Friday, September 26, 2014

Who benefits? It is always worth wondering ...

In comments on yesterday's post, Hattie reminded us to ask who benefits from our country's endless wars. Here's a link to good article about contractor profiteering by Dan Froomkin at The Intercept.

And here are some additional direct beneficiaries of U.S. military power projection and the campaign to keep us Very Afraid:
I don't believe that contractor interests (or even control of oil reserves) make up the totality of what drives our persistent military adventures. There's also a nasty stew of prideful national ignorance and atavistic impulses underlying to the drive toward war. But some good old fashioned profiteering sure helps keep the war fires burning brightly.

2 comments:

Hattie said...

Propaganda is what convinces the people to back up military adventures. As long as I'm recommending reading, I suggest Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything. What she says ties into and explains why we are going to war over oil again.
It's a feedback loop: the U.S. military consumes more oil than any other institution. In order to keep itself running, it needs to secure oil supplies, which it does by waging war, which uses up oil, which means they need to secure supplies and so on. Forever and ever amen.

Rain Trueax said...

An interesting and diverse group debated this on Maher last night. Interesting to hear and it's been so far very political/partisan for how it's seen with Obama going against his usual base for what he's doing.