Imperial Conquest - Manifest Destiny of the Wealthy Elite

Imperial Conquest - Manifest Destiny of the Wealthy Elite
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17418.htm
The Moral Imperative
By Charles Sullivan
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. --Andre Lorde
03/26/07 "ICH " -- -

It should surprise no one that the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq four years ago was based upon lies and fabricated evidence. Other wars instigated by the U.S. were begun in the same way, but we never seem to learn the lessons that history could teach us. The purpose of the U.S. invasion was not to free the Iraqi people or to spread democracy (when has the government ever done that?); it was to privatize the natural wealth of the region and to transfer ownership from the Iraqi pubic domain to the coffers of U.S. corporations.

We have a long and shameful history of imperial invasions and occupations, and no experience building democracies.

The United States Middle East policy is also intended to suppress the enemies of radical Zionism and to extend Zionist control of the region, as well as to prop up the sagging U.S. dollar against the strengthening euro. It is the continuation of Manifest Destiny; the foolish but stubborn believe that Americans are superior to everyone else; what historian Howard Zinn refers to as American exceptionalism.

Manifest Destiny and the spread of capitalism go hand in hand. The growth of the military industrial complex requires imperial conquests and continuous expansion—an impossibility on a finite planet. We have yet to learn that wherever reality clashes with economic myth, reality prevails. The Pentagon, which is the iron fist of American capitalism, requires enemies in order to justify its vast expenditures to an unquestioning public, even if it has to invent them. In the past those enemies were the spread of communism and socialism, which were a threat only to Plutocratic rule, not to the American people themselves.

Now the danger is as cryptic and ubiquitous as state propaganda—the exaggerated threat of Islamic terrorism. I do not contend that there is no real threat of terrorism against U.S. citizens. I do, however, assert that those threats remain small and are a direct response to unjust U.S. foreign policy, including the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is important to understand that the interest of the people and the government are always in conflict. The will of the people has never mattered to the ruling clique, as evidenced by the ongoing occupation of Iraq, despite overwhelming public opposition. What matters to America’s rulers is the acquisition of private wealth through war and expansionism.

The ruling elite have never hesitated to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers and workers for imperial ambitions, or to sanction the deliberate killing of innocent civilians in unknowable numbers.

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