The War Machine

     So it’s war again. Boom, boom, bang, bang! Again? Can anyone remember when Washington wasn’t in war? Well, there might have been a couple of years, true, but again and again, sometimes with Congress’s “authorization,” sometimes without it: just to begin somewhere, the war against the indigenous population in the United States, the war with Mexico, the war with Spain for Cuba and the Philippines, the buccaneering in Central America, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War (by the way, has that ended?), the Vietnam War, the tinkering with rightwing military coups in Latin America and the ongoing “war” against Islamic extremists for which Obama wants the approval of Congress.

      These wars, usually defended officially as struggles in defense of lofty ideals such as “democracy” or “freedom,” have usually been strongly backed by the mass media while Hollywood has churned out movies glorifying them and politicians and even persons in high academic position have attempted to soothe the irritation of critics by claiming that the U.S. represents an “exception” among the world’s nations.

      War would appear to be the inevitable price of becoming or maintaining the nation as an "empire" or as the world's most powerful force. However, that brings about an essential question: who pays the bill?