men and women at arms – but to keep up with an extremely expensive, ever-changing technology of killing. The cost squeeze has led to a new type of society, perhaps best termed a "depleted" state, in which the military has drained resources from all other social functions. North Korea is a particularly ghoulish example, where starvation coexists with nuclear weapons development. But the USSR also crumbled under the weight of militarism, and the United States brandishes its military might around the world while, at this moment, cutting school lunches and health care for the poor.

"Addiction" provides only a pallid and imprecise analogy for the human relationship to war; parasitism – or even predation – is more to the point. However and whenever war began, it has persisted and propagated itself with the terrifying tenacity of a beast attached to the neck of living prey, feeding on human effort and blood.

If this is what we are up against, it won't do much good to try to uproot whatever war-like inclinations may dwell within our minds. Abjuring violent speech and imagery, critiquing masculinist culture, and promoting respect for human diversity – all of these are worthy projects, but they will make little contribution to the abolition of war. It would be far better to think of war as something external to ourselves, something which has to be uprooted, everywhere, down to the last weapon and bellicose pageant.

The "epidemicity" of war has one other clear implication: War cannot be used as a means to prevent or abolish war.//