Why Are We Constantly At War?

[ThePilgrim]

Why are we constantly at war?  Well of course the most elemental and biblical answer is because of sin.  But why is it that governments like ours seem to be constantly at war aside from the biblical answer?  

The basic answer as to why governments love war is that war consolidates power.  Orwell in his book 1984 uses the backdrop of constant war as a way for the government of Big Brother to strengthen its hold on power and social control.  During a war, the organizing principle is law and order, structure and control.  To engage in constant war, government exacts total force over its citizens. 

The historian Howard Zinn discusses such an idea in his work, A People's History of the United States: "War is the health of the state," the radical writer Randolph Bourne said, in the midst of the First World War. Indeed, as the nations of Europe went to war in 1914, the governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was stilled, and young men died in frightful numbers on the battlefields-often for a hundred yards of land, a line of trenches.

The implication is that the social discourse and action that might question governmental action and behavior is suspended during wartime, as patriotism becomes an elixir that all citizens are supposed to devour in mass quantities.  Hence, constant war is a state of being where government is in complete control at all times.

In Owell's 1984 the enemy was whatever supposed foreign power it said it was and war was unending.  Watch these four clips and tell me how the last 24 years have been any different.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IFrnQHaQWoA

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ENAV_UoIfgc

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5BwxI_l84dc

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kKcx1b6EnRg

[John81]

War serves to distract the people, scare people, and make people look to the government for answers. War provides the excuse to expand governmental power, take away citizen rights and liberties, raise taxes, neglect domestic matters, and profit those in power along with their key supporters and friends.

 

A crisis opens doors for power grabs and for the people to willingly give up what others before them fought so hard to secure. Most often this comes through war or threat of war (though FDR accomplished a lot in this area due to the Great Depression).

 

Political leaders have long known the power that comes when a people is convinced they need to be in fear of an "enemy" or must engage in war with them.

 

I think it was Franklin that warned if a people was willing to give up liberty for promised security they would have neither.

 

When no real threat is around, the government creates one for the people; even to the point of being able to convince them that a few thousand militants about half-way around the world may threaten the survival of America.

 

It's all about power, control and wealth; all of which go hand-in-hand.